#like you can have visible intro. read more. visible conclusion

[shinakazami1]

have you seen the promotional material from tsp greenlight? if yes i would absolutely love to hear your thoughts on it. otherwise i can go fetch it for ya

First - please check Maximum's art - one of my fav TSP artists fr fr <333 Thanks for the ask!!

I asked for the files and now I'm sharing it here for you guys, too of the original TSP: HD REMIX greenlight.

I want to say that the TSPUD release took some inspiration from this campaign and I will compare the two, focusing mainly on the greenlight as you've asked for it.

There is a lot to unpack here so, I will break this into a few parts.

TABLE OF CONTENT

1) Trailers 1a) The First Trailer 1b) The Raphael Trailer 2) Images 3) The FAQ (frequently asked questions) 4) Final conclusions

1a) The First Trailer

Let's look at this trailer first. From what I can tell, this is the first instance of the 2013 intro. The layout of the Parable is once again unique, which happens in other trailers, too.

What is intriguing is the ending.

The exit sign - was also visible in 2011 Escape Ending (with Curator), and 2013 (Mariella Ending - it's green). The only instance of it being above the door is the Demo (door close to 'Do you like the Stanley Parable' choice). It feels like a clever blend of the 2011 and 2013 ending to me, as the Narrator experiments more with the new placement. That's maybe why the layout feels isn't as familiar.

It's also the first instance where we see Stanley being conscious, besides the 2011 opening. From his perspective - he woke up to completely. Every video present in it is from the intro - which, seeing erratic movements from the camera, could mean those are new to him, too.

My take is this is where the Other Stanley comes in place. As he can move too, he might either be the guy who we see in the trailers OR, the one in the video. I like both interpretations

This trailer was reimagined for the PS5 release of TSPUD.

The layout is also different from the main game. What is intriguing, however, is the setup. While the intro does show the room from above, making this fake 427 room just a scrapped material, the fact that the new Freedom ending (look at the difference in the sky between the images), only furthers what I said in my prev post (about IOS release )

Conclusions:

For trailers, the Narrator likes to make new parts of the Parable and play with layouts, letting Stanley run around freely.

That Stanley might be The Other Stanley. These, besides the Escape Pod Ending, are the only spots that Stanley moves by himself.

The greenlight trailer is there to show the new content from the perspective of 2011 mod, with a small callback to the original.

Now, onto

1b) The Raphael Trailer

Link to it Before I get to the trailer, I just want to give a shoutout to a Raphael Parable mod. It's an interesting fan game and I truly admire it.

The orange walls are typical Source SDK engine ones, and we have the emotion boxes found later in the Demo.

Have this list tho because it's funny

It's the typical type of crazy list we see in the Demo, Disco, and iOS new content; I feel this is closer to most of them, written by the Narrator instead of Proctols like the Disco one.

It's also the first mention of other types of game and the Narrator's interest in them. The survival horror element with the Bicycle scene is really nice. It shows up later in the Memory Zone <3

In general - this is, before Cookie9, the first canon situation of the Narrator reading other people's feedback on the game. Just like with Cookie, he seems to take a proactive method with negative feedback, trying to show he can change. The attitude, however, also changed - for Raphael's ending, he is still 2011 way meaner self. The amount of sarcasm throughout the whole thing is so enjoyable and, whoever Raphael is, I hope he enjoyed this.

Conclusions:

The Narrator takes a proactive approach to critique that feels close to heart.

The construction part with desk 000 is shown for the first time - which could potentially mean each office number corresponds also to the part of office built.

2) The Images

There are 17 images in total. This part is also referenced in the PS5 TSPUD release video but also, if you look at the Mind Control Facility, some of the images are also used there as some of the room renders.

There are main three types of these images. The first, the contradictions that are also present in the PS5 video. It's a theme in the game in general to combine these, as The End is Never The End (thing that the PS5 text segment ends with) only shows it more.

The second element - image 7 mentioned multiple different games styles that just like the video, fits the fact the Narrator loves gaming.

But the third one is most interesting. The text in these seems conscious

For the person who could say this, it could be either The Narrator or The Settings.

a) The Narrator: - Asking someone for help when game doesn't work like he thought:

Demo: " THEY SAID THEY LIKED IT! I NEED SOMEONE TO STOP THE DEMO! HELLO??"

Expo Achievement Fix: "Who fixed it? Is someone here?" ;

Confusion" "Will someone come for us?" - Skip Button parallels:

Image 12: slow corruption and scattered mind,

Image 15: "I am in control" ("It's all out of my control now. ") ,

Image 16: repetition,

Image 17: the return to normality

b) The Settings Person / 432 / TimeKeeper : - This could be his first appearance in the series.

- References to 'someone' could be his coworkers.

- Image 12: we know the number 8 is significant in the game. Just like the Bucket and Gamborrata, we know there seems to be some spiritual stuff going on and that might be the exact moment when he became the Timekeeper.

- Image 14: "If someone could get rid of the text maybe then I would see what the game is about" seems not quite like The Narrator's thing to say, as it's his game. Rather than that, it feels like someone else could be involved. - and with the corruption, it feels like a great

- Image 15: "don't tell me what to do" and Image 17: 'Let's begin again' fit their Settngs Persona

Both interpretations are as likely and while I prefer it's 432, feel free to make your own interpretations :] Maybe it's even a new character we don't know!

EDIT: I want to just show the smallest text on image 14:

"I would just like to know who is writing all of this. Do you know who is doing that. Would you please ask them to stop? Because I'm trying to figure out what this game is about (covered)"

This one part could mean whatever we see here are transcripts of thoughts, or what the person is saying is either written on the slides as they speak (meaning someone IS observing them), or they possibly have internet access (Google Translator). Once again, both can be true for The Narrator and 432 but, I thought it was a neat detail :]

Now, onto the last part:

3) The FAQ

It ties a bit back to who might be the person speaking in the images. And here, I would say it's even harder to tell due to the answers.

The question that starts it all is this:

If you remember the iOS post, the Narrator will in the future to this say he holds back on the details. Of course, as this is Davey/Cakebread, it could be interpreted as one of the Proctols speaking.

The second part though, is really interesting.

The question of identity is one in gen also present in the game (i.e. Confusion ending).

But the ending note-

"I'm alone again, aren't I."

makes me feel that once again. This might be either a) someone else entirely,

b) The Settings Person (theme of loneliness, loss of identity, understanding of weird rules),

c) Or, for this one my favourite, The Narrator.

Skip: "And here I am now, stuck in a room waiting for you (...) and that I'm going to be stuck all alone(...)" 

Bucket apartment: "No, no no, no, no, no, no, no, what's going on? Why do I want to be with the bucket, hear what the bucket has to say do anything it asks, what's wrong with me? I don't understand!"

4) Final conclusions

First - thank you maximum for the ask. I had no clue about the Greenlight Steam page so, this was a delight to look through and analyse. Here are my final thoughts on this:

This was still a collaborative work for the Narrator. The construction work, the different characters seemingly present in the images and the FAQ work well with the Demo having mention of Proctols. He used some old ideas and is going into new territory.

Trailers are spaces for Stanley (or, the Other Stanley) to walk in peacefully without a player's interference. It's unclear which Stanley is it.

The critique was meaningful to him from the start. The way he responded to it felt similar, but the emotional impact seemed to have changed, just like he did between TSP and TSPUD.

Themes of madness and loss of identity are important in the game. It might be the first instance of The Settings Person appearance, but no canon information is shown.

The FAQ might be the last canon instance of him being directly in touch with the Proctols.

If you got to this part of the post - thank you :] Nine cookies for you!!

🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪🍪

[imgeekgirlfan]

The Curse of Cassandra [EP : X]

Read in Ao3 : here

Pairings :  Qimir x f!reader(SEA Reader)  [The Acolyte]

Content Rating : Mature 18+ Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warning (AT YOUR OWN RISK)

tags/themes : Alternate Universe - Dune & Star wars, Partners in Crime, Strangers to Lovers

Summary : At the Jedi Temple, everyone confronted a shocking truth about themselves, whether it was Sol, Yord, or yourself.

Status: just finished writing this fic! (It will end in Episode 14)

A/N : I'm not spoiling anything, but two things: First, Qimir's out of the picture for a bit after this, while the story shifts to the Jedi Temple, where you'll learn more about his and the reader's backstories. Second, there's a super important character here you won't want to miss.

Ps.If you enjoy my work, please reblog it. Just liking the post won’t help others discover it.

➡  Intro // EP : 1 // EP : 2 // EP : 3 // EP : 4 // EP : 5 // EP : 6 // EP : 7 // EP : 8 // EP : 9 // EP : 11 // EP : 12 // EP : 13 // EP : 14 (Completed)

[Episodes 10] Hand of God be my witness; I am the voice from the outer world

They won't believe me.

The thought crosses your mind as you survey the interrogation room in the Jedi Temple on Olega. The room is nearly barren, with bare gray concrete walls and no windows, furnished only with a table and two chairs on opposite sides. You choose the inner seat, facing the door, patiently awaiting the arrival of another.

It isn't long before the steel door slides open, revealing the tall, gaunt figure of a middle-aged man dressed in a yellow Jedi uniform. Sol’s expression is grave as he takes the chair opposite you. Without preamble, he begins to speak. “I apologize for keeping you waiting. The things you’ve told us are... quite shocking.” He pauses briefly, then continues with a polite tone, “It will take time to verify the truth of all this, and we may not reach a conclusion soon.”

You reflect on everything you've revealed to them earlier. You told them all they needed to know—that Qimir was behind the Jedi slaughter on this planet and that he was a Sith Lord disguised as a harmless apothecary, hiding right under their noses for years.

To the Jedi, however, your account is just hearsay. After all, everything you said came from your visions, lacking tangible evidence to prove your story—no proof that what you saw was real and not some fevered delusion.

You know your fate hangs by a thread. There’s a strong chance the Jedi will deem you delusional and might even cast you out of the Temple. That is a risk you cannot afford to take, especially when Qimir knows you have escaped and is relentlessly pursuing you. Nowhere in the galaxy will be safe for you except under the protection of the Jedi Order. It's your only hope for survival.

“You don’t believe me either, do you?” You decide to test the waters, assessing Sol's demeanor behind his neutral exterior.

Sol clears his throat, visibly uncomfortable as he speaks. “I can't say I believe everything you've said, but I don't think you have a reason to lie, given that you admitted this man was your lover.” His gaze meets yours with sincerity. “But some parts don’t make sense...”

“It doesn’t make sense because you believe the Sith have long since vanished," you interject, interrupting him before he can finish. "But I'm telling the truth. I've told you everything. Qimir is a Sith Lord. His goal is the destruction of the Jedi Order, and he won't stop until he achieves it.”

Sol sighs. He remains skeptical of your words and seems caught between belief and doubt, but can’t help feeling concerned, aware that this issue is far too serious to ignore. The implications of your claims could threaten not just the Jedi Order but the stability of the entire galaxy. It is beyond the capacity of a single Jedi Master to decide alone. “The problem is we have no evidence to confirm the Sith still exist,” Sol says cautiously, his tone now even more guarded. “And the way in which these Jedi were killed doesn’t align with typical Sith methods.”

"But it aligns with Jedi methods," you murmur, though Sol hears every word clearly. "He kills Jedi in the Jedi way. That's why you initially suspected the culprit might be one of your own, or perhaps a former Jedi."

Sol's eyes widen in shock, staring at you as if your words are the most startling thing he has ever heard. "How do you know all of this?" he asks urgently, his voice laced with confusion. He clearly remembers that none of these details were shared with you. So where did you get this information?

You offer him a faint, mysterious smile, one that makes Sol feel unsettled in ways he cannot fully explain.

"I know what you know. And I know what you don’t," you say, your blue eyes momentarily distant and lost in thought. "Your suspicions aren’t wrong. Qimir isn’t his real name, and he was once a Padawan among you. As for the rest... you’ll have to find the answers from your own people—someone who knows him far better than I do."

Sol is taken aback, concern reflected on his face. For the first time, the words of this stranger evoke a pang of fear within him. "Who are you talking about? Who among us knows the Sith Lord?"

"Your friend, Master Vernestra."

Sol furrows his brow, thinking of the Mirialan Jedi Master, who is indeed his friend. At this point, Sol's doubts multiply as he struggles to find answers for himself. How does she know about Vernestra when they've never even met? he wonders.

Sol turns his gaze back to you, his eyes now filled with analysis and wariness. He's no longer sure how to feel about you—whether to be amazed or afraid.

"Who are you really?" he finally asks.

In truth, the more appropriate question would have been, “What are you?”

You sense the confusion and doubt etched on his face, making you start to wonder as well. "You really don't know who I am?" you ask, almost to yourself.

Sol shakes his head, not pausing to consider his response. "I don't know you, and I’m sure no one else here does either."

How is that even possible? You wonder; the memory is still vivid. When Qimir first captured you, he warned that the Jedi were after you too. You were certain their intentions were the same as everyone else's—to claim the power of the last Bene Gesserit for themselves. That's why you always avoided the Jedi. But when things changed between you and Qimir, you had no choice but to reluctantly seek refuge with the Jedi, knowing it was your best chance to evade Qimir.

You had prepared yourself for the possibility that your secret would be exposed here, which is why you dared to use your visions in front of Sol. Even though you hadn’t said you were a Bene Gesserit, you knew that the Jedi, who already held an interest in the Bene Gesserit, could easily piece the truth together on their own.

Yet, Sol’s response is not what you expected.

Confusion swirls within you as you meet Sol’s gaze. You desperately want to peer into his thoughts to understand what he’s truly thinking, but you can’t do that. Despite having prophetic powers, you lack the ability to read minds like a Force user. This limitation makes predicting the future so difficult—human thoughts are ever-changing, and so too is destiny.

However, Bene Gesserit training provides a solution to this weakness through a technique known as the 'Way of Perception.' This method focuses on observing every minute detail in your conversation partner’s movements—like the slightest twitch of a facial muscle, a shift in the eyes, or a swallow—each subtle gesture that reveals their true intentions. By employing this meticulous observation, a Bene Gesserit can analyze another’s thoughts, discerning truth from deception without relying on the Force.

You use the Way of Perception on Sol, meticulously observing his reactions and analyzing them as you have been trained in the ways of the Bene Gesserit. What you discover is that he’s telling the truth. Sol and the others here neither know of nor acknowledge the existence of someone like you—a Bene Gesserit.

In that moment, a realization hits you with blinding clarity—a truth you have never considered until now: Qimir has been lying to you all along.

You remember when he first approached you out of sheer curiosity, manipulating your fear of the Jedi to keep you from running. He worked to earn your trust, all in a bid to uncover your secrets. When Qimir finally learned that secret, he realized you were too valuable to fall into anyone else’s hands. So, he killed everyone who knew about you, all to keep your power under his control.

And what better way to control someone than through love?

That’s exactly what he did to you. Qimir tried to make you fall in love with him, to surrender yourself completely—body and soul—to serve his grander purpose. His ultimate plan was to resurrect the Sith and exact revenge on the Jedi. With the aid of a Bene Gesserit, he believed he could conquer the universe.

But what throws everything off course is that Qimir, instead of merely seeing you as a tool to achieve his goals, has become genuinely attached and has fallen in love with you. 

Then, when you decided to drink the Water of Life, you allowed yourself to foresee the terrible future that unfolded, with countless possibilities and impossibilities stretching out before you.

You know that Qimir's plans will never succeed. Sooner or later, he will meet his end before reaching his goal. Even so, your bloodline and his will succeed nonetheless. Anakin Skywalker will become everything Qimir has ever aspired to be—the one to lead the Sith to greatness, the one who brings the Jedi to their ultimate demise. 

And so it goes, you think to yourself. You expected to feel more sorrow, yet you find your thoughts and heart curiously cold.

As days pass, you lose more and more of yourself. It’s as if you’re no longer human but merely a data system, recording and processing the flow of events in your mind. Fate itself has become nothing more than a set of data inputs into a system, repeating endlessly until it loses all meaning.

You resign yourself, allowing your mind to swim once more in the currents of temporal data, hoping you can still alter those paths, even if only slightly.

And you decide to start with Sol.

"I know what you did on Brendok ten years ago, Master Sol."

Your voice comes out deeper and raspier than usual, almost resembling a man's voice rather than your own.

Those words hit Sol like thunderbolts. You instantly read his reaction, analyzing every movement. The tensing of his shoulders betrays the fear he's trying to suppress. Sweat beads on his temple, indicating pressure and dread. His lips tremble, momentarily rendering him speechless.

It’s a secret Sol has kept hidden from everyone. In the past, when he was still a Jedi Knight, Sol was part of a team assigned to explore Brendok after the planet endured a devastating natural disaster. There, he encountered twin girls named Osha and Mae—children born of the Force, raised by a coven of witches, a group of women attempting to mimic the ways of the Bene Gesserit, who had been hiding on this planet for quite some time.

The twins' strong connection to the Force sparked Sol’s hope that they could undergo training to become Jedi Padawans. However, the witch coven opposed him fiercely. Osha and Mae were the future of their coven; they wanted the girls to inherit the witches' path. They didn't want the Jedi to take their children away, as had happened to other families across the galaxy before.

Tensions between the witches and the Jedi finally reached a breaking point when Sol accidentally killed Aniseya, the twins' mother and the leader of the witch coven. This triggered a violent battle, resulting in the deaths of the entire coven, including the twins, who were trapped in a burning building during the fight.

That calamity has haunted Sol ever since, a nightmare and stigma he has carried to this day.

The entire story was covered up by the surviving Jedi, as this grave mistake could have led to their permanent expulsion from the Order. There's no way an outsider like you could know this secret, which is precisely why you bring it up. You understand that this is the only way to prove the truth of your words and make Sol fully believe what you’re about to reveal to him.

You lock eyes with Sol, unwavering, before unveiling your truth.

"I possess foresight. I can perceive all secrets and discern the fates of every life. That is why you must trust me."

What’s happening to Master Sol?

Yord ponders, watching as the once-calm Jedi Master suddenly storms out of the interrogation room, his face pale as if he has just seen something profoundly terrifying.

For a moment, Yord hesitates. He considers asking what happened but ultimately decides to stay silent. He remains where he is, observing from afar as Sol approaches. Yord notices that Sol seems entirely unaware of his presence, lost in his own thoughts and drifting past him as if he isn’t even there.

Yord's gaze follows the Jedi Master until he disappears down the hall. A frown forms on Yord’s face before he turns his attention to the steel door of the interrogation room where Sol had just exited.

Suddenly, Yord feels it—a deep, undeniable sense of certainty, as certain as knowing the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. He knows what's inside that room. He knows exactly what made Master Sol so shaken. He knows who is in there.

Yord bites his lip, torn between the urge to open that door and simply walk away. But curiosity wins over; he takes a step forward, tension rippling through his body. Cautiously, he pushes the door open and steps inside.

There you are, seated on a chair, with only a metal table separating you from him. You greet him with a faint smile, your demeanor calm, showing no surprise, as if you’ve been waiting for him all along, or perhaps you already knew he would come.

“It’s good to see you again, Yord.”

Hearing his name makes Yord freeze. It’s not just the fact that you know his name, even though he’s never told you, but the way you say it—your words and tone are exactly as they were in his dream last night.

There’s something eerily familiar about you, something Yord can’t quite shake off. It’s as if you and he share a connection that runs far deeper than the mere acquaintance, although he still doesn't know who you really are.

For the first time, Yord begins to suspect that he’s caught up in a mysterious and complex pattern beyond his understanding—something his mind can barely comprehend. 

And he knows. The only person who can explain it all is you.

Yord takes a deep breath and moves to sit in the chair across from you, his hands clenching nervously in his lap. “This might sound strange, but... I dreamt about you before we even met,” he says, the words spilling out before he can stop them. “I saw your life. I glimpsed what has happened and what will happen to you. How is that possible? Why do I feel like I've known you all my life when we've just met?”

“Dreams are messages from the deep,” you reply. “They’re a form of prophecy, a sign of the gift we both share. But your family's lineage has abandoned the old ways, which is why your power is weaker than mine.”

Yord senses a hint of sympathy in your voice. Though you speak of it as a gift, he can tell you view it more as a burden—an inescapable curse.

His eyes lock onto yours, searching for answers, but when your piercing blue gaze meets his, it feels like you’re the one reading him instead. In that instant, he’s certain that those eyes can see straight into the depths of his soul.

"You mentioned my family... Do you already know who I am?" he asks. 

"I do," you nod. "Our ancestors are connected."

With each word you speak, Yord’s confusion only deepens. "How do you know all of this? Did you see it in a vision?"

"I didn’t see it; I was there," you correct him. "I stood at the mouth of the cave the day my sister was born. I held her in my arms. That child grew into a woman, and eventually she loved and secretly gave birth to a daughter before she died. Your bloodline began with her."

"How is that even possible?" he argues, his voice growing tense. "How could you have been there thousands of years ago?"

"I’m not telling you this to make you believe. I’m simply informing you." You give Yord a gentle smile, a fond smile like an elder gives to a child. "If we’re counting, you are as much my descendant as she is."

Yord raises an eyebrow in surprise. He just notices that your choice of pronouns has suddenly shifted. Instead of using ‘I’ to refer to yourself, you now use ‘she’ as if you’re speaking about someone else.

And then it hits him. Yord suddenly realizes that the woman in front of him is no longer herself. Her spirit is tainted, like clear water muddied with black ink. Something is possessing her—something he both fears and cannot comprehend, like an ancient mystery sealed away for eons, only now unraveling.

“Who the hell are you?!” Yord shouts, one hand instinctively reaching for the lightsaber at his side, ready to strike if the person in front of him makes any sudden moves.

But you remain calm, unshaken by the threat of violence. "You know exactly who I am," you reply evenly. "Think carefully. Your mother warned you about my coming. You’ve always known who I am, just as I’ve always known who you are."

Your words send a shiver down Yord’s spine. His throat tightens, and he finds himself unable to speak. 

He remembers clearly what his mother warned him about before she passed away. Her wrinkled hand gripped his tightly as she whispered the important secret of the universe that no one knew except him—the return of that person.

All his life, Yord had dismissed those words as nothing more than the ramblings of a dying woman—just imagination and meaningless superstition. But today, when he faced you himself, he finally realizes that it was all true.

As the truth crashes down on him, Yord unknowingly utters the words.

“Lisan Al-Gaib.”

A/N :

Yord when he know who you are

[gemwolfz]

good morning chat (<- it's 12:30 pm) its time for a GEM FROG WATCHPOST (instead of putting it in the bg while i draw because ive accepted i cant draw and read at the same time)

btw my very legal straming site doesnt have episode descriptions and no way im remembering an episode thats been mentioned by number so i have no idea what im getting into. also im setting a timer to truly see how long my autistic ass can stretch a 15 minute episode. ok lets get started :)

okay first of all intro i havent seen yet lets GOOOO. PURURU SIGHTING IN THERE HEY GIRL!! i actually need to watch some eps with pururu in em btw. like hey show her to me. anyway good intro lots of guys spotted :)

^ CATEGORY 5 DORORO EVENT HI. experiencing the horrors as usual i see

i see so this is what we're doing today huh. do you intend to rip my heart out.

im sorry they have a fucking invasion planning chore wheel? thats really funny

OH IT'S THIS ONE HUH. THIS IS WHAT WE'RE DOING HUH (lovingly)

wcdonalds btw. sorry sorry wcdonalds cracks me up every time in any show

^^ his ass did NOT process what was just said!!!

he had it right the first several times cmon man.

hes taking this in stride huh. even in category 5 THE LORE situations the silly grind doesnt stop

why is zeroro resonance so fucking stupid btw. sorry man.

screenshot that speaks for itself man

somehow i dont think "my alien ninja partner is in serious trouble i need to leave immediately" will be counted as an excused absence by your teachers but after scaling a building in a single leap i dont think anybodys gonna question you. i love you koyuki

[this image set broke in the editor but it included keroro and tamama calling zeroro SO MEAN for not explaining his plan to them] frankly i respect keroros unwillingness to treat situations with the proper gravity because i do the same thing king

his ass does not care

he changed his mind something is terribly wrong

okay lets be real here the platoon would NOT have found him there. if he hadn't been able to contact koyuki he'd have been fucked. badly. something something being saved again by the person who showed you the warmth and beauty the planet has to offer

literally yeah the fate of the planet is held by natsumi being able to throw frogs like splat balls. pov youre giroro and the number one person standing between you guys and invasion is decidedly the girl who is constantly personally stopping you from blowing shit up. this is a personal attack

important and relevant but also im sorry "brat" is incredibly funny word choice coming from tamama

no reaction i can put into words. btw this episode is labelled as a filler episode. just so you know. i just think thats funny. haha so silly

aye.......................................... i would be using more reaction images but i have to prioritize screenshots. anyway god.

they were holding their fucking BREATH. his ass could have died!! badly!!! their deep sigh of relief is not as visible as i'd have hoped but you know. you feel me.

there are reactions i am making that are sound effects i cannot put into words sorry. im better at posting silly nonsense im sure you understand. hell, post horse staring at the ocean MAN again

he goes "i'm sorry about that, everyone!" as if it was fucking nothing. DUDE. This is why you caught that trauma-eating brain parasite because you just act like shit was NOTHING DUDE...

........yea...........................

NO EYECATCH OR ANYTHING? YOURE JUST GONNA TAKE US TO THE NEXT EPISODE? OKAY. OKAY THATS FINE. THAT'S FINE.

gem conclusion:

anyway i spent an hour watching this ten minute episode. sorry for maybe a weak reaction post i need to stir this episode in my head like a soup. thank you plates for your recommendation. join me in the rbs later as i may watch episode B and experience whatever tonal whiplash this episode came with

[akshayventes]

Strategic Content Syndication: Best Practices for Amplified Reach

Introduction

In the ever-evolving world of digital marketing, the significance of content syndication as a strategic tool for amplifying reach and boosting brand visibility cannot be overstated. When executed thoughtfully, content syndication can serve as a powerful lever to tap into new audiences and enhance your online presence. In this blog, we will delve into the realm of strategic content syndication and explore the best practices that can lead to a substantial increase in your content's reach and impact.

Unpacking Strategic Content Syndication

At its core, strategic content syndication involves a purposeful approach to distributing your content across various platforms, aiming to connect with a broader audience while maintaining a unified brand voice. This process allows you to harness the strengths of established platforms to your advantage, all while creating a harmonious content ecosystem that resonates with your target audience.

Best Practices for Amplified Reach

Define Your Objectives: Start by setting clear objectives for your content syndication efforts. Are you aiming to increase website traffic, generate leads, enhance brand awareness, or position yourself as an industry thought leader? Knowing your goals will guide your strategy.

Audience-Centric Selection:

Identify platforms that align with your target audience's interests, preferences, and needs. Look for platforms where your content can add value and resonate with the audience, rather than just focusing on the platform's popularity.

Optimize for Each Platform:

Resist the temptation to syndicate content verbatim across all platforms. Tailor your content for each platform while preserving its core message. Adjust headlines, intros, and formats to suit the platform's style and audience.

Prioritize Quality:

Quality should never be compromised in your pursuit of broader reach. Syndicate only your best-performing and most relevant content. High-quality content is more likely to engage readers and prompt them to explore further.

Keyword Consideration:

Incorporate relevant keywords into your syndicated content to enhance its discoverability on the platform and in search engines. However, ensure that keyword integration is seamless and does not compromise the content's readability.

Leverage Visuals:

Visual content has universal appeal and can make your syndicated posts stand out. Consider repurposing your written content into engaging visuals like infographics, videos, or slide decks before syndicating.

Collaborative Partnerships:

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Akshay Narale

Sr.Digital Marketink Associate

akshayventes@gmail.com

www.ventesb2b.com/ New York, USA

[vagabond-sun]

this was originally posted on my pillowfort. come join the conversation there, too!

also, a disclaimer i feel like i have to make on tumblr: this isn’t an invitation to coin something. i think we should spend some time learning what the terrain looks like before we give the place a name.

so this is a question and a conversation that comes around every so often in the alt+h discord, on tumblr, and in some other places:

is identifying with an archetype otherkin? more broadly, is it alterhuman?

to the latter question: definitely yes. but i think we could stand to let it stand on its own as an experience, for a number of reasons. so here’s my attempt to write a bit about my experience with this concept, pin down what we’re actually talking about and its unique dimensions, and possibly reach people who are doing the same thing in the interests of building a community around it.

to start out with: what am i talking about?

there are people in the alterhuman communities (and outside of it!) who consider things like 'royalty' or 'pirate' or 'ranger' or 'mad scientist' part of their identity. I’ve seen a lot of people simply using the ‘kin’ label for this. and, like i said, I’ve seen a lot of people asking questions about it, often as a hypothetical experience, but also many times wondering if other people also feel what they feel.

there is a historical precedent – the silver elves in one of their books on ‘types’ of fae mention the Daundre, who are ‘rangerkind’ - a (presumably fictional or otherwise not-of-this-world) population of humans considered explicitly otherkin by dint of their connection to the wild and disconnect from society at large.

but for me, the ‘kin’ label is ill fitting. for me, it sits in a space partway between our understanding of ‘kin’ frameworks and gender ones. when i say I’m nonhuman, I’m describing an experience that affects my self image, the way i filter information, certain desires, my sense of embodiment, and so on. when i say i'm butch, i'm making a statement about where i sit in relation to men, and women, and femmes, and straights, and to Society In General. i'm making statements that might give you a clue as to how i'll dress or act, or what my values might be.

when i say I’m a pirate, I’m kind of saying both.

so what’s my experience? other-life experiences of literally being a swashbuckler aside, why does this speak to me? in what way, in this life, am i tangibly experiencing and manifesting this?

it’s more than just an aesthetic, though cultivating a particular Look is not not part of it. i think it’s a very pirate-ish thing to want to look flashy - it's only jolly roger enamel pins and barely-buttoned hawaiian shirts right now, but i'll have my 17th century frock coat eventually. i think it's also worth pointing out that people who do dedicate themselves to presenting a specific way like this are still not considered normal, even if it's 'only' an apperance thing.

but also, i think i would be deeply unhappy if i lived too far away from the ocean. it’s a bucket list item of mine to buy a boat one day, and i already have some sailing experience. i spent a lot of my formative years travelling and moving around the world and now i get itchy if i stay in the same place for too long. i’m really, very queer and i like to let people know that. i’m a strong advocate of freedom of information, the abolition of intellectual property, digital privacy and decentralization, as well as just generally striving for a system of (non?)governance that radically departs from the current social order.

pirate is a nice way to put a little bow on top of all of that. it's a thread that loops through all these seemingly disparate concepts and draws them together, creating a narrative.

i have similar but less definable relationships to the idea of kingship, and to some kind of village wiseperson, sage-on-the-mountain type role that I’m mostly calling druidry (see also this). that latter one’s complicated by the existence of actual ordained druids, but honestly? someone whose job it is to look into the future, perform magic, and mediate the spirit world is not having a typical human experience in western society. I’ve seen plenty of people talk about feeling alienated from humanity and the world at large because of being god- or spirit-touched. they’re welcome to call themselves alterhuman too - the original definition pretty much outright says so.

and, sure, you could still argue that anyone can experience oneness with nature, or concern about the state of copyright law, or the otherness of being queer, or a pull to leadership positions. these things on their own are normal human experiences. and yet. people do not move through the world calling themselves pirates and kings and magical girls and paladins and supervillains, at least not all the time, and not sincerely. not the way i do. i don’t see the way i live reflected in society, nor do i feel there is space made for me to do so. and i don't think that any current alterhuman communities fully encompass what i'm experiencing either.

reader, do you have an experience with an archetype you adhere strongly to? that affects your sense of self? how does it affect you? do you feel like you stand out from other people because of it? come tell me about it. we can make the space ourselves.

[olderthannetfic]

Bring back useful readmores!

Or, rather, design them into your sites.

Tumblr’s feature has always sucked and continues to do so. I don’t typically use them because of how they break for deleted blogs and blogs that are only visible in that sidebar view. But even aside from those problems, they just fucking suck.

You know what are great? LJ cuts. DW has them too. Why?

You can put them anywhere in the post you want (same as tumblr readmore, not the same as truncate post features)

They can have custom text, not just ‘read more’

They can end and you can have more surface-level post after that—useful for intro and conclusion paragraphs with hidden argumentation/evidence/etc. in the middle

There can be multiple per post, each with its own title for what that part of the post is about, and you can expand one at a time

They can be nested

Adding your own formatting on older sites was more of a nuisance, but at least you could actually do shit, not just be endlessly screwed by some heinous auto-formatting crap.

There are things I like about Tumblr over Dreamwidth, but I don’t think people who got started on newer sites realize just how intentionally badly designed they are. And it’s not like these predecessors weren’t right there to be copied and improved on.

[mistleaneous-chaos]

Kay so just beat Morgott and realized MORE shit about Runes!

Elden Ring Spoilers

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Ok so. Once Morgott is defeated, it’s well known that he just lays there with dialogue till you sit at the grace, right? Well, what’s fuckin’ interesting as hell is what he looks like.

(Not my game btw got from a youtube thumbnail by “The Depressed Hollow”)

Notice how his horns are gone. Now what I interpret this as, due to both this and the image of him defeating Radahn from the intro as shown here

Is that when a Shardbearer obtains their Shard, they undergo a growth spurt depending on the shard itself.

Now this could mean, such as for Radahn, a radical growth to three times his size(Also I’m assuming he didn’t have it in the intro and this is Morgott after obtaining it). Or how Malenia grew to be larger than the average person but isn’t as big.

But then there was Morgott, who wanted to be accepted and would likely have shaved his horns off to the stumps. His horns grew back and he grew a fair bit.

Firstly this means that not only do Runes grant power to their respective demigods, their bodies physically morph to fit them, with Rykard likely not being able to revert to his old form due to him fusing with a snake. It also makes sense as to why Godrick just seemingly fell from his Grafts, the Godrick that was left didn’t fit the Grafting and just slipped out.

It also implies, on a more personal note for Morgott, that he had shaved his horns out of desperation. See, in the description for Regal Omen Bairn, it talks about how Royalty-born Omens don’t get their horns shaved but merely get sent to the Shunning Grounds. But Morgott, despite this happening, shaved off his horns to the point of them not being visible. Whereas Mohg let his horns hang out and take over the majority of his face as well as the majority of the Omens down there, with only 1 from what I can recall actually having shaved theirs.

So just imagine Morgott constantly shaving his horns in hopes of being accepted where Mohg just watches him like “Dude they’re not gonna accept you” and Morgott’s just like “But what if they DO”

So in conclusion: Runes fuck with your biology and I just turned this into a Morgott Angst post that I tricked you into reading, get pranked.

[sanstropfremir]

the hotly anticipated kingdom episode 7 review is here!!

this episode was a lot less spectacle-y than the last one (the last episode with stages, i mean), and i think that was a good choice for all the groups on the whole to tone it down on the run up to the finale, because at the rate everyone was headed there would be no room to go any higher. i'm very glad that there was actually a collab stage and not just a song swap, especially because it gives a chance for the boys to work together and make friends when they otherwise arent going to be able to interact much. love love love to see them making friends and having fun doing these stages!

i'm not really sure why mnet didnt put the vocal stage this episode, because what on earth else are they going to put in the next episode with it??? i know it's a content stretch but still, it seems like a weird choice to me. anyways, there’s four stages for me to talk about this time and i'm going to try to not ramble out of control, but we’ll see. i did enjoy watching all of these, but we’ve all got favourites and i'm going to rank by which group i liked better out of the two for each stage, and then i put a few conclusions at the end. strap in folks this is another long one.

rap stages

skz + btob + atz

i was actually really surprised at how much i liked this stage. i would not classify myself as a rap fan and believe it or not i actually do not place a lot of importance on lyrics when enjoying music. although i have very high lyric retention and comprehension, i focus more on the sound than the literal words, so a fair amount of rap is swing-and-a-miss in my personal listening. plus when you add a language barrier on top of that, a lot of the nuance and technical skill of it just flies over my head. so i really dont have much to say about the sonic elements this time around, sorry. also.....i know i joked that nobody from the kingdom staff is reading my reviews.....but is someone from the kingdom staff reading my reviews????? i specifically mentioned that i think skz should do an art themed stage and then we got one????? i know i manifested the punk ateez stage but did i manifest this also??? am i just that powerful???

costume

obviously these are pretty basic rap/hiphop stage looks, but the white was a really good choice for visibility’s sake, and also thematically: it reflects the colours in the lighting really well.

i am DYING to know who the designer of minhyuks jacket is. if somebody knows please tell me i love it so much. it looks like some of the recent belted jackets that dior was putting out, but the drawing on the front armscythe piece reminds me of the superm/kim junggi collab for tiger inside. say whatever you want about superm, but you cannot deny that that is not some of the coolest merch on the kpop scene.

loved the traditional korean elements that came through in addition to the western references: the screens, hongjoong’s fan, minhyuk’s big fuckoff brush, the masks, and the sleeves on the dancers at minhyuk’s bit. those are a costume feature from a style of korean traditional masked dance called bongsan talchum. the masks themselves are versions of hahoetal masks, which are used in a very specific archetypal ritual dance in andong. i think these are imae masks, who is the servant/fool archetype that mocks the nobleman and the scholar. i suspect that was a deliberate choice, but i can only speculate.

another point about the masks which is not relevant but maybe a fun fact for people who don’t know. i actually thought at first that they were western theatre half masks, which are a very old style of mask that, like with hahoetal masks, represent a number of archetypes/stock characters. maskwork is a very common training practice in theatre schools, because it teaches body language and control, because half your face is covered and you cannot speak in your own voice (sometimes you cannot speak at all, this is one of the rules of full mask). the tradition of usings masks to portray emotion goes all the way back to the ancient greek chorus, but more commonly people in the west sometimes know it from the italian commedia dell’arte, of which you will have definitely seen some of the character archetypes before. i just find it neat that the same types of art pop up in different places seemingly independently of each other. humans are cool.

set

not much to say here, it's pretty bare with just some propwork. thought the screen use was fun and they used it smartly in a couple of transitions. 

thought changbin’s bit of ‘interrupting’ the artists was cute and fun. there’s obviously a picasso reference there, and the four technicolour paintings are a reference to andy warhol’s pop art silkscreen portraits, most famously of marilyn monroe, but he also did many other celebrities in the 70s and 80s.

lighting

i LOVED this lighting. super bright and fun, lots of use of colour, obviously. the projections were there to enhance the visuals and weren’t distracting in any way. i thought the transition to black and white/ink with minhyuk was smart and had good contrast, it gave a strong rhythm to build back up to for the climax.

sound

bang chan’s ‘spelling colour with a u’ bit had me SCREAMING with laughter. we spell colour with a u normally bang chan, the americans are the ones that are wrong. 

staging

i don’t really have a whole lot to say here, it was pretty straightforward and fun. like i’ve said in previous reviews, i wish they were more conscious of the steadicam direction and would stop showing extended bits of the production crew. at least everyone was wearing full blacks this time.

fun use of the upward angle combined with the groundwork/leg choreo during hongjoong’s verse, that was a highlight for me.

sf9 + tbz + ikon

nothing against this stage, the other one just hit harder for me. bobby is the best rapper on the show and he really carried this stage with his charisma. he’s a fun performer to watch and he knows how to command a space. i'm sure there’s technical notes that people have about the raps themselves, but i'm here looking at visuals as a priority, which i'm sure you’ve all grasped at this point.

costume

these were clearly extensions of these idol’s personal styles, with is a perfectly fine choice, especially for a rap stage where the emphasis is more on authorship. LOVED bobby’s 11yro girl at recess look.

amusing that both rap stages involved paint in some way? loved the backup dancers shooting supersoakers filled with paint at them, but i wish i knew the reason for it? i'm glad i saw this stage first because i would have been underwhelmed by the paint throwing if i had seen this after rainbow bonanza.

set

almost no set at all here, just a few props. i'm not judging as harshly on lack of set this round because these stages are meant to be more about skill than anything else. 

lighting

i loved the projections, i thought they were unobtrusive and i admit, i LOVE outer space themed anything.

i liked that they did more concert lighting and had no projections in the first half to put more focus on the performers, it really highlighted the fact that this stage was about them, and not about anything extraneous.

sound

it was indeed a song.

staging

i do wish there had been a bit more control of the space, because it did look very empty at some parts and they could have staved that off by keeping tighter camera shots. this stage is so fucking big, holy shit.

they really brought their onstage chemistry and they looked like they were having a blast, which FINALLY!! 

i actually really liked hwiyoung’s opening, i think there was a lot of potential there for some sharp contrast work that i wish had been played through a little more, especially with the cool white light overtop the black costumes. it actually reminded me a bit of the intro in the music video from a rapper i do actually listen to, bewhy’s gottasadae.

glad to see some more use of camera effects with the black and white, but why did they do it over the paint throwing? it just made the trajectory of the paint invisible because there was no colour contrast.

performance stages

sf9 + tbz + ikon

ok obviously im gonna have a lot more to say about the performance stages, nobody is surprised there. this one was the better constructed of the two and my personal pick for better stage, but i actually liked watching the both of them equally.

costume

king shit, literally. we love contemporary hanbok in this house. there was good colour and style distinction between the three of them without clashing. 

costume change was fun and neatly blocked, it's pretty common to see backup dancers and chorus hiding quickchanges but i liked how this was a more unusual formation.

taeyang rocking the organza skirt and the big purple eyeshadow, thank you for keeping it cunty as always.

i really liked juyeon’s underlayer look. finally we get a good tbz costume look thats thematically relevant!

set

like all the stages this round, pretty minimal. the setting was almost entirely established through the costumes and the projections, which is some really good designwork. it's pretty much just the litters (the lifted chairs they entered on), and some smaller props. they managed to not make the stage feel empty because there was a lot of projection visuals to compensate, which is difficult to do without being overbearing, but i think they mostly pulled it off.

i originally thought it was gonna be weird to try and mesh the traditional korean architectural aesthetic with the weird mnet deco, but i ended up not noticing it as much as i thought i would.

lighting

like i just said, projections very well done and do a fantastic job of conveying setting without being overly distracting. like with the atz/skz/btob rap stage there’s a really broad range of colour use here that they offset by brightening and properly fill lighting the faces so you can actually see what’s happening.

the use of the strobing lasers and more concert style lighting fit really well with the change in the music from traditional instrument sounds to electronica and the more hiphop/isolated movements.

sound

i liked it well enough! i think it had a good arc that we can see echoed through the rest of the piece, like previously stated in the lighting and movement style. 

staging

like i mentioned with the quickchange, there was some really interesting formations using the backup dancers here, especially as a lead toward/away from the camera

having the three of them enter on litters; again, literal king shit, love to see it.

this has a pretty clear narrative that doesnt really need an external explanation, which is good. i have to assume that the burning of the paper with 妃 (concubine) is intended to be a gesture of ‘burning’ the love out of their hearts, but that was the only thing i'm still confused on. this may very well turn out to be a reference to a specific story that i just have no idea what it is, but we’ll see once the subs are out!

i loved juyeons solo bit with the alcohol drinking and the table flip, that was the choreographic highlight for me. i just really wish he would use the other muscles in his face more often. we know youre pretty, you dont have to blue steel your way through all your performances!! take a page out of donghyuk’s book and make some ugly faces, it's good for you!!

i though taeyang’s swordwork was fine, but since i do actually have a decade of sword training i'm very judgemental. it's not bad, he obviously has practiced with the weapon and he knows how to control it, but he doesn’t have the same understanding as someone who has trained with a sword as a weapon and not just as a prop. if we hadn’t seen another stage with swordwork in it i probably wouldn’t have brought this up (that's a lie, i still would have brought it up, i have a third dan), but you can really see the difference between how minhyuk moves with his sword and how taeyang moves. a lot of this has to do with the proper weighting of the blade, which i mention briefly in my second episode review in btob’s section (and also this ask here, where i talk about properly weighted weapons in relation to the gun choreo in sf9’s and ateez’s previous stages); minhyuk is likely using a ‘real’ sword (it’s blunted but still made using proper methods and materials), and taeyang is using a cheaper-made replica (unless you’re doing full contact striking a LOT there’s no way a properly made blade breaks like that. also you would never tape it together hello??? respect the blade). if you know what you’re looking for, you can tell from the movements themselves when someone has training. minhyuk did a load of real training for a film where he was a swordsman, and you can tell; the sword is an extension of his arm, all the movements lead with the tip of the blade first, because that’s your first, your fastest, and your most dangerous point. you do 90% of your cutting with the first eight inches of blade, but it takes a lot of specific training to get your hands and arms to a place where that kind of movement is possible. taeyang’s movements are driven from his hands, which is unsurprising, because that’s where he’s used to his extensions stopping. the tip follows rather than leads. wow this got insanely sidetracked i hope you liked this crash course on swordwork.

this is pretty much what i expected to see from this unit. these three groups all have standout soloists, so i wasn’t surprised to see these three boys as the picks. juyeon and taeyang especially, theyre both from groups that are more likely to do experimental stages and choreography that highlights them as soloists and skilled dancers.

skz + btob + atz

this was a letdown from ateez’s last two stages, because they knocked those out of the park, but it's only fair that they have a bit of a fall. that being said, i did really enjoy watching this for its sheer ridiculousness; i’m forgiving the wolf concept this time because well, it’s wolf. you can't cover wolf and not do a wolf concept, that’s against the law. also, like i’ve said before, i'm all for dark concepts IF you give them thematic weight. is it on the nose? yes. is it thematically relevant? also yes. is it dumb? also also yes, but that’s never stopped a single kpop group in the history of ever.

costume

friendship restored with ateez stylists, rivalry started with skz stylists. the fur shoulder fluffs??? stupid and i love them. perfect in every way. however i keep seeing the same fucking costumes on the skz boys and i will come directly for the stylists at jype if they dont get their shit together. be! more! creative!!!

i really really wish they had gone more 2013 kpop with it, we need more of that ugly ridiculous styling. peniel was actually pretty close, with the overly long tunic and those yellow lenses. very vixx on and on (yes i know they were vampires from outer space, let me live)

i actually thought the wolf gloves were fun? the small bits of uv paint actually worked instead of looking out of place, and i'm glad they put them on wooyoung because the uglier an outfit, the better he pulls it off. 

set

same dice, just the long table and the camo net at the beginning, which i thought was unnecessary. the table was useful for levels though, so happy to see they utilized that.

lighting

there is so much happening all the time. lots of lasers. it's definitely aiming for camp territory, and i dont actually hate it as much as i did on my first watch. it actually wasn’t as dark as i thought either, because its mostly lit with blue and amber. but it doesn’t really have that great of an arc and its not really that good on the whole.

the projections are a bit much for me, but that’s only when i'm actually looking at them. true to form, i didn’t even notice the excess of red slashes until like my fourth rewatch because i was too busy watching the performers.

sound

rookie exo my beloved. the original wolf goes so hard for absolutely no reason, so i’m not knocking this stage for being ridiculous. in fact it should have been more ridiculous. i think they did a fine job updating the song for a.....less 2013 sound. 

i like that they didn’t bother to live sing the stage even though they recorded vocals for it, it gave them all a chance to actually focus on just the dance.

that being said, i am kind of missing all the adlibs from the original. but even though there’s some strong vocalists in this unit, they aren’t made of the same stuff as baekhyun, luhan, chen, AND d.o.

i literally just realized that peniel had already debuted when this song came out AND is technically exo’s senior because btob debuted like two weeks before exo officially did.....oh no

staging

choreographically this feels a lot more like the skz stages that we’ve seen rather than the ateez ones, so i'm curious as to who the choreographer was. 

the tricking was definitely more ridiculous in this one, but i can't really say any of it was there for no reason because it all had elements of fighting in it. the scale of the tricks was quite large though and not very well blended with the rest of the choreo, which ending up making them look awkward. i thought it was a nice detail that they shone a green toplight on the dancers that made up the cliff wooyoung climbed up so that it looked like there was grass on it. cute.

the blocking is lacking a lot of fluidity, and i think that’s partially the scale of the tricking and also the editing, because this editing is TERRIBLE. there’s so much cutting, why is there so much cutting!! haven’t we already learned that longtakes are the best for this???

there’s a lot of stuff here that had good potential but could have been pushed a little farther. i feel like i say this for every mediocre stage, but what can i say, i'm good at constructive criticism. 

they should have given more showcase to the tree and the scratching arms; it's the most iconic move!! i also wish they had kept some kind of iteration of the different unit ‘leaping’ in over the exiting one, i always thought that part of the original choreo was really fun and did a lot for establishing them as wolves. 

i LOVED peniel entering with all those backup dancers in chains, thats some fucking iconic shit. very ‘im the alpha wolf,’ which is valid because he’s like at LEAST five years older than everyone else on the stage. i wish that instead of being the backup dancers it was the actual members, because THAT would have been an image. theyre all wearing harnesses and collars anyways, just clip em in! he’d be like one of those dogwalkers!

me last week: specifically talking about how krump is an uncommon style in kpop and it's very hard to get right kingdom, throwing the manifesting dodgeball at me for the third time: here would you like a KRUMP SOLO?

if you didnt believe me before that krump is hard to get right, i sure hope you do now. peniel did fine, but you can see how easily you can veer off into looking ridiculous.

some conclusions

i mentioned this really briefly in an ask i got earlier today, but i do think it's important to establish that the two performance units are doing two different types of performances. i can understand why people are underwhelmed by the atz/skz/btob stage and wanted it to be less of a traditional kpop dance stage and more like the experimental stages we’ve been seeing for the last few weeks. and i agree! i think they could have done more with it. but i also think that this kind of stage was a good choice for this particular subunit. unlike with the sf9/tbz/ikon unit, there are not really any standout technical soloists in ateez or skz. ateez has, in my opinion, the highest ratio of dancers with actual stage presence of any of the 4th gen groups ive seen. they’re at a solid 75% for any given performance, and occasionally they can bump that higher depending on the stage. that high of a stat is rare. it's extremely rare for a group to have all its members have good stage presence (i can think of like, maybe two or three?), and to get over 50% is pretty damn impressive. but ateez’s strength isn’t in how good they individually are as dancers, but it's in how well they work together. there’s a reason why they put FIVE of them in the performance unit. one of the first things i said about ateez to hanya is ‘i love wooyoung but he doesn’t stand out when he's not centre.’ which is for good reason!! he’s not supposed to! they all willingly give up centre and take it back when they need to, because they have that charisma. there’s a very cohesive push and pull to watching ateez that speaks to their strengths as performers. dancing in a group where you are all meant to be equal is a very different skill than just being a talented soloist. you have to understand what to prioritize in a different way. taemin dances differently with shinee that he does in his solo career, especially since they’ve been back. he understands when to step back; more often than not i find key to be the standout dancer in shinee choreo.

this is a very long winded way of saying that wolf was a good choice for them even though the stage didn’t turn out as well as it could have. also the fact that they made a cohesive performance at all, with a week of rehearsal and while working with essentially strangers is a feat and speaks to all of their skill at their job. performing in a group is a huge part of kpop, and they did call this the performance stage, and not the dance stage.

i'm not entirely sure on what the breakdown is on why each of the subunits were formed. i know the team sizes are extremely uneven, with sf9/tbz/ikon clocking in at 26 people and atz/skz/btob clocking in at 17 (i'm not counting changsub because he's not there and probably has a scheduling conflict), which is like, a whole extra group of difference. but atz/skz/btob utilizing their whole groups for each of the units (5/3/1 for performance, 1/3/1 for rap, and 1/1/1 for vocal, for 7/7/3 total), verses sf9/tbz/ikon only bringing out six people for these two stages and then six for the vocal stage is......weird? that's over half of their group number that’s not performing. i do think the groups brought out their standout performers and made smart choices with the stages but the balance still strikes me as odd. i do wish tbz had actually done some group choreo because they are very strong group performers and it would have been fun to watch.

ateez really played the long game here, good job boys. teaming up with the group who gets the highest fan votes AND the group with the strongest technical skills? i see you.

i think this is probably too wild of an assumption and is only based on circumstantial evidence but.....i think hongjoong might actually have a lot more creative sway than i previously thought. all the stages he’s been a part of have been very well designed, and i know he provided suggestions for the two ateez stages prior to this... i’m probably thinking too much. 

ok you know what i know there were some other points in my brain somewhere but this is already 4000 words so i’m going to stop. if i remember anything else its probably gonna end up in the answer to some of the asks i’m inevitably going to get because i think my opinions on these ones are a little bit more controversial, whoops!

not entirely sure if ill do an extensive review for next week’s stage, because i'm not really a ballad fan and i dont really do vocal reviews, but i could do a quick one. i guess it also depends on what else they put in the episode. we’ll see!!

[possiblyimbiassed]

What happened to Sherlock? Part VIII - The Sign of the Hetero Norm (1)

Why does Mary Morstan play such a prominent role in BBC Sherlock? 

I’m surely not the only one asking myself this; while she’s barely mentioned in canon after marrying Watson, she’s all over the place from TEH and onwards in Mofftiss’ adaptation. And when I recently read this excellent fic by @discordantwords, a couple of things dawned on me, that I think have been brewing in my mind for quite some time. Which brings me to the long promised continuation of my marathon meta series about what I think we’re actually seeing in this show. Because the entire point of Mary Morstan seems to be to prevent Sherlock and John from getting together in a romantic relationship - a story of hetero norm. This eighth installment will explore the ‘case’ of little Rosie, and the role she and her mother plays in this show. 

This far I’ve published an intro and seven installments, each with corresponding attempts to test my hypotheses:

Introduction - The game is on (explains the method of analysis) Part I - Blog vs TV-show Part II - Re-living memories Part III - Drugs and weirdness Part IV – Heartbreak and coma (1) Part IV – Heartbreak and coma (2) Part V – Bizarre scenarios Part VI - Live and let die (1) Part VI - Live and let die (2)

Part VII - The Importance of Being Earnest (1) 

Part VII - The Importance of Being Earnest (2)

This installment will also be parted in two, and the second half can be found here (X). Many of the screen caps from BBC Sherlock in this meta are from Kissthemgoodbye.net - thanks! And thanks also to Ariane DeVere for the incredibly useful transcripts!

My next hypotheses is, in and off itself, a clear and straightforward prediction that can be explicitly verified or falsified once we finally get to S5, so it will be extra fun to see what happens with it in future: 

Hypothesis #8: John is not the father of Mary’s baby

(Disclaimer: My suspicion here only concerns John’s biological offspring. It would still be possible that John, and perhaps also Sherlock, might father the child - if it exists - by adoption. It does not exclude a metaphorical reading where the baby represents, for example, Sherlock’s and John’s relationship. I also want to stress that this hypothesis is an attempt at logical reasoning based on observations in the show and in ACD canon; it’s not meant to be ‘gossipy’ and has nothing to do with whether I would actually like to see this happen or not - that’s a whole other story. ;) )  

This hypothesis has been brewing in my mind for quite some time now, but I don’t think it’s just a hunch; there are actually a series of reasons that have made me come to this conclusion. 

(Continued under the cut)

But first of all: can we debunk my hypothesis at this stage in the story, by testing it ‘scientifically’? Well, not really, since the show doesn’t provide any reliable evidence that confirms John as Rosie’s biological father. Not even IRL would this have been possible without a DNA-test (or without physical circumstances that would have made any other option impossible). And the only thing that the show tells us about human DNA-tests is that not even this procedure is 100% reliable, as shown in ASIB:

JOHN: You were dead on a slab. It was definitely you. IRENE: DNA-tests are only as good as the records you keep. JOHN: And I bet you know the record-keeper. IRENE: I know what he likes, and I needed to disappear.

DNA is brought up in TGG (Ian Monkford’s blood) and again in TST (the identification of Charlie Wellsborough’s body), but since John’s fatherhood is never questioned in the show, little Rosie is never tested, as far as we know. The remaining evidence that speaks for John being the father is circumstantial: that John and Mary obviously must have been living together at the approximate time of conception. And that they both act as if they’re both Rosie’s parents.

So I guess that in order to get any further with this, I’ll have to start at the other end, analysing the characters and see if I can find evidence that support my hypothesis - on a textual level as well as metaphorically and on the meta level. 

Mary’s function in the story

I think we can safely say that Mary is the most controversial character of BBC Sherlock. Some viewers love her, others hate her, but I can’t recall anyone claiming to feel indifferent towards her. Mofftiss have indeed managed to push forward a character who is hardly even visible in canon, once she’s married to Watson. In BBC Sherlock, however, Mary totally dominates the show from HLV and onwards. Her appearances may have been increasing in numbers and length already from her introduction in TEH. But from the point where John wakes up in HLV, there isn’t a single case where she’s not somehow involved. Up until TFP, everything is about ’Mary’. And even then, once we might have believed we’d got rid of the ghost of this hijacking protagonist, she comes back, only to once again take over the narrative with a weird and basically inexplicable voiceover. She seems like some kind of obsession; a brain ghost stuck on someone’s mind.

This is rather different from ACD canon, where Mary Morstan has extremely few lines as soon as she’s no longer a client, but Watson’s wife. Personally I find it hard to see the lovable aspect of this character in BBC Sherlock, since she constantly shifts appearance, behaviour and motivation; it’s almost impossible to pin down who she actually is. Which makes me convinced that Mary is not meant to be a real, believable character that we can relate to as such - at least not all the time. And maybe that goes for canon as well.

But what then is the purpose of her, what’s Mary’s actual function in the narrative, looking at the subtext? I think there’s basically three of them, and by no means mutually exclusive:

1. Mary is a metaphor for heteronormativity and its power over people when they internalise it

2. Mary is a façade or ‘beard’, where a straight marriage is established to cover up a story of a gay relationship

3. Mary is a mirror for Sherlock; by substituting himself with a female spouse for John, Sherlock can be with John ‘by proxy’, trying to figure out John without having to face his own real problem: reveal his emotions and risk failure.

As soon as Mary firmly puts her foot in the show, it all becomes a spectacle, a demonstration of how to keep up a straight facade at any cost. After TSoT, no-one ever assumes John and Sherlock are a romantic couple; Mary is the ultimate ’proof’ that John is indeed straight. Which is of course illogical, because why would a bi person stop being it because they married someone, no matter of which sex? Mary admits it herself by telling Sherlock that ”neither of us was the first, you know”. And Sherlock complains that John is dancing around Sholto ”like a puppet” even after the wedding ceremony. But in all the episodes after TSoT, John is happily freed from people’s assumptions regarding his sexual orientation. Gone are all the gay jokes, and John Watson is miraculously ‘cured’. 

I think this is perfectly illustrated in the fic by @discordantwords​ that I mentioned above. The plot follows logically on TFP, as things would be if everything we’ve seen from HLV and onwards is actually meant to be ‘true’. Mary is now dead and John lives alone with little Rosie. For a case, in order to get close to the suspects, Sherlock is planning to fake his own wedding with Janine Hawkins, and John is feeling jealous and excluded – especially when he finds out that one of the murders that Sherlock is investigating had involved a wedding of a gay couple:

"Why all of this, then?" he asked. He tipped his head towards the kitchen, where Janine was fiddling with the kettle. "I could have just—wouldn't it have been easier for us to just—?"

"You're not gay," Sherlock said.

"Well," John paused. "No." He cleared his throat, looked back at the wall. "But everyone already thinks we're a couple. Wouldn't be that much of a stretch, really. For a case."

"No one has thought that for quite some time."

This fanfic rings perfectly true to me, considering S4 on the surface level; John and Sherlock appearing as a couple wouldn’t work after John’s own wedding in TSoT. Because gone is now every allusion to John being anything else than straight. Gone is also John’s admiration for Sherlock; from HLV and on, he hardly ever even speaks about Sherlock in a positive way. (Which also makes me wonder: was ‘The Fall’ also about Sherlock feeling he had fallen from John’s pedestal of admiration?). For the rest of the show, it’s only Sherlock whom we see suffering from (presumably) gay pining. It’s only in Sherlock’s Victorian imagination that Moriarty tells them to ’elope’ together, while John in TLD is shown to be exclusively fixed on his dead wife. 

On the surface, Sherlock seems to support John’s relationship with Mary, while I’m sure he is actually suffering deeply. But I think, metaphorically, that Sherlock is acting like some kind of self-sacrificing Christ figure. (Don’t forget Irene’s words from ASiB: “I think you’re damaged, delusional and believe in a higher power. In your case, it’s yourself”). He bears the ‘cross’ of torture by seeing John with someone else, until he can’t stand it any more and trashes himself on drugs. This is what we see at the beginning of TEH, John holding hands with a woman in front of Sherlock’s grave:

Why can’t we see Mary’s face already here? I think it’s because this is from Sherlock’s POV; he’s either seeing or imagining them from behind. She might have a hidden face but a familiar shape because by the time Sherlock is recalling this, he already knows what Mary looks like. But at this point in time, maybe he didn’t? In any case, it must be devastating for Sherlock to see or imagine John with someone else, when he should be there to mourn him, Sherlock. 

Thinking about John with Mary, Sherlock can’t even sleep. He is tortured on a cross and dies for all our ’sins’, doesn’t he? On the meta level Sherlock Holmes sacrifices his life, he extinguishes his true self, in the name of heteronormativity. So that John can have his straight marriage, even if it’s dysfunctional. But our worst ’sin’ as an audience, I believe - our ultimate mistake - is to buy into this narrative without questioning it. That’s literally letting the hetero norm rule.

King David the Adulterer

Mary’s ex-boyfriend David is introduced in TSoT, but after this episode he never shows up again. But this seems very random to me; why is David even there, and why is he depicted as some kind of rival to John? What is his narrative purpose? David is often blurred out in the scenes, but he is definitely present during the whole wedding reception, where his role is to be an usher (showing people their places/seats). David gives the impression to be single, since he attends Mary’s wedding without any partner as company.

Sherlock, who meets David alone at 221B during the wedding planning, deduces that he still seems to have an intimate relationship with Mary. Only recently I discovered this meta from 2014 called The Baby Problem by @abitnotgood​, which brings up pretty much exactly the same suspicions I have had for quite some time now. The main points are the following:

Mary was dating David for 2 of the totally 5 years she had been undercover with the false name Mary.

They’re still close enough friends for David to attend the wedding, which might indicate their breakup was unwanted from one or both parts.

Mary’s reactions during the wedding reception indicates that she still cares for David.

Sherlock finds out that David has “offered to be her shoulder to cry on no less than three occasions.” 

David sits at the same table as most other major characters, which indicates that he’s important.

David doesn’t look particularly happy while toasting for the bride and groom.

To these I could also add that Sherlock gets so suspicious about David that he threatens him with keeping a close eye on his whereabouts with Mary. From a story telling POV, when a character is suspected by the main character who is a genius detective, there should actually be some reason for this - shouldn’t it?

So who is David? Does he appear anywhere in canon? I actually think he does. In ACD’s short story The Crooked Man (CROO), the name David plays a symbolical role. The story is about a (supposed) murder of a middle-aged military officer, colonel James Barclay. It’s a classical Sherlock Holmes mystery with a door locked from the inside and the key missing. The death seems to originate from a domestic quarrel between the colonel and his wife. (Which is particularly interesting considering the Watsons’ ‘domestic’ in HLV). 

Turns out the colonel died of fright when he saw his old rival Henry Wood, whom he had betrayed in the war and deliberately left to be captured by the enemy. Henry was repeatedly tortured and crippled and held prisoner for many years, until he could escape back to London and a coincidence brought his old love interest in his way, who was now married to the colonel. (Hmm... tortured by the enemy. Been away. Love interest married. Does this seem like anyone we know? ;) ). Henry was “the crooked man” of the story, who was bereft of his loved one because of James. 

But the name David was mystically uttered by Colonel Barclay’s wife while quarreling with her husband - why? Holmes claimed it was a biblical reference to the drama of king David, Batsheba and Uriah. King David committed adultery with the beautiful Bathsheba, who was married to his soldier Uriah. Bathsheba got pregnant after sleeping with David, while Uriah was out fighting a war. David tried to cover up that fact by sending Uriah home, but Uriah refused to leave his comrades. Then David betrayed his rival Uriah the same way James betrayed Henry: by deliberately leaving him exposed to the enemy. The only difference was that Uriah died on the battlefield, while Henry was caught and crippled. Which leads us almost inevitably to Captain John Watson - he is a soldier who was crippled by the enemy too, wasn’t he? ;)

What about Rosie?

Although Mary is dominating the show from TEH and forwards, John’s and Mary’s daughter - little Rosie - is subjected to the opposite treatment; she has very little screen time, and we never learn about a single character trait of hers. In ACD canon the Watsons never had a child, as far as I know. And – even in Victorian times – I believe it would have seemed strange with the Doctor spending so much of his free time (besides work) together with Holmes, obviously neglecting his family duties. So since Mofftiss have introduced a totally new ingredient to their adaptation - a time-consuming baby - one would think this has to have a clear purpose, right? I would have expected Rosie to play a part of her own, someone the audience could relate to just like the other characters, if only still a baby. 

But instead, Rosie is seen most of all as an obstacle. Mary is balancing her while discussing a case with Sherlock. Rosie is handed over to John like a sack of potatoes when the family goes on to solve a case with Sherlock; she doesn’t make a sound and we don’t even see her little face. We see John change Rosie’s diaper once (basically to show that he has a toy daisy behind his ear, which is apparently a good flirting device), and then we see Sherlock trying to babysit her at 221B, getting hit in the eye by her toy. We also hear her cry in the background once, and see Molly hold her once. And that’s about it. 

When Sherlock texts them from the London Aquarium at the end of TST, Mary and John debate which of them is going to have to stay with the baby, but finally both of them show up at the Aquarium – without Rosie. And this happens not long after Mary has taken a ‘little trip’ around Eurasia ending up in Morocco and John and Sherlock going after her – little Rosie staying at home. Which means weeks without any of her parents. If S4 were real, I’d feel truly sorry for little Rosie.

In TLD, Rosie is more absent than her dead mother! While Mary haunts the episode, all we hear about the baby is John’s tremendous guilt for neglecting and abandoning her (which he manages to do completely). John does seem to have enough spare time and energy to go on another case with Sherlock, though, in the middle of his therapy session. At the end of TLD, all is supposedly fine again with Rosie (until John gets shot with a tranquiliser), but we never get to see it. But then in TFP John goes on a long journey with Sherlock to a far away island, and not a word about Rosie. She’s not even present when John receives Mary’s DVD at home. At the end she’s suddenly there again, though, without any comment. 

Based on this, it doesn’t seem farfetched to ask if this little character is even supposed to be real. There’s a subtle hint in TLD which could point in this skeptic direction: 

Sherlock: “And, of course, I hadn’t really anticipated that I’d hallucinated meeting his daughter.” “Still a bit troubled by the daughter. Did seem very real, and she gave me information I couldn’t have acquired elsewhere.” 

John: “But she wasn’t ever here?”

An earlier quote from TGG could also question John’s fatherhood: ”Of course he’s not the boy’s father - look at the turnups on his jeans!” (Sherlock while watching telly with John in TGG, right after the fourth ‘pip’).

And - of course - if S4 is all imaginary, only happening in Sherlock’s head, Rosie would probably not even have been born yet. 

There are also some more subtle hints about Rosie’s narrative function: John’s guilt about cheating on Mary in TLD is connected to the baby. John specifically mentions that he was “cheating” on Mary while she was taking care of Rosie: JOHN (to Ghost!Mary): “We texted constantly. You wanna know when? Every time you left the room, that’s when.  When you were feeding our daughter; when you were stopping her from crying – that’s when.” This does make the (otherwise rather exaggerated) texting affair sound a bit more damning for John, doesn’t it? ;)  If this is all taking place inside Sherlock’s head, it might rather reflect one of Sherlock’s (possibly) major excuses to himself for not confessing his true feelings to John; it might (once the baby is born) disrupt a whole family and affect an innocent little child.

John and Mary’s relationship

The other day I took to re-watch this little piece of extra material from S4: statements by Martin Freeman and Amanda Abbington about John’s and Mary’s relationship (X). Every time I see this video I’m just laughing so hard. Please don’t miss how Martin is struggling to keep a straight face without smiling, after claiming “they’ve been through stuff already in S3 that would test any couple.” (Yep. Like the discovery that Mary is actually a contract killer who shot his best friend and hasn’t even revealed her real name to John). Or how Amanda avoids looking at the camera when she’s lying talking about Mary’s feelings towards John, closing her eyes and shaking her head. Great acting! :)

I mean, this cannot even be intended to fool anyone; I think this is meant to signal to the audience that the marriage we’re seeing is a dishonest, superficial construction made up of empty words. It’s very similar to the scene in HLV where Sherlock tells John about his ‘relationship’ with Janine. Platitudes like “we’re in a good place” are not only included, but also called out in the very same dialogue. John: “You got that from a book!”  Sherlock: “Everyone got that from a book!”. In the video clip, overly sweet violin music is playing when Martin and Amanda talk about their characters’ supposed deep love for each other, but this is mixed up with sitcom-like scenes where this love is made very hard to believe in, like Mary about to give birth in the car and roaring to her husband to pull over, or John telling Mary that he simply intends to forget about a recent past where she very nearly murdered his best friend.  

John’s marriage actually seems terrible from start; he can’t even keep himself off Sherlock’s blog comments during his own honeymoon. Which I believe is canon consistent; in ACD’s stories Mary Morstan even encourages Watson to never leave Holmes’ side. And the bad marriage is also confirmed in HLV by Wiggins’ and Sherlock’s deductions about John’s cycling to work and keeping his shirts ‘folded and ready to leave’ at any moment.

But what’s Mary’s position in this? Let’s say, as a mental experiment, that she knows from start about John’s feelings for Sherlock. Why would she want to be together with, and even go on to marry, a man who is obviously in love with someone else? Well, while I don’t buy the facade-climbing Ninja!Mary who tries to kill Sherlock in HLV, she could still be dishonest in her approach to John. She could still be on some sort of mission related to Sherlock, where her role simply is to get in between John and Sherlock, while she actually is together with someone else (and even carrying that someone’s child). Her aim could be to hurt Sherlock as much as possible, for a specific reason. 

As far as I see in TEH, Mary seems suspiciously eager to befriend Sherlock. Instead of behaving like one would expect from someone in love who just got their special moment ruined by a rival; with anger or at least annoyance, and of course supporting the beloved - Mary immediately sides with Sherlock.

And she seems to side with him most of all on an intellectual level, taking part in his explanations of how he managed to fake his death.

“Oh, he would have needed a confidant...”

So - what can we deduce about Mary?

If everything we see in the show after TSoT only has happened inside Sherlock’s head (as I’ve tried to make a case for in this meta series), from this follows logically that in Sherlock’s ‘reality’, there is no Assasin!Mary, no SecretAgent!Mary, no Martyr!Mary and - of course - no Ghost!Mary. Because up until the wedding, Mary seemed to be just an ordinary woman. The character’s appearance from HLV and onwards would all be fabrications of Sherlock’s drug-influenced mind, albeit loaded with a lot of metaphorical meaning from his subconscious. 

But Mary still seems to exist on some level, doesn’t she? She is referred to by John on his blog, talked about by other people on the blog (including Sherlock), and she even makes comments on it on no less than ten occasions. On the blog, John is clear about getting married to Mary. And after Sherlock’s final blog post ‘The Sign of Three’, it also gets obvious that Mary is now pregnant. 

And – most importantly – if S4 is all-fake, this also means that in Sherlock’s ‘reality’, Mary’s drama-loaded death in TST never happened. Mary is still alive! So if Mary is a ‘façade’, a ‘beard’ and/or a mirror for Sherlock on a meta- and sub-textual level, who is she on the textual level? Well, I think there are some clues in the show, and also a lot of subtext material in ACD canon to draw from, which might have been developed into actual story line in the show.  

And this will bring us to the second half of this meta, which you can find here (X).

Tagging some people who might be interested: @raggedyblue​ @ebaeschnbliah​ @sarahthecoat​ @gosherlocked​ @loveismyrevolution​ @sagestreet​​ @tjlcisthenewsexy​​ @elldotsee​​ @88thparallel​​ @devoursjohnlock​​ @sherlock-overflow-error​​ @yeah-oh-shit​

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Welcome to the first chapter of my self-indulgent kiss fic! My first Apex Legends fic, as well!

This fic has five chapters, including an intro (you’re here!), an ending, and three middle chapters that focus on a specific relationship each within my self-indulgent polyamorous ship of Bloodhound-Octane-Mirage-Caustic. This is like my take on the start of their romantic relationship 💕

I have to put a disclaimer, for I know not too much about the Apex lore, and have been playing for only a little more than four months as of now - so my characterizations and headcanons are purely based on what I think from seeing them in-game. I hope Apex veterans will still like my take (⺣◡⺣)♡* 

For quick reference, not that it truly matters to the reading experience, I wrote this fic with certain character skins in mind - Caustic has his Blackheart skin, Bloodhound has their Flamingo skin, Octane has his Original skin, and Mirage has his Fiber Optics skin.

Sidenote: There’s a lot of language other than English within these chapters, regarding dialogue - Old Norse, Icelandic, Spanish, and French being what they are. I have not included translations, but many of them are able to be understood with context. I also write dialogue based on how they actually speak, rather than readability. Words containing “r’r” represent a roll of the r, and missing letters represent the character skipping over them because of accent or dialect. Everything else should be self-explanatory! Any questions regarding this sidenote can be asked through the notes of any of the relevant chapters.

Below is the chapters in order.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Intro (You are here!)

Chapter 2 - Mirage

Chapter 3 - Octane

Chapter 4 - Caustic

Chapter 5 - Ending

Without further ado, Chapter 1 below the cut!

The dormitories abruptly filled with stumbling footsteps.

“Are you sure it’s fine?” Mirage spoke uncomfortably as he eyed the team’s best hunter.

Bloodhound swatted away any hands that came to touch them - not meaning to come off as rude, but rather in their discomfort of general intimacy. The other legends were aware of this, but the natural urge to touch someone’s arm or back in comfort arose stronger now than in previous encounters, despite the hunter’s visible unwillingness to accept such an offer. In the middle of battle, it was often too risky to offer physical forms of affection even for a moment in terms of someone ambushing them, but even when the chance presented itself Bloodhound was always one to dismiss their hurt and assure their other teammate(s) that they were fine.

“Quite,” started the hunter, their ever-so-slightly-shaking fingers fiddling with one of their prominent jacket pockets, “I’ll be fine. Don’t treat this as such a dire issue.”

“Compadre, of course it’s a big issue,” Octane assured Bloodhound with his unwavering hand resting on their arm, much to the latter’s dismay. “Che needs to at least see it-”

The man’s purring voice was cut off by one deeper and more grainy.

Caustic pulled at his sleeves and turned to check the emergency medicine cabinet by the door - giving a bitter “I’m thinking if someone didn’t use an illegal play, then you’d not be wounded. I know a particular subject who despises common etiquette,” referring to Revenant.

Bloodhound gave a reassuring “Don’t tr'rouble yourself finding someone to blame. I’m fine, thank you.”

All three men seemed wanting in terms of disputing how fine Bloodhound really was (not to mention faulting the obvious perpetrator of their wound), but mutually abstained for civility’s sake.

“Cabinet’s bare.”

“Think I got some supplies left in my own stash,” Mirage offered as he hastily turned to go up the stairs to his room.

As he left, the hunter walked to the left side of the kitchen they were all standing in and leaned against the counter - looking down and tapping a hand against the granite. The motion gave the two men with them a quiet sign of how they were trying to ignore the pain.

“Where is it exactly?” Octane questioned as he came to stand in front of them, “Face, neck-?”

“Face,” they confirmed. “The pain feels centered on my right.”

Octane went to say something before Mirage had come back down - carrying in his hands a few items of aid.

“Got some antiseptic, some cotton pads, and a thing of g- a thing of- ah- some bandages.”

Octavio was quick - obviously - to take the pack of cotton pads, roll of applicable gauze, and travel-sized bottle of antiseptic. Before Mirage could question it, Octavio purred to Bloodhound, “If you need help with it, compadre, I’ve gotten five star reviews on my medical care.”

“From who, exactly?” Caustic quipped, “Last we were teamed, you could hardly administer a syringe to me without missing the vein two times first.”

“I’m thorough, what can I say?”

Bloodhound slightly reached out a hand to take the supplies, “Thank you for these, Mr. Witt. I think I’ll be fine to administer these myself, really-”

“Oh, it’s no big deal!” Octane assured, pulling open the bag of cotton pads as he spoke, “It’s better when you got someone else to look over your heridas - más cobertura.”

Bloodhound swallowed. The offer was tempting - knowing Octane was right in that - but they’d never taken their mask off in front of anyone in terms of the other legends. They trusted them, of course, but it was still a strong desire of theirs to keep their physical identity hidden. There’s been occasions they’ve seen their hands or their hair, but their face was something they were always careful to hide.

Taking in a sigh, they decided against their better judgement and slowly raised their hands to unclasp the few straps holding their mask in place behind their head.

“Just be quick about it.”

Octane half-expected Bloodhound to decline the offer, take the supplies, and head to their dorm - and yet they didn’t. Blinking, he popped open the cap of the antiseptic bottle and doused a cotton pad, “Sure thing! Sorry if this burns any.”

Bloodhound shook their head a bit, “I assume it will - no need to apologize.”

The next few moments felt so slow - Mirage and Caustic consciously looking elsewhere as to give the hunter a bit of privacy where it was due, Octane setting down the rest of the supplies on the counter beside Bloodhound until he needed them again, and all accompanied by a small clink from them unbuckling their mask.

They visibly hesitated to pull it off, gloved hands grasping the sides of the mask timidly, and had their gaze pointed downwards.

Nothing was said when they fully pulled the cover away and looked up - heterochromatic eyes looking to their left at nothing in particular just to avoid eye contact.

Octane, being the one to have been looking at them the entire time, would have been the first to find that they were so pretty - gorgeous, even. A slightly angled jaw, warm olive skin decorated with scattered beauty marks, blushed lips, a large angled nose, soft brows - not to mention the scars. One dragged from their right to left cheek horizontally, across the bridge of their nose. Another was smaller, and trailed vertical from their right brow to their cheekbone - the same side as their grey, presumably blind, eye. The last was a gnarly horizontal across the fully shaved part of their head - just below where their deep black hair began and trailed much past their shoulders.

Octane figured they wouldn’t want anything to be said about their appearance, which fought with his want to compliment them, but ultimately he went with the former idea. Raising the cotton pad to clean the notable fresh wound, an abrasion scuffing the skin beside their chin and just above their jaw, Octane pressed it against the scrape gently.

Bloodhound made a muted wince.

It was then that, as goes human curiosity, the two other men looked over - finding themselves at the same conclusion as Octane had just seconds ago-

Bloodhound was damn pretty.

It felt rude to stare, but it was hard to look away - Caustic being the first to reluctantly move his gaze towards the floor, followed by Mirage looking down and fiddling with a random pocket on his suit.

Octane tossed the used cotton pad into a nearby bin. Picking up the applicable gauze, he unwrapped it and began to line it up with Bloodhound’s wound.

“I think it’ll heal up just fine,” He assured, “Doesn’t look like anything that’ll leave a scar behind.”

The hunter gave a hushed “Thank you” as Octane pressed the bandage against the wound and made sure it was secure. As the man pulled his hands away, Bloodhound felt the urge to cover their face over once more - though as they’ve already seen it, they simply held the mask in their hands.

“..Þakka fyrir,” they spoke quietly, “All of your concern is appreciated.”

Given they seemed comfortable enough to leave it off, Mirage glanced back over prior to lifting his head up a bit. “It’s nothin’, really. Gotta’ look out for one another, you know?”

Bloodhound gave a nod.

“..I’ll retire to my room. Thank you all, again.”

Caustic gave an assuring “Our pleasure.”

With that, they made their way to the stairs and left - leaving behind a trio of men who suddenly needed time to think.

That was a week ago.

The opportunity to discuss the event came in the form of an early Monday morning - the beginning of the work week regarding games.

Caustic was a known early-riser - him or Lifeline always being the first to brew a pot of coffee in the morning. He and Mirage sat at the dining table making seldom conversation - the scientist drinking his coffee black while Mirage had poured in a concerning amount of his favourite pumpkin-flavoured creamer into his own.

Mirage wasn’t known to wake up quite this early, it being seven, but he wasn’t late to do so either - that title belonged to Octane, an infamous sleeper-till-three-or-four-in-the-afternoon. Considering that, it was a shock to find the man coming down into the kitchen.

“Morning,” Octane quipped prior to yawning and scratching his lower back. Unmasked, his baggy grey sweatpants and violet tank-top looked freshly wrinkled - most likely having just woken up.

Unperturbed by most things at this point, Caustic gave an unwavered “Good morning,” though unlike most days he sounded a little tired. Come to think of it, so did Octane.

Mirage returned the greeting with a playful “Aren’t normally up this early - special occasion?”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Ah.”

Octane took a seat beside Caustic, in front of Mirage - rubbing the back of his head and messing his hair a bit. The silence wasn’t necessarily awkward, but there was an obvious something between them not being said.

Knowing Mirage nor Caustic were going to say anything, Octane felt it his responsibility to break the tension.

“¿Qué pasó? We’re not gonna’ just forget about what happened last Monday, are we?”

Caustic furrowed his brows and hesitated to speak - taking a drink from his mug before responding, “I’m unsure what you mean.”

“I know you know what I mean, Nox,” Octane chortled, “and you aren’t free from this talk either, Elliott.”

Elliot gave a scoff. “I’m.. abstaining.”

“Really - can we talk about it?” Octane leaned back in his seat, putting his hands in his lap. The three of them haven’t been able to talk alone throughout the week, and any conversation with Bloodhound was the same as before that Monday afternoon. Octane continued, “Say what you want, compadres, but I have a feeling we’re all thinking the same thing.”

Octane’s intuition seemed to carry some weight when neither of the other men said anything - Dr. Nox hesitating before taking another drink and looking away while Elliott set his cup down.

The latter ultimately gave in with a sigh. Looking between Dr. Nox and Octane, Elliott spoke a little sheepishly, “Well, I…” He paused, “Look, promise you it’s not new - been.. liking Bloodhound for a while now.”

“How long is a while to you?” Octane teased before being reprehended by Dr. Nox.

“How exactly did you come to the conclusion this was the discussion you wanted to have?” He spoke while lifting the mug to his lips.

Octane scoffed and bore a smile, “I can’t be the only one who felt that tension after they left - I’m not dense.”

When the remark was met with no defense from either of them, Octane felt safe to assume they were now on the same page.

“..For what it’s worth, I’m fine with however we wanna’ go about this.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Elliott questioned with furrowed brows - though after a moment or two he quickly cleared his throat as the statement clicked. He put his elbow on the table and propped his head up in his hand. “Scratch that. Gotta’ say - would’ve taken you as a jealous type, Octavio.”

The comment earned an amused, short exhale from Dr. Nox.

Octavio spoke with playful surprise in his tone, then put his hand on his chest, “Me? Jealous? Estoy dolido.” He put his hand back in his lap. “Pero, I really don’t mind. I know I’m one of the least serious people here, but I’m talking about it because I’m trying to be for once.”

Dr. Nox set his mug down, his attention assumedly fully taken now.

“I’m just saying I’m interested in them,” Octavio finally confessed in concise terms. “And maybe I’m not as good at reading people as I think I am, but last week I felt something there. And I know nothing about your preferences,” he looked to the scientist, “Pero I wanted to.. how do I say this?”

Elliott looked focused on something, with his eyes narrowed and looking away. When Octavio found himself at a loss on how to convey his thoughts, Elliott spoke up in hopes he got the gist of what he was going for.

“What, like polyamory? I am, if it means anything - but, I’m.. sure you already knew that.”

Octavio gave a snort, “A huevo - yo también.” He then looked back to Dr. Nox and gave a quick nod of his head, “You?”

The man took a moment to answer - almost as though he’d never really thought about it before. Hell, he never expected to be talking about something like this. “..Might be. I’ve never given it much thought.”

“With what I’m proposing,” Octavio wanted to confirm, “You’d be okay with that? All of us having permission to pursue them, I mean.”

“I’ve yet to reject your offer,” Dr. Nox replied with a tinge of surprise in his own statement - definitely never before questioning this about himself.

The discussion seemed over on that note - an odd feeling of mutual relief lie between them. They knew Bloodhound had no obligation to accept any theoretical advances, but the first step was to make sure between themselves that they could do so in the first place. Octavio relaxed a bit and slouched in his seat, finding his once restless mood fading and, for the first time this week, ready for some proper sleep without anxieties occupying his mind. He closed his eyes and crossed his arms behind his head as a sort of cushion. Elliott took a quiet sip of his coffee. Dr. Nox kept his gaze elsewhere, in thought, and proceeded to pick his mug back up.

It was silent for a long while - the three  enjoying the company, in a way.

Upstairs, alone in their room, Bloodhound sat on their bed. Their hands clasped together, they couldn’t keep their mind off of something in particular - having kept them up for a few hours now.

Since last week, the hunter had been slowly becoming more comfortable with showing their face around the other legends - albeit for short periods, at times they’d been having a communal meal, but it was still progress. Last week had encouraged them to be a bit more open about the idea of doing so, but something about then still bothered them.

Bloodhound couldn’t tell whether it was fortunate or not that the three people they’d taken their mask off in front of for the first time were the exact three people they’d found themselves attracted to for months now - maybe the circumstances were the Gods’ sense of humor.

[critical-ramblings]

Things that Mean More

On a second watch through of Critical Role campaign 2. (Ep 11-15)

“Maybe [Yasha] was a ghost the whole time, maybe the lightning exploded her, maybe she wandered out into the rain and lost her memory”...one of these is not like the others!

Molly: What should we do while keeping watch? Jester: We could find a candy store Molly: Wait there are stores specifically for selling candy?” sometimes Molly makes me sad

“Nott and Molly, you ready to go?” For some reason I expected him to say Caduceus and now I’m sad.

Matt is going really hard on the class differences between the Outersteads and the Tri-spire. 

The three towers of the Tri-spire are the Zauberspire, the Constellation Bridge, and the Triumph Chime, which we don’t know much about because Beau rolled a 6 on her history check

Matt cracks himself up describing Chastity’s Nook. His face is SO RED. Liam: “I made you plan for this!”

Tusk Love makes an appearance! Who knew Matt’s smut shop prep would become a recurring theme this campaign

Beau, to Caleb: the Cerberus Assembly, you know much about them?

It’s so interesting to hear them talk about the state of the Empire and the Cerberus Assembly, because they’re just so...powerless.

I think Beau straight up says, “I don’t know, look at this. Look at how much money is up here compared to elsewhere. This is a lot of control.”

Caleb immediately asks, “so what do you plan to do about it?” after which Beau deflects to drinking booze and making money. Look how far they’ve come. :)

Caleb buys Jester bear claws and then Jester buys him the Courting of the Crick. Their love language has always been gifts

I remember not being a Huge fan of the political arc in Zadash, it’s pretty slow and doesn’t have a super conclusive end, even though they ‘succeed’

first explanation of the crick slur! this is also the first real experience we have with the Kryn Dynasty, and I remember wanting to know more about them! Xhorhas is like a black hole of knowledge, it’s just on the other side of the mountains and we know NOTHING

Doolan Tversky! What the FUCK Nott? WHAT DOES IT MEAN???

Dolan and Horace are...very relatable in today’s political situation

We talk about how bad it was for Molly to charm Nott, but she started it by stealing from Fjord. That doesn’t make it okay, but it does add some context. As far as PVP goes, she was the instigator

“I need him to be powerful. So he can save me.” the ‘using him’ undertones of the conversation are SO GOOD

Fjord is also asking all the right questions, but Nott is excellent at dancing around them. Even charmed, she doesn’t trust them enough to tell them. 

“I did my own dental work” oh boooooooy i missed that one

the description of fictional Xhorhas is very :/

Fjord attempts to Manage Nott..it does not work...he asks Caleb to do it. Nott tells him she’s not an idiot. I think this is the first time she really pushes back against the infantilization

If you want your players to know someone is evil, have them advocate killing puppies and call tieflings ‘demonbloods’

proficient in mail fraud

man the Mighty Nein (and mostly Caleb) really Improved the Knights of Requital plan. We go from ~somehow~ tying Sutan to the Myriad and the High Richtor to framing the two of them for murder (of the Lawmaster)

intro of the meta-gaming pigeon! originally a signal in-game for investigating Dolan

Ren Sutan is the one they were investigating at the hospital, his father Deitrich Sutan is the one they frame in the Heist

The Hospital Scene....the last brain cell in the Nein went with Beau and Jester

the grin that Taliesin has when he says “I’ve got a plan” is Terrifying

after Molly’s done with his Disguise, Fjord says ‘do I dare ask how it looks,’ Molly says, ‘well, i can show you?’ and it’s CALEB who says “yes show us the goods”

“we are working together. we are TRYING to work together. Getting all of us out is more important than finding this asshole” Caleb, being a Team Player. This is 1 episode before scrollgate

Caleb tells Jester to keep her writing plain “not as charming as you normally speak”

hes so softe already

Nott and Caleb have a talk about learning Identify, how Nott supports Caleb, believes in him, which visibly makes Caleb uncomfortable. Nott is clearly fishing for ways to make Caleb more powerful without revealing why

The robberies/evidence planting actually goes off without (too much of) a hitch. Not much to say, until we get to the Scrolls

Fjord is classic dumbass, he escalates the situation (brings out the falchion) and then even if he agrees with Caleb (they’d already destroyed the rug in Sutan’s place) he can’t back down

Then Ulog’s sacrifice--absolutely the most interesting part of this arc, to me. He’s not just a thief, he’s a real revolutionary. 

he also knocks Caleb out in one hit, which is Nice

The assassins strike the Zauberspire!!!!! Earlier this episode Sam says “We think Matt’s managing three plot lines, but there’s actually a fourth we don’t even know about” and he is Absolutely Right

god I want to write a fic about those two. It seems like the classic echo knight/wizard support combo, i want to know about these two special forces drow sent to retrieve the Beacon, the holy symbol of their people. Blessed by the Bright Queen herself. And they come so close. (if it weren’t for those meddling kids!)

Matt pulls this Advanced DM trick, where you have the party fight an enemy that would be completely annihilating them--if it wasn’t already injured.

The first impressions of the Beacon, from what they manage to glean from this Charmed assassin, are so interesting. Jester’s eternal mis-interpretation about babies (which isn’t...really wrong?)

The drow twitched when Ulog’s name was mentioned! Though the Gentleman’s association did not deal with the Krynn, Ulog knows some shady people. If he wasn’t a spy himself.

They don’t even take the Beacon! (But the time they took futzing about with the assassin was what allowed him to be captured and killed)

I just realized that the reason Caleb stays with the Beacon that first night isn’t because he’s afraid it’ll be stolen--it’s because as long as he’s within 5 ft it can’t be scried on!

Okay, Molly and Beau really do team up against Nott in this talking to. Nott Does Not Agree with their reasoning--in the episode before, it was Caleb who put the scrolls back to deescalate the situation. Caleb is the one here who has the aside with the skull about how much he wants to make this group work. It’s Nott who’s on the fence. 

“He’s MY boy. I take care of HIM.”

Caleb tries, after the skull interlude, he tries to tell Nott. “You know, I was going to go to that place. The Soltryce Academy...But I fucked it up.” He can’t bring himself to say more than that.

Nott purchases the enchantment for her never-ending flask. 250 gold is nothing, when you’re a goblin who just likes shiny things.

Whenever Caleb has money, he spends it on paper and ink to transcribe spells. Whenever he doesn’t have spells to transcribe, he buys them. :)

Taryon Darrington!!!! I also fell out of my chair when this book came up. Can’t wait for Caleb to read it someday and declare it trash

MOLLY! He bullshits SO well, I (and Cree) bought into the idea that he just really wanted to stay on the DL. That’s really what I take away from this revelation, his intense desire to keep his past under wraps.

Meeting the Gentleman! Fjord won 600 gold with some good gambling, they get a job dungeon crawling, Laura isn’t there to meet her dad.

Yasha backstory! The crumbs we get about Xhorhas are so little, and I remember being a little confused about how big Xhorhas was, the difference between the region and the Krynn Dynasty, how connected everything is over there. 

Caleb asks Fjord whether or not he used party funds to gamble. Fjord reassures him, but Caleb says he would be alright with it. “Calculated risks.” 

From home Jester strikes with the Wand of Smiles...

This interrogation has so many good one-liners from our good Mollymauk. “That person is dead and not me” “The truth is vicious, it thinks you owe it something” “joy can fill an awful lot of a person’s life” 

Caleb’s Joke: (about Pumat) “Well, [he’s] not one of a kind.” Molly: “Did you just make a joke?” Caleb: “No.” 

Yasha in Pumat Sol’s shop is the most awkward we ever see her. She stumbles over her words, bails on her attempts at banter, DOES manage to roll a 14 Persuasion for a discount on her healing potions.

Important Caleb & Yasha bonding over buying the throwing stars for Beau

Liam really is the best Jester (besides Laura, of course)

Some really great early Fjord/Jester in the Underworks. “Don’t read into it.” “This is just like that scene in Tusk Love.” I think Fjord did flirt with Jester, but that came from a) heteronormativity and b) Fjord always pushes his luck. His curiosity and playfulness have burned him more than once--I don’t think he considers that he might also be hurting Jester with these interactions.

bonus Caleb: “It is sad when ships sink.”

Highlight of this dungeon crawl is Nott completely failing to rogue. Nott and traps don’t get along...

[fermented-writers-block]

Why I think the actual Angel is Noelle Holiday

After nine months of research, procrastination, and working out the kinks, here’s a little theory of mine that’s been floating around in my head ever since the end of last November about Noelle Holiday and her potential role in the future of the series. It’s a bit of a long read, but I hope you’ll be willing to indulge me and give this crazy theory a chance.

As a forewarning, the following points I will be bringing up are simply too hefty to make a TLDR for, and it’s quite a long read, but trust me, you’re going to want to read through all of it for it to make sense in the end

Part 1: The Possible Evolution of the Delta Rune

First off, I’d like to look at the Delta Rune itself and a few easily overlooked key lines Gerson says about it:

That emblem actually predates written history.

The original meaning has been lost to time…

All we know is that the triangles symbolize us monsters below, and the winged circle above symbolizes…

Somethin' else.

The meaning and design of symbols can change over time, and it’s likely the same has happened to the way the Delta Rune is currently interpreted compared to when it first came into existence. For example, take a look at these variations of the Delta Rune:

Of these variations of the Delta Rune, these may be some of the oldest or closest iterations of the symbol to the original design, especially the ones from the intro cutscene and Gerson’s shop. The former is presumably from long before the Human-Monster War and thus the oldest version, and with Gerson’s apparent age and how he implies that he studies history, it is likely that the variation in his shop is also as close as can be to the original.

As for how these particular iterations of the Delta Rune fit into my theory, look at the design and positioning of the wings in these probably older iterations compared to likely more modern interpretations:

On the more recent interpretations, the base of the wings are placed around the same level as the center of the circle, and the wings themselves are mostly realistically designed. However, on the older interpretations, the wings are more simplified and stylized with more of an explicit arc to them, and the ‘feathers’ are more blocky with visible and sometimes significant spaces in between. Now keep that in mind when looking at these pictures:

Taking this into account, I think it is possible that - through the help of time and redesigns becoming successively more stylized - what was originally supposed to be a reindeer with antlers slowly got distorted and misremembered as a ‘winged circle.”

And maybe, something like this might even apply to Deltarune’s version of the Delta Rune as well given how several of the depictions of the Angel throughout the game look like the transition point between the older and newer designs, what with the ‘feathers’ being much rounder and closer together while still on an arc-based stylized design instead of a realistic wing-like design:

Part 2: The Origins of Modern Christmas

Now, with that established, let’s take a closer look at Noelle and her family.

Besides the obvious exception of Lancer, she has the most dialogue of all the NPCs, gets two entire scenes to herself in the hospital with her dad and outside her house to flesh out her character and crush on Susie compared to several other NPCs getting only a few lines of dialogue at most, and it is absolutely required to talk to her at the beginning of the game in order to even progress and end up in the Dark World. 

As many other posts than mine have demonstrated, this suspicious level of detail has led a lot of people to theorize that Noelle will be an important character and that she might even be playable later on, a theory which has certainly been helped by Toby Fox’s original concept art of “THE FUN GANG” showing that her character has been in development for a LONG time - perhaps even from when work on Deltarune was just beginning - and that she may have been designed as a main character from the start.

However, much like how the potential origins of Undertale’s Delta Rune point towards the importance of reindeer in the series, I believe the deeper origins behind the names of the Holiday family similarly point towards Noelle’s true role in Deltarune. 

Obviously, the name Rudy is a clear reference to the famous Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, and Dess is most likely a reference to how Christmas is celebrated in the month of December. However, as Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer was created in 1939 for the Montgomery Ward department store chain, he is actually a relatively new addition to the list of Santa’s reindeer, whom in of themselves are early 19th Century additions to the image of Santa Claus - a figure tracing back to the 4th Century Christian bishop Saint Nicholas.

And on Jesus’ birth being on the 25th of December for Dess’ name, from what I’ve gathered with my google-fu, the event may have actually taken place less on December 25 and more during the fall or spring due to mentions of shepherds tending to their sheep in the scripture as well as from several attempts to connect the Star of Bethlehem with recorded astronomical events.

In fact, it seems likely that - in the 4th Century - the church might have actually chosen the date either because of coming to the conclusion that Jesus’ conception took place on the spring solstice - aka March 25, nine months before December 25 - or because they wanted to increase the popularity of Christianity through adopting and appropriating pagan winter solstice festivals like the Yule and Saturnalia holidays around the same time of year.

On the flipside, Noelle is a name that has a particularly distinct connection to Christmas; specifically, to the one for whom the holiday is named for in the first place rather than a recent secular addition or the general time in which said holiday is celebrated.

From what I’ve seen, Noelle as a name traces back to the French word ‘noel,’ which - alongside referring to Christmas carols - is a variant form of the word ‘Nael.’ This form comes from the noun use of the Latin adjective natalis, meaning of, or belonging to, one’s birth. The noun use (from natalis dies, day of birth) denoted a birthday, an anniversary, a commemorative festival, hence in ecclesiastical Latin the festival of the nativity of Christ, Christmas.

Basically, out of all the names of the Holiday family, Noelle’s is the one that most directly ties into the actual origins of Christmas in how the name’s origins heavily revolve around the birth of Jesus Christ, a major religious figure who was to be a sacrifice for humanity’s sins and to provide a way into heaven.

Considering Toby Fox’s attention to hidden details and deeper meanings and how angels are heavily associated with and are depicted in Christianity - particularly in relation to Jesus - there may be further significance to Toby picking a name that’s typically given to girls born around or on Christmas day. After all, even if it may or may not be the actual day of Jesus’ birth, it is widely celebrated and recognized as such.

However, as you’ll see at the end, I think there’s even another layer of meaning to Noelle Holiday’s name than just this one. 

Part 3: Reindeer in Undertale

On a slightly different topic, while it’s hard to ignore how more prominently featured Christmas iconography and figures in the foreground of the series - what with the introduction of the Holiday family as well as several jokes about “Krismas” and Santa Claus in Deltarune, I believe it may also be important to pay attention to Undertale’s fair share of Christmas-themed details.

Namely, in how a significant amount of them owe their existence to one specific minor character; aka the rather unusually designed Gyftrot.

In contrast to the handful of implications that Asgore is the Underground’s Santa only being implicitly hinted at through extended dialogue and checking his bureau, Snowdin’s tradition of putting presents under decorated trees is blatantly and conspicuously out in the open. 

And as Gift Bear explains if you talk to them, said tradition originated not with wherever Asgore’s Santa outfit and apparent moonlighting came from, but rather came about in the first place as a way to make Gyftrot feel better after some teens decorated his horns.

As to why I am calling Gyftrot unusually designed, it is because of his rounded head and sideways mouth - a trait only seen elsewhere in the DT Extraction Machine, Photoshop Flowey, and Sans’ Gaster Blasters.

Of all the conversations and theories I’ve seen about this strange detail, most people were only able to come up with the explanation that Toby simply liked the design and reused it for Gyftrot just for fun without any deeper meaning to it, or that Toby unintentionally gave it to Gyftrot while making Undertale.

However, a third explanation I found is that Gyftrot’s design may actually be foreshadowing for what Photoshop Flowey’s appearance looks like, what with how Gyftrot actually seems to have a second pair of eyes at the base of his antlers, and how one of the decorations he spawns with is a picture between his four eyes in a very similar position to the television screen on Photoshop Flowey.

To my knowledge, this explanation and comparison has only been made in conjunction by two people, with user u/Peridotthepie providing the explanation and and user u/pleasespellicup providing the following picture in the linked post.

While I can’t see any other possible parallels between the two to fully call this foreshadowing - especially with how the picture decoration isn’t guaranteed to show up on every playthrough and how obscure it is - I’d like to propose the idea that the DT Extraction Machine (and perhaps the Gaster Blasters by extension) may very well be based on Gyftrot or a relative with a similar design in-universe.

After all, not even boss monsters leave behind anything more than a pile of dust when they die, not even a goat-like skull that could be used as a reference, whereas Gyftrot is a living, walking example of such a design, complete with what even seems to be a SOUL-shaped hole in his mouth.

Not only that, but given how attentive to detail and deeper meanings Toby has shown himself to be as well as the increased prominence and importance of reindeer/Christmas themes in general for Deltarune, I find it incredibly unlikely that this design choice was made just for fun or as an accident.

On a bit of a side note, it is interesting that we first learned of the name “Rudy” in a post from September 17, 2017 on Undertale’s 2nd anniversary and alarm clock app.

Considering the apparent parallels between Undertale and Deltarune - for example, the potential connection between Susie and the ‘Suzy’ character mentioned by Clam Girl, who appears to have ties to Gaster - and the implications of the dialogue in that post, it’s likely that Undertale Rudy is also a reindeer just like his counterpart, and I would not be surprised if he was also related to Gyftrot as well.

As for what the exact deeper meaning or in-universe explanation behind Gyftrot could be, it’s too early to tell, but I have the feeling that it likely ties heavily into Noelle’s circumstances in Deltarune and some of the effects of the DT Extraction Machine on Undertale’s plot as detailed below.

Part 4: Determining Other Connections

To explain what I’m talking about, let’s take a closer look at a few key lab entries by Alphys, starting with this one:

ENTRY NUMBER 5: I've done it. Using the blueprints, I've extracted it from the human SOULs. I believe this is what gives their SOULs the strength to persist after death. The will to keep living... The resolve to change fate. Let's call this power... "Determination."*

While not explicitly confirmed, from the name and surrounding context, it is likely that the blueprints Alphys used were for the DT Extraction Machine and that DT stands for Determination, though it is unknown whether Alphys built the machine from the blueprints or if it was already constructed and she merely used the blueprints to operate it.

Either way, as we all know, things went horribly wrong from there. Alphys had accidentally turned those who had “fallen down” into the Amalgamates, created Flowey from the flower whose seeds Asriel had brought from the surface, and fell into a nervous downward spiral while wracked with guilt.

Now, I want to focus on just how the Amalgamates had been created, particularly with these entries:

ENTRY NUMBER 6: ASGORE asked everyone outside the city for monsters that had "fallen down." Their bodies came in today. They're still comatose... And soon, they'll all turn into dust. But what happens if I inject "determination" into them? If their SOULS persist after they perish, then... Freedom might be closer than we all thought.

ENTRY NUMBER 12: nothing is happening. i don't know what to do. i'll just keep injecting everything with "determination." i want this to work.

ENTRY NUMBER 17: monsters' physical forms can't handle "determination" like humans can. with too much determination, our bodies begin to break down. everyone's melted together…

Here, I’d like to draw your attention to a few things. Given the surrounding context, “falling down” seems to be a condition - one that potentially originates from age, injury, or some kind of illness - involving or causes monsters to enter a comatose state and eventually die. 

And in Entry 17, there is the interesting wording of the line “with too much determination, our bodies begin to break down.” From how it’s phrased, it seems that, instead of melting from any amount of Determination in their systems whatsoever, monsters can handle Determination without having to fear of their bodies breaking down, though obviously there’s a cap to how much they are able to handle.

As for why I’m making this particular distinction, it’s because of Noelle’s situation with her father and how it may proceed beyond Chapter 1 in the future.

With the implication that Undertale Rudy had passed away a while ago, Deltarune Rudy’s conversations with and about Noelle, and Deltarune’s apparent theme of choices not mattering - or at least, not in the long run - it seems pretty likely that DR Rudy is suffering from a case of the foreboding coughs of death and that he may even “fall down” later on.

As such, it wouldn’t be surprising if his condition keeps worsening all the way until he ends up on his deathbed/in a coma/legitimately dead no matter what the doctors or Noelle and such do to help, and neither would it be surprising for her to be seriously affected and react in a severe way as a result.

I mean, Rudy openly talks about how everything scares her, even ironically Santa Claus, and as the classroom scene demonstrates, she has trouble mustering up the courage and confidence to assert herself to the point where even Alphys asks her to speak up.

Considering that her father openly talks about how defenseless she is and how he worries about not being able to protect her from his hospital bed, his death/apparently inevitable upcoming death would no doubt drastically impact her, especially if she attempted as much as she could to stop it to no avail. 

Sometimes, one can be driven to desperation to do crazy things as a result of love and worry, and Noelle may very well do the same out of love for her father. If at least some of Undertale’s rules about SOULS and monsters also apply to the world of Deltarune, then there may only be one way - or at the very least, what she feels might be the only option left - in the end for Noelle to potentially give her father the strength to persist and the will to keep living, perhaps even after death.

Or in other words, potentially through extracting enough Determination from a human SOUL to inject into and potentially save her father/bring him back to life. 

If the SOUL we the players control is or is close enough to a human SOUL to work, no other human characters/SOULS pop up later, and Noelle somehow finds out about the power of Determination and becomes resolved to use it, then there may be few - if any - things we will be able to do to dissuade her from going after Kris/wherever the SOUL we control goes.

Now, this is where what I think could be the second meaning behind Noelle’s name points would come into play, and in quite an important way.

For those that don’t know, if you enter Susie, Kris, or Noelle as the creator’s name in Deltarune’s introduction, you get the interesting following response:

“YOU ARE ABOUT TO MEET SOMEONE VERY, VERY WONDERFUL.”

With how anagrams appear to be a major theme of Deltarune in both a naming and worldbuilding sense, it's rather curious that of these three names, only two make any actually sensible anagrams. Kris and Susie can be turned into "risk" and "issue,” but Noelle oddly appears to buck the trend. 

However, I think the answer for this ties back to Lab Entry 17. You see, in toxicology research terms, Alphys had injected more than “the highest dose at which there was not an observed toxic or adverse effect.”

Interestingly, this level of dosage is known as the No Observable Adverse Effect Level, or the term NOAEL for short. And sometimes, when describing and looking for an effect in general than just specifically adverse ones, the term used in toxicology reports is the No Observable Effect Level, or NOEL.

Basically, if Noelle hopes to save her father, she needs to make sure to not inject too much or too little Determination. Otherwise, she’d go below the NOEL, where Ruby would simply not have enough strength to keep living, or above the NOAEL, where Rudy would seem to be fine for a while at first before inevitably melting down. 

And with that, Noelle’s strangely un-anagramable name can be reconciled with Kris and Susie’s, all three names relating to terms often used to describe something problematic in a scientific way.

In fact, one could even say that the terms their names correspond to sound like they would fit very well in a lab or experiment report, perhaps one involving interesting increases in darkness, like an imbalance in Dark Fountains…

Part 5: Conclusions

Of course, I do realize that that last bit is quite a stretch to suggest, even in comparison to the rest of my theory and particularly the latter half of the above section. As of now, there’s no real way of telling how these details actually connect in this way or if they really even connect to each other in the first place, let alone if they even operate on similar enough rules like my theory presumes. 

Heck, with the shortage of clear definitive details about W.D. Gaster, the apparent differences between the worlds of Deltarune and Undertale, and how things may change or have already changed in development in between games and chapters, it’s entirely possible that the series will take a very different direction than the one laid out here.

Perhaps we haven’t even heard of the character who is the actual Angel and everything we’ve seen so far are just red herrings. Maybe Ralsei’s legend will be revealed to have been falsified and he and/or Asriel will turn out to be the Angel like commonly theorized. For all we know, the world of Deltarune might not even precede OR succeed Undertale’s, and it’ll turn out that both worlds are derived from a third, unaltered world/timeline.

But whatever it may be, at the point we currently are at now, I find that my most likely candidate for the Angel is Noelle Holiday. On their own, the details supporting my theory would be easy to disregard and aur tenuous at best when taken by themselves, but when taken together as a whole, it’s hard to deny that they VERY much look like they start to frame a pretty concerning picture about the exact role of reindeer across the entire series. 

I mean, even if stuff like Determination turn out to not exist - or at least, don’t work the same way they do in Undertale at all - in Deltarune, the following general sequence of events seem likely to happen for me; that Rudy might get worse to the point of almost dying/actually dying, that Noelle might turn to something just as equally rather dangerous or desperate as extracting Determination in order to save/bring back her father, and that what she does may involve/cause her to somehow become the Angel.

Besides, like we can see from the introduction to Deltarune Chapter 1, it would be much like Toby to play with our expectations from Undertale and set us up to suspect that Ralsei or Asriel may be the Angel while he sets up the real Angel elsewhere.

After all, just about every good magic trick and literature twist relies on the art of misdirection at least in some part, subtly distracting the audience while the real clues are being built up in plain sight.

Like, for example, using the power of fluffy boys to deflect attention from the reindeer in the background.

[spiderman-homecomeme]

For me I think a cute college au would be that peter and mj are in the same dorm like across the hall, and maybe they always do their laundry at the same time and she notices he’s washing blood and dirt out of his clothes always or something lol :)

Hello friend!! so sorry this one was late!! I had this written out a while ago but couldn’t come up with a proper way to end the dang thing, but i’ve got it!! I hope you like it!!

Here is some 1.8k of funny collegiate fluff and stuff!!

Michelle’s pretty sure— she’d say maybe about 40%— that certified Cute Boy Across the Hall™ Peter Parker is a serial killer.

That, or he’s Spider-Man, which seems more likely.

But she finds it hard to come up with any other explanation.

Sure, Peter Parker is one of the nicest people she’s ever encountered. Honestly, the guy didn’t have a mean bone in his body; the kind of person that apologizes to inanimate objects after running into them.

And yeah, he may be almost frustratingly considerate sometimes— once, he bought her a new laundry basket after some asshole stole it (which was weird by itself, the theft. Who even does that?)

Another time, he’d stayed up till, like, 3 AM, helping some poor soul figure out their advanced chemistry homework.

He’s always the first volunteer when someone needs help moving furniture or something like that (he’s also weirdly strong).

Why he’s not an RA absolutely baffles her.

No, she doesn’t come to the serial killer conclusion at first. He’s too nice.

Then again, they always start as charming, don’t they?

See, every Thursday night, when everyone’s out getting drunk and partying at All You Can Drink till the sun comes up, that’s when Michelle gets all her shit done. No one to bother her, no one to knock on her door and ask questions, nothing. It’s prime be-productive time. Mostly, she uses it to do laundry, finding some peace in the quiet room, reading as she listens to the mechanic hum of the machines.

Except, she’s not always alone on these nights.

Peter usually washes his stuff then, too, always coming in with a basket-load of dirty clothes held tightly to his chest, eyes wide, mouth in some kind of weird rushed demeanor. But, polite young man that he is, he always makes sure to greet her with a smile, making the generic, nice small talk that’s expected; what book she’s reading, and how was it, how her day was, how her classes are. She doesn’t mind it really. Normally, she’d inwardly roll her eyes at talking about the weather or other shit like that.

But…

She’d definitely make an exception in this case.

Plus, he was so soft and pure as a person. How could she ruin his spirit like that?

It also helps that he happens to be really easy on the eyes.

So what if she gets a little hot under the collar seeing him in something as simple as a white tee and gray sweatpants?

Despite how attractive she finds him, she figures it might not be the best idea to get involved with someone like him. Yeah, he’s cute, but again, he’s either a crime-fighting vigilante or a murderer.

She’s not sure though, her only real concrete evidence coming from the blood and mud stains that are splattered on some of his clothes. That’s a little concerning, but she doesn’t mention it the first few times.

It’s when it starts becoming a regular thing, that’s when she becomes intrigued. The red spots always seem to be on his clothes, but there’s never any sign of it on him; no scars, no bruises.

After some observations, she discovers that it’s usually the same few t-shirts and boxers, occasionally, it’s some red hoodie (which, funnily enough, you can still see blood on red). One time, when she’d come in a little after him at around two am, he was scrubbing something red and blue. He’d nearly jumped out of his skin, shoving what she thought was spandex into the hamper, piling clothes on top of it.

Another point for superhero.

Then there was the whole thing with his roommate, Ned. They’ve apparently been best buds since High School, which was pretty cool, she guessed. But the weird thing was, was that those two were always whispering, glancing around and behind their shoulders before continuing a conversation.

It was impossible to catch him after his last class of the day, Intro the Philosophy at 2:30 (what? She’s not a stalker, just observant. He’s the potential serial killer, here.) His footsteps are silent as he rushes down the hall to his dorm, disappearing into his room for hours at a time. He’d be off campus from then until midnight at the earliest, doing God knows what.

With all of that, it would only make sense that this 4.0 college sophomore was leading a double life as a ruthless murderer. What, with the blood and dirt staining his clothes, the hushed tones spoken with his roommate, and the disappearing act…

And again, maybe he’s Spider-Man.

Even with the suspicious activity, though, she couldn’t help but feel a bit of concern for the guy. If he wasn’t a criminal or a superhero, obviously something was going on outside of classes, and not just normal extracurriculars. It may not have been any of her business, and really, she’d be happy to just keep doing her thing of observing from the sidelines, but she couldn’t help but wonder, and she didn’t think she’d be completely satisfied until she got at least some semblance of an answer.  

That’s what this Saturday night was for. To find out once and for all whether or not this kid was a homicidal maniac or a masked vigilante crime-fighter.

Her foot taps mindlessly, basket perched on her hip, she types in the four digit code. For a moment, she feels a little stuck, trying to figure out which hand to grab the handle with, struggling for a moment to get the door open.

Instead, she nearly falls forward when it pulls open, revealing the kind face of Mr. Killer himself, Peter Parker.

His eyes crinkle as a smile breaks across his face, and she feels the annoying butterflies fluttering in her stomach. “Hi, Michelle.”

Wow, the deviant.

“Sup, loser,” she remarks, a half smirk tugging at her lips as she moves past him, setting her hamper on top of one of the washers.

There’s a silence, and her eyes glance back to him, catching his dopey expression as he stares at her. He coughs, scratching the back of his neck, averting his gaze and busying himself with his dirty clothes.

They continue in a comfortable silence, spouting the occasional tidbit of small talk here and there. Honestly, if it weren’t for the same blood and dirt on the same t-shirt she might have forgotten that teensy little problem she had to investigate.

He seems to be trying to block her view from the shirt as he loads it into the washer, hastily chucking it into the chamber.

“You know, hydrogen peroxide’ll get that right out,” Michelle states matter-of-factly, not looking up from her own basket.

Peter freezes, head whipping toward her, eyes wide in a state of both shock and fear. “Huh?!”

“Hydrogen peroxide. The blood. On your shirt,” she replies, shrugging slightly as if it’s obvious. “Put it on there until it bubbles and then you scrub it out. Don’t just wash it.”

He stands ramrod straight, his face stricken with nerves, scrambling slightly, slamming the washing machine door closed in an instant. “What are you— What are you talking about?”

Michelle fights back an eyeroll. “Okay, I’m not dumb. And I’m not blind,” she folds her arms across her chest, fixing him with a skeptical glare. “How’d it happen?”

There’s a weird silence as he tries to respond, mouth opening and closing, but no sound coming out. He clears his throat, eyes trying to focus on anything but her in the room. “I… uh—I fell… down… the… stairs. Yeah,” he lets out a sharp exhale, resting his hands on his hips, nodding slowly. “The stairs. I’m clumsy.”

“So,” Michelle muses. “You fell down the stairs…”

Peter nods again. “Clumsy ol’ me.”

“Every week?”

He sputters, an awkward hand coming up to scratch the back of his neck. “Well, it sounds weird when you— when you put it like that…”

“Uh-huh,” her tone is still skeptical, but she feels the slightest bit of humor bubbling up inside of her. She honestly doesn’t know where that whole killer thing came from, because honestly, this kid doesn’t seem like he’d be able to hurt a fly a be able to live with himself. So far, the whole superhero thing might be more likely. She might as well just ask, though, just to get under his skin. “So, are you like a serial killer or something?”

The ghostly shade of white his face turns is a little funny, but she doesn’t crack a smile. He blanches, immediately shaking his head as fast as he can. “Oh, God. No! No! I’m not!! I swear!”

“Hmmmm bit defensive?”

“No! Oh my God—” He covers his head in his hands, groaning. “It’s not that at all!”

“Then what is it?”

“…. Fight club?”

Honestly, she’s impressed that he’s trying this hard to hide whatever the hell it is that he’s hiding. But she doesn’t say anything, smiling quietly to herself as he fumbles with the rest of his clothes.

She doesn’t know if he’ll ever tell her; they aren’t close friends or anything.

She also doesn’t even know if he needs to.

Because she can see the red and blue peeking out from the bundle of clothes.

Is that thing even machine washable?

And she still doesn’t say anything.

“Hey, uh, I know this is kinda weird now, considering this conversation, but uh—” He breaks the silence, changing the subject not-so-smoothly, voice still tinted with nerves.

She perks up internally, careful to remain visibly impassive though, keeping her cool. “Hmm?”

“Do you uh— maybe wanna see a movie, or… grab dinner sometime?”

If she were being honest, Michelle’s never really been more excited about something in her life. But again, she can’t let that show, even as she tries to fight the way the corner of her lip twitches ever so slightly. “I don’t know,” she starts, shrugging slightly, her gaze just meeting his, eyes narrowing. “Do you promise not to murder me?”

The utter shock and horror on his face is enough to crack her stony exterior, and she snorts bringing a hand up to cover her mouth.

But she figures she should maybe go easy on him, even if that little exasperated sigh he lets out is the teensiest bit endearing.

“I’m kidding,” she promises, unable to help herself.

He rolls his eyes playfully, though he still seems frazzled.

Suddenly finding herself feeling the slightest bit shy, she brings her gaze up to his. “I’d love to,” she finally answers, lips pressing together in a smile.

“Awesome,” he breathes out, eyes wide with quiet excitement. “Cool cool cool!”

It’s then that she steps closer to him, though still maintains a reasonable distance. “Besides,” she starts, eyeing him carefully, arms folded across her chest. “You can tell me all about this ‘fight club’ you’re in.”

[bluey-fan]

I made a short video showcasing the preview footage from 2017 for Bluey’s episode “The Weekend” along with the final footage that was actually aired.

I’d like to go over all the differences between pre-release Bluey and the final release I noticed! Check out the differences by clicking the read-more link if you’re curious, and if you spotted anything I didn’t, let me know, I’ll edit my post.

Backgrounds are VERY different, and every character except for Bluey looks different than their final design. There are some minor differences, but for the most part I’m only going to be talking about things that I feel were intentional rather than accidental, i.e. in one shot Bingo is missing shadows on her legs. Let’s talk about the intro first.

Intro

The intro is completely different from the final. It shows early Mackenzie, Rusty, and Bluey dancing. They appear pretty close to their final versions design-wise, just with darker colors! They also use older models than compared to the preview itself. The older models appear more rectangular, especially on the muzzle, and the ears are different. Also, the WAFF WAFF at the end sounds like Bingo’s WAFF WAFF in The Claw, it could be different though. Also, the title card doesn’t have a character saying “This episode of Bluey is called... [episode title]”.

Characters

A few overall differences apply to most or all of the characters:

Characters don’t have any eyelids in the preview

(perhaps a coincidence, the final airing of this episode also doesn’t have it either during this segment) Character eyes don’t do the squash-and-stretch effect when moving fast

Bluey

Bluey didn’t get any changes from what I can see! Good for her.

Bingo

Bingo got some changes! Her entire model is a little bit different now, probably to emphasize the fact that she’s younger than Bluey.

Bingo also has 4 spots on her back instead of one and a lack of darker orange on the back of her head.

Also, funny enough, she is missing a spot on her tail in the preview and also in the final The Weekend episode itself, all scenes. She does have the singular dark orange spot on her back now, though, so this was probably an oversight. She has a spot on her tail in all other episodes (I checked!) This means The Weekend was probably the first episode made, with all the others following. Good to know! It does explain some scenes where the models seem a little different.

Bandit

Bandit’s got the most obvious difference out of everyone: half of his head is blue instead of the black. Makes him look so much younger! He’s also missing the yellow on his belly, and the stubble on his mouth (or the video quality is too low and I couldn’t notice the stubble). I’m surprised he ever didn’t have the black “mask” considering his name is Bandit! It’s unlikely the characters ever had different names, considering how long ago this dialogue was recorded.

Chilli

Chilli is missing half of the brown on her face, but other than that, I don’t notice anything different. She definitely looks younger like this. Her model’s also flipped; in the final, when she’s facing right, three of her back spots are visible, and when she’s facing left, two are visible. Here in the preview it’s the other way around.

Backgrounds

Now that we’ve gone over characters, let’s check out all the different backgrounds! They’re ALL different. I won’t go through describing all the changes, but overall, all the changes seem to be for the better. The backgrounds in the final are much more appealing and detailed, in my opinion.

One thing: the cricket player appears to be a recolored Bandit. In the final release, they still use the same model. He lacks the eyelids and everything. Kinda interesting!

Music and Sound

Bluey is known for its great music, which the preview just happens to be completely missing, other than the intro and the very first bit of the preview. It feels weirdly empty. Music accompanies tons of stuff in Bluey, lots of musical cues for the simplest actions, and really sets the mood and tone of the show. I’m not sure if the show was ever meant to not have music, but I’m sure glad it does now! It’s one of my favorite parts of Bluey. Also, the sound effects appear to the same.

Dialogue

First of all, Chilli has a completely different line than what she said in the final episode. I can’t quite make out what she says though, feel free to let me know if you can tell what she says. I wonder if that’s part of why they changed it?

The dialogue from the TV is also completely different.

Another thing is that the dialogue in the preview is put closer together. In the final, there’s clear pauses between a lot of lines of dialogue, while in the preview they’re played sometimes even on top of eachother.

Conclusion

And that’s everything I could find. Lots of interesting stuff. I wonder if The Weekend was the first episode produced? That would make the production order I’ve seen floating around inaccurate. Hopefully one day we’ll find out! Thanks for reading.

[akshayventes]

Syndicating Content like a Pro: Effective Best Practices

Introduction

In the digital age, where content is king, syndication has emerged as a powerful strategy for expanding the reach and impact of your content. Syndication involves republishing your existing content on third-party platforms, such as other websites, blogs, or social media channels. This practice allows you to tap into new audiences, enhance your brand visibility, and drive traffic back to your original content. However, syndication requires careful planning and execution to ensure that you reap its benefits fully. In this blog post, we'll explore effective best practices for syndicating content like a pro.

Choose the Right Platforms

Not all platforms are created equal. It's essential to identify the platforms that align with your target audience and goals. Research platforms that have a substantial and engaged audience interested in your niche. Look for platforms that allow you to include backlinks to your original content, driving traffic and boosting SEO. Guest blogging on reputable websites, contributing to industry-specific forums, or partnering with relevant influencers are excellent ways to get started.

Repurpose and Customize Content

Syndicating doesn't mean duplicating content across platforms. Repurpose your content to suit the platform's audience and guidelines. Tailor headlines, intros, and even visuals to match the tone and style of the hosting site while maintaining your brand's voice. By providing unique value on each platform, you'll avoid duplicate content issues and maximize the engagement potential of each piece.

Prioritize High-Quality Content

Only syndicate your best-performing, high-quality content. Remember, you're showcasing your expertise and brand to a new audience. If your content doesn't meet the hosting site's standards or doesn't offer value to readers, it can harm your reputation. Make sure your content is well-researched, engaging, and relevant to the audience you're targeting.

Craft Compelling Bios and Introductions

Introduce yourself effectively to the new audience. Write a captivating author bio that highlights your expertise and links back to your website or social media profiles. Craft compelling introductions for your syndicated articles to grab readers' attention and encourage them to read further. The initial impression you create can impact whether readers will explore more of your content.

Optimize for SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) plays a crucial role in syndication success. Ensure that your syndicated content includes relevant keywords, meta descriptions, and properly formatted headers. Incorporate backlinks to your original content, helping search engines recognize your content's authority and directing readers back to your website.

Monitor Engagement and Respond Promptly

Stay engaged with the new audience on the hosting platform. Monitor comments, answer questions, and participate in discussions sparked by your syndicated content. This interaction not only builds your credibility but also encourages readers to explore more of your content.

Respect Duplicate Content Guidelines

While syndication is about sharing content, it's important to be mindful of duplicate content guidelines. Some platforms may have rules against republishing content that's already available elsewhere. If syndication is a significant part of your content strategy, consider using canonical tags to indicate the original source of the content and avoid potential SEO issues.

Build Relationships with Platform Owners

Forge relationships with the owners or moderators of the platforms where you syndicate your content. Building a positive rapport can open doors for more syndication opportunities, guest posting invitations, and collaborations in the future.

Conclusion

Syndicating content can be a game-changer for expanding your brand's reach and influence. By selecting the right platforms, customizing your content, maintaining quality, optimizing for SEO, and engaging with the audience, you can effectively leverage the power of syndication. Remember that successful syndication isn't just about spreading your content—it's about providing value, building credibility, and establishing your brand as a trusted authority in your industry.

Akshay Narale

Sr.Digital Marketink Associate

akshayventes@gmail.com

www.ventesb2b.com/ New York, USA

[artificialqueens]

In a summer haze - part 1 (branjie) - i-n-o-n

Author’s note

Someone requested branjie camping, so I brought them to summer camp. Constructive criticism very welcome.

This will be the first part, if people want to read more. Let me know.

——————————

It’s really just babysitting.

That’s what Brooke tells herself as she mails her application for the summer counselor job, convincing herself that the only real difference is the amount of kids you’re required to watch. She conveniently neglects to realize the fact that babysitting usually consists of a few hours of letting a child watch TV, while summer camp is eight weeks of 24/7 alertness.

The camp is for girls aged ten through sixteen, and she desperately hopes to get the ten year olds. The older girls have more likely than not been corrupted by the drama of middle school, and will be worried about image and gossip - things that Brooke have moved past long ago, and doesn’t really wish to relive.

When she arrives at the camp she is handed a list by a short, black haired woman with an obscenely large pair of headlights and a look on her face that makes Brooke wonder if she’d just swallowed an entire packet of Warheads. There’s a tall, stoic woman by her side, with large pageant hair that seems highly impractical in their primitive surroundings.

The black haired woman introduces herself as Michelle, and her tone is as sharp as Brooke had assumed it would be upon first glance. She explains how the nine names on the list are the names of the girls that’ll be in Brooke’s cabin, and Brooke’s heart falls as Michelle tells her that they’re all either fifteen or sixteen. Great.

Relief is quick to follow though, as Michelle tells her that they’ve paired all the newbies with a veteran counselor, so she won’t be dealing with it on her own.

Brooke’s veteran is Shuga Martinez; a latin girl with big hair and a perpetual smirk. She’s here for her third summer, although Brooke wouldn’t necessarily have pegged her for a career camp counselor, so to speak. She throws her bags unceremoniously on one of the two twin bunks, eyeing Brooke as she does so. “Ever done this before, Blondie?”

“What?” Brooke is broken from her spell, setting her own bag carefully on her bed. “Oh, not camp, no. But I babysit a little bit…”

“So, no,” she smirks. Or, well, she strengthens her existing smirk. “This should be fun.”

She must sense the way Brooke is starting to shake in her chelsea boots - which she realizes now was a dumb choice of shoewear - because she quickly turns her smirk into a reassuring smile.

“Relax,” she says, placing a hand on Brooke’s shoulder. “I never had any issues I couldn’t solve in a minute. We work together, and we got this.”

“Yeah?” Brooke hates seeming this timid, but she’s coming to the conclusion that she’s gotten herself into waters that she doesn’t know how to navigate.

“Of course, hun,” the nickname spills from Shuga’s lips with ease. “Besides, teenage girls ain’t that bad in the summer.”

——————————

The first morning is spent with the counselors scattered around the gym, which doubles as an auditorium. They’re waiting for either of the camp directors to come and host the intro meeting, even though Brooke can already tell that it’ll probably be Michelle. The actual owner of the camp, mother Ru is what the others call her, seems to be much too busy to actually get her hands dirty, or to get too involved.

Shuga abandons her as soon as they get inside, calling enthusiastic greetings to the other returning counselors. Brooke leans on the edge of the stage, revelling in the relative silence around her. Shuga is a talker, she’s found out, and she hasn’t had a proper chance to slow down and take things in on her own.

Brooke grabs a camp brochure from the box she’s sat next to and flips through it. She takes in the images of campers jumping into the lake, building rafts, playing soccer. It’s as idyllic as what she’d actually seen of the grounds so far, and although she is beyond terrified for the campers to arrive, she finds herself excited to explore all of the activities.

There’s a box of craft supplies in the middle of the stage, and Brooke looks around to see that the majority of the counselors are working on cabin decorations. She grabs a stack of colorful construction paper, a scissor and a few sharpies and settles on the floor. From the pocket of her shorts she digs out the crumbled list of names, and starts writing the girls’ names in big, swooping letters. If nothing else, she can hang it by their bunks to help her remember who’s who.

Her partner doesn’t seem inclined towards decorating - at least not at the moment. She’s sitting on the floor next to an equally smirky girl. Surprisingly, Brooke finds herself staring. The girl is tiny, with wavy, brown hair and a tattoo smattered across her sternum that makes Brooke wonder about the administration’s hiring conditions. There’s an easy, familiar rhythm between her and Shuga that suggests she’s a returning counselor too.

Shuga says something that cracks the other girl up, and Brooke feels an odd sweep of obscure jealousy.

She lets her eyes linger for a moment, hoping Shuga will somehow catch her eye and wave her over to make introductions. It never happens, so Brooke returns her attention to her crafting. She’ll meet everyone later, she figures. It’ll be fine.

Clever and precise as she is, she gives each name card a theme that matches the first letter of each girl’s name, and her perfectionism has her losing herself in the task. When she finally looks up, the girl with the tattoo is standing there and looking over her shoulder, grinning with one side of her mouth. She looks endlessly amused, and Brooke curses her fair skin as she blushes.

“You’re real thorough, huh?” the girl speaks, and her voice is like gravel and tar, taking Brooke by complete surprise. “Good thing you’re stuck with Shuga, she won’t make as much fun of you as the rest of us.”

“I, uh-”

The girl ignores her weak attempt at a sentence, thumbing through the stack of name cards before her with a mock critical eye.

“Whatchu gonna do if this Brooke Lynn bitch is real scared of bumblebees though?” she asks, holding forward one of the cards, delicately dotted with a few tiny bumblebees.

“She’s not.” Brooke sneers, grabbing at the cards. The girl just moves them further away from her reach, flipping to the next.

“What if Caitlyn don’t like cats? She could be allergic or some shit.” she continues, and Brooke rolls her eyes playfully. “Or what if Sarah-”

“If Sarah doesn’t like sunshine, she’s coming to the wrong place,” Brooke bites back, and the other girl’s brows go flying upwards at the sudden retaliation. She looks pleased above all else.

“You win that one, girl,” she admits, before eyeing Brooke with a judging lilt of the head. “But really, mami, trees? Why not turtles or tigers-”

“We’re surrounded by trees, I felt inspired.”

“-tequila?”

In one sweep motion, Brooke snatches the papers from her, ducking her head in a vain attempt to hide her stupid, treacherous smile.

When she looks back up, the girl is still grinning at her with keen fascination, hands folded behind her back.

“I’m Vanessa,” she says, her first words that don’t hold an ounce of teasing to them. “Most folks call me Vanjie, though.”

“Nice to meet you, Vanessa,” Brooke says, feeling the syllables of Vanessa’s name scratch at her throat before she speaks them. “I’m Brooke Lynn.”

She’s suddenly mindful that the bumblebee card has landed on the top of the stack. Vanessa’s eyes grow wide as she follows the direction of Brooke’s own stare.

“Oh,” she says, chuckling. “And you ain’t afraid of bumblebees.”

“Indeed I’m not,” Brooke is now the one smirking, and she finally feels like she has the upperhand in this conversation.

“You make one for Shuga too?” Vanessa asks, nodding in Shuga’s direction as she sits on the floor alongside the other counselors. “Cause she won’t tell you, but she’d appreciate the shit outta that.”

“I didn’t,” Brooke suddenly realizes, flicking through the papers. “You want to help me make one?”

“I ain’t no good with arts and crafts,” she admits, although she does sit down across from Brooke. “I fudge off of the pretty girls with the good hands, ya dig?”

Brooke laughs and Vanessa looks smug about it, but really Brooke is stuck on the pretty. Although she has a lingering feeling that she’s not the first girl Vanessa has said that to, she finds that she doesn’t really care.

Michelle chooses that moment to finally make her appearance, sauntering in from the left side of the stage with a clipboard in her hands. Her nails make an insufferable clicking noise as she taps her fingertips against the cardboard. She orders everyone off stage, even though it really only is Vanessa and Brooke, and they file into three rows of folding chairs.

As she berates them and warns them that parents could start arriving within the hour, Vanessa looks Brooke’s way and rolls her eyes exaggeratedly. As if Michelle had been the one kept in waiting.

——————————

On the small porch of their cabin, Shuga and Brooke await their campers, giving Brooke her very first chance to see everyone else’s cabin matchups. Visible from their porch is the cabins of the girls she’d managed to meet briefly following Michelle’s “pep talk.”

There’s Silky and Yvie, whom she’s been informed are more rivals than anything else. Apparently there’s a bet going around about who’ll request a switch of cabin firs. Then there’s Scarlet and Ariel, Mercedes and Soju, and Ra’Jah and Honey.

The cabin neighboring their own was occupied by Plastique and Nina, two girls that Brooke had immediately hit it off with. Nina looked much older than the others, towering over even Brooke who was a considerably tall girl to start with.

Most notably though, if you ask Brooke, was the cabin across the small stretch of grass from their own. It was Vanessa and A’keria’s, and between Vanessa’s tattoos and A’keria’s staff shirt that was tucked into a pair of high waisted, cut off shorts, paired with huge gold earrings: they were shaping up to be the cool cabin.

Brooke starts to feel the nerves the second the first kid appears on the lawn, carrying a tiny little suitcase and with her blonde hair in an adorable set of pig tails. Michelle directs her towards Nina and Plastique’s cabin - the lucky bastards got the ten year olds.

More kids appear, and as she thinks she’s about to be swept into chaos, she catches Vanessa looking straight at her.

“Get ready,” the girl shouts. “We only just getting started!”

And she’s right.

Once it starts, everything moves fast.

——————————

Every single Sunday, including their very first night, the kids line up to sign up for activities to do throughout the week. They have to do at least six a day, and Brooke is pretty sure it’s mainly meant to tire them out so there’s no hassle come bedtime.

The counselors receive their assignments on Sundays too, and much like the kids they rotate through activities, taking turn monitoring them in groups of two or three. They circle through the girls that way, instead of merely getting to know those that live in their cabins.

Brooke is relieved to find out, on that very first night, that to fifteen and sixteen year olds, she is the epitome of knowledge and experience. They ask her about boys, mainly, and she shoots Shuga a knowing look. The other girl immediately takes over, not seeming surprised in the least when Brooke tells her she’s gay as they’re lying in their bunks later.

Within the first week, Brooke gets to do every outdoor activity her mother had always warned her against - she hikes, kayaks, swims in the lake although it’s riddled with tiny fish and possibly leeches. She plays dodgeball and soccer and ultimate frisbee, and tie-dyes a T-shirt in the colors of the rainbow.

They eat three meals a day in the main hall, she and Shuga at the heads of a wooden table with their girls on either side, talking over each other and asking questions so often that Brooke rarely gets to finish an entire meal.

Once a week, dinner turns into a special occasion. The camp cook, Ross, cooks on the massive grills by the lakeside, and the girls sit on picnic blankets and tend to stay there all night.

That is, until they move to the campfire.

The campfire is lit every single night, with no exceptions. The counselors take turns lighting it, and Brooke thanks the lord she had the mind to stay with the girl scouts for more than just a week. It saves her from complete embarrassment. It does help her self-esteem to see the ever confident Vanessa try to constrain a string of swears as her matches somehow get wet, and the lighter runs out of gas.

Around the fire, songs are sung and ghost stories are told. They roast s’mores and pass around bags of chips and juicepacks. Brooke watches the girls sing and giggle, and regrets never going to camp herself.

Within days, the counselors start to accumulate an excessive amount of handcrafted jewelry, and cabin pride blooms furiously. Handshakes are invented, chants are written down, and Plastique and Nina’s cabin comes up with a rap that Brooke can only describe as suburbian.

By day three, the girls in Vanessa and A’keria’s cabin are wearing hoop earrings and red lipstick. Michelle surprisingly doesn’t tell them to quit it, but merely looks on disapprovingly. That doesn’t make anyone stop.

Yvie, who Brooke quite frankly hadn’t trusted around children at first glance, has a ten year old permanently stuck to her hip, even though she’s not even assigned to her cabin.

Brooke and Shuga have established personas that the girls find hilarious. Brooke plays he clueless newbie, and Shuga yells at her morning and night that she needs to clean her shit up so she can find her reading glasses. They call her nana, and the nickname is soon used by everyone at the camp.

She loves their kids, every single one. Even though Caitlyn literally never stops babbling on about her stupid dog. She loves how pleased they look as they present her with beaded bracelets and the way they engage her in their own elaborate handshake every time they see her. She doesn’t even mind how long it takes them to get ready in the morning as they fight at the mirrors, applying makeup that they’ll sweat off within the hour.

Camp life is structured around set routines, and the counselors have their own too. Every night, Shuga and Brooke sit on the floor between their beds and play Connect Four or Tic-tac-toe, until the giggles on the other side of the wall fade.

Then they head outside.

All of the counselors gather outside on the large stretch of grass that connects their cabins. They lounge in the dewy grass, passing around bottles of wine or liquor. These hours are usually Brooke’s very favorite, as the summer heat turns from aggressive to pleasant, and the grounds grow quiet. They exchange stories of what their campers have said, and things they’ve experienced at home.

Most times, when someone makes a joke, Brooke catches herself looking at Vanessa, no matter where she is in the circle. It shouldn’t make sense, that she is the one that Brooke gravitates to.

But then again, whenever Brooke looks her way, Vanessa seems to be staring right back at her.

She likes all of the girls, although she thinks Ra’Jah is too sensitive, and Silky is too loud. She’s forging genuine friendships with every passing day. Still, Vanessa is the one she finds herself looking for in a crowd. She’s who she wants to connect with, as if she is being guided to her by some divine light or force. If you believe in that kind of crap.

No matter where they are, Vanessa always shines the brightest.

So why shouldn’t Brooke look at her? Seeing as she makes everyone else blur around the edges.

Seeing as she’s Vanessa.