#listen. I am just. tired

[gayjaytodd]

the reality of existing as a trans person in 2024 is that I routinely have to tell cisgender people that 'no, of course you're still allowed to love harry potter, you can absolutely choose to still support jkr financially bc you just love harry potter so much, I get it, it's totally fine, I Absolve You Of The Sin Of Transphobia' like, for fuck's sake, just admit that trans people and people of colour matter less to you than a book series from your childhood bc you are not personally affected by transphobia and racism and stop making it my goddamn problem

[tiresomespaceplant]

the speed that you moved, the screech of the car, the creature still moving, that slowed in your arms // the fear in its eyes, gone out in an instant, your tear caught the light, the earth from a distance

alt coloring and original sketch below!

[shotmrmiller]

forcing your presence onto simon late at night because insomnia and a cup of tea always helps, or so they say, but you were taught better than to not offer others some but now the steaming cup is just sitting on the table to cool while you carefully sip on yours.

he doesn't look at it, you, nothing. keeps his eyes fixed on whatever he's doing, maybe cleaning his gun or something. fine. what matters is that you did your part.

and it eventually becomes routine. every night, like clockwork, he's darkening a corner in the coffee room and you've got a kettle warming. and every night, he ignores everything in his peripheral.

until he doesn't. it starts slow. you're already headed for the door, hand covering your yawn when he picks up the mug and takes a sniff. then, it's the tiniest sip, as if it's got teeth. come morning, the mug you used and his are clean, drying on a dish mat.

the following night, he waits for you to put it on the table before grabbing it. "you've a shit hand," he mutters. "left to steep too long. more bitter than the cigars price smokes."

okay. bastard. the next pot is too bland. calls it dog water. but he drinks all of it just the same. little to no sugar, splash of milk. the stare he leveled your way when he added milk could've destroyed the block.

"secrets safe with me, lieutenant. swear it."

unless he's tearing your ego into tatters with his scathing tea critique, he says nothing else. listens well enough, though. maybe. his eyes look blank most of the time. but he lets you ramble without interruption about nonsensical stuff; your day, your job, soap being the usual nuisance.

it's nice.

and then you fall ill. nothing water and cocooning yourself with your bedsheets for a day or three can't fix.

but then there's a very violent knocking on your door, hard enough to rattle it in its hinges, flaring the already painful throbbing that sits behind your eyes. no matter how hard you try to tell them to piss off, they don't.

"open the door."

now you've got a 6'2+ man barreling into your bedroom, turning his unnerving gaze your way. his eyes flick to your runny nose, chapped lips and wrinkled sleeping clothes.

"you're sick." brilliant observation. truly a man worth his sniper position.

"yes. i'm quite-" your words come to settle behind your clenched teeth as you watch him dig into his front pockets and pull out crinkled tea bags. and open your cabinets because now you're the visitor and he the (g)host.

you'd rather drink battery acid than another one of his brews. it made your eyes prick with tears, burned as it went down, warmed your chest. it was lukewarm when you drank it.

(he clears up a space on your foot table, and by clear up i mean use an arm to shove everything off the edge so he can continue to clean his weapons. has your couch always been that small?)

[itsybitsybatsyspider]

Eepy Parker

[starcurtain]

I wish everyone collectively understood aventurine’s character like you…things would be so much easier! I genuinely don’t understand how people keep getting his motivations wrong??? Could it be because some of the most popular Aven fanfics were written prior to his release? That could have contributed to some of the takes we tend to see about him…thoughts?

I struggled all day to come up with a concise way to answer this and couldn't think of one, so here, have a long-winded ramble:

I don't think early fic writers have much impact in the situation with Aventurine's character now, since most people can look at when a story was posted and go "Oh, this was before we had ____ information."

I think that Aventurine's problem is being a male character in a gacha game. Gacha game characters are designed to sell. Hoyo can sell female characters very, very easily. Give her huge tits and a visible underwear strap and you're good to go. I love all my guy friends, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it: straight men are not the hardest audience to please. Hit a particular fetish (feet, spandex, dommy mommy), and you're gucci.

Nah, we all know why Jade's trailer is Like That.™

Male characters in gacha are harder to sell because women as consumers are a little harder to predict. Does every woman want a tall, ripped hunk? Shit, no, small cute boyish models like Aventurine are selling better now? Why?! Would a bad boy be more popular than a nice guy??? It's harder to account for women's tastes, especially because they are often (a little) less visually-oriented.

Hoyo is good at what they do though, and they've figured out that male characters sell very well when they possess at least one of two specific traits:

Endearing vulnerability/helplessness

Gay ship tease

Give a character both, like Aventurine? They might as well be printing money.

That sound you hear is Hoyo's stock prices rising.

So, from the very beginning, Hoyo is incentivized to create a character that appeals to people, a character people will want to crack their wallets open for. And they achieved this, first and foremost, by giving Aventurine traits that female players (in particular, but men too), find especially appealing: emotional and physical vulnerability.

We see Aventurine's pain. We sympathize with his grief. We identify with his struggle to make meaning of his difficult life. He's our woobie, blorbo, babygirl, whatever the hell they're calling it now.

He can't hide his suffering anymore. He's on the very edge. He's a dude in distress. He's surrounded by enemies! He misses his mama! He's been betrayed! No one understands him like you do, dear player!

The ultimate feeling evoked is: He needs to be saved.

When people talk about male power fantasies, I think they forget that women can experience them too, and "Emotionally vulnerable man that only I (or my favorite character) can fix" is actually a female power fantasy.

And from there it's really easy, right: the people who shell out cash to buy warps for their harmed-husbando feel like they've saved him; the people who are into mlm ships look for the nearest hot dude to be the savior Ratio was waiting for his time lol.

Morally and intellectually, this type of deep-down-golden-hearted, emotionally-wounded male character is very easy to digest. There is nothing to dislike about this type of character or role in the story: this character is a good guy who has just gone through so many terrible situations, whose victim status makes him endearing, and whose lack of agency means that any of the questionable or downright bad things he does are always the result of someone else forcing his hand, and never something he would have chosen himself.

His motivations are always clear and consistent: get free, heal, and live happily ever after.

Insert the Wreck-It Ralph meme: "Do people assume all your problems got solved when a big strong man showed up?" But to be fair, a big strong man did kind of solve Aventurine's problem, so--

Anyway, it's simple. It's straightforward. Morally, it's pretty cut and dry, black and white: Aventurine is our hero, which means everyone dictating the course of his miserable life is evil.

Hoyo is not remotely discouraging people from literally buying into this emotional appeal.

And trust me, I get it. I'll be the first to admit that hurt-comfort is its own entire genre in fandom because it is so appealing. People eat up Aventurine's tragic backstory like candy! The idea of watching a character go through hell at the hands of bad guys just to finally find a happy end is like the definition of everyone's favorite story.

In fact... people love Aventurine's suffering so much, they have invented whole new ways for him to suffer that aren't even in the game.

This is where we get all the headcanons that Aventurine was a sex slave, every single person he meets hates him because of his race, the Stonehearts are executioners holding knives to his throat, Jade enslaved him to the IPC with a lifelong contract, his material possessions belong to the company, the IPC is forcing him to take only the most dangerous missions where he is being required by his evil jailers to continually put his life on the line... You name it and I promise you, I can find a fanfic where Aventurine suffers from it. 😂

Bro can't even sleep in on his day off; life is so hard for this man.

Being serious: if the game is telling us that Aventurine is a victim... Why not make him the perfect victim?

Why not envision an Aventurine with no freedom, who bears no responsibility for any of the horrible situations he is in or any of the dubious things he does?

It's so natural to like that version of Aventurine, so appealing to see a totally powerless underdog use his own wits and charms to claw his way up to freedom. Or, if you're the kind who really relishes angst: It's even appealing to see Aventurine lose more. To delight in fics where he loses his wealth, where the IPC punishes him for past crimes while he's powerless to stop them... (I assure you, this is many people's cup of tea and the fanfics prove it!)

Ultimately, there's nothing wrong with liking characters who are exactly this straightforward! It's completely fine to embrace characters that are intentionally written to be morally above-board, whose primary role in the story is to generate angst by being a good person who suffers, or those characters who never show unlikable traits, bad decisions, or contradictory actions.

The problem is that that's just not who the game is telling us Aventurine is.

Hoyo may be capitalizing off people who love to envision poor Aventurine still living his life as a slave... But the game also needs to tell a complicated enough story overall to appeal to people who don't care about this specific husbando--Aventurine's role in the actual game's plot has to be interesting enough for almost everyone to appreciate it, not just Aventurine's simp squad. (Don't get mad, I'm in the simp squad with you.)

So his character doesn't stop at just being a pure-hearted victim who is still waiting to be saved.

Aventurine is not that easy to label, and I think the biggest struggle in this character's fandom right now is between people who prefer the even-more-angsty, still-a-slave Aventurine versus people who want a morally grey, self-destructive character instead.

To me personally, while I greatly understand the appeal of fanon!Aventurine and the joy of a really juicy angst fic where characters lose it all, I think that missing out on the depth that canon is suggesting would be a real loss on the fandom's part.

The character motivations that Aventurine shows in the game are complicated. They cancel each other out. They're basically self-harm! He makes almost every situation he's in worse for himself--on purpose.

He is a good person, but also a person who has done unspeakable things. He does have morals, but he's not above allowing those who don't have them to use him to their advantage.

He's both the victim and the victor. He's his own worst enemy. He's a lost little boy who's been making terrible decisions for himself since he was like eight years old, and a grown ass man who is barely managing to fake his way through an existence that destiny is not letting him quit.

This kind of character is a lot harder to embrace. He's done things that most people would find appalling--like willingly joining up with the organization that let his entire race be massacred. He's invented a whole new peacock persona to frivolously flaunt riches he doesn't even care about (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 101). He actively plays into racist stereotypes about his people to manipulate others through their preconceived expectations. He's made a mockery of his mother's and sister's hopes and dreams by endlessly trying to throw his own life away.

He has flaws! He bet everything he had on a ploy without doing his homework to find out if the people he was risking his life for were even still around. (Maybe he already knew, and couldn't bear to admit it, even to himself.) He's intentionally off-putting and obnoxious to everyone he meets (Poison Dart Frog Self-Defense 102). He terrifies everyone who gets close to him by (seemingly) carelessly throwing himself into the jaws of death without the slightest provocation.

He knowingly allows the IPC to exploit his power and talents for profit. Did everyone forget that his role in the Strategic Investment Department is asset liquidation?! Like, his actual day-to-day job is ruining people's lives. Canonically, Aventurine kills people when his deals go bad.

His motivations change off-screen in two lines of story text. We're told in one line that his biggest reason for joining the IPC was to make money to save the Avgin, then in the next line we find out that's impossible. And... then what? What motivations does he even have now? The whole point of his character arc from 2.0-2.1 is that he was on the edge of giving in to utter despair and nihilism because he couldn't even perceive a single reason to stay alive. He has no purpose in life before Penacony, and that didn't start with the Stonehearts at all??

People keep saying Aventurine was held in the IPC by golden handcuffs, but how do you tie down someone for whom profit is meaningless? What can you offer to a man whose only desire is to bring back something already lost forever? How do you imprison someone whose only definition of freedom is, canonically, death?

Working for the Stonehearts is obviously not healthy. But that's why Aventurine was doing it--because taking dangerous missions allowed him to put himself at risk. The job that he originally pursued hoping to save his people became a direct means to self-harm, and the IPC's only real role in that was just happily profiting off the results.

The journal entries for Aventurine's quests are there deliberately to tell the player what is on his mind, and none of it has to do with escaping from his job:

Like... Work is the least of this man's problems.

At really the risk of rambling on too long now, he's also just a massive walking contradiction:

Aventurine is among the most explicitly religious characters in the game, yet he's one of the only people in the entire game that we have ever seen actively question his people's aeon.

You might be tempted to think Aventurine's risky gambles with his life as an adult are a result of giving up after finding out about the Avgin massacre... Butttt no, Hoyo makes sure to tell us that even at knee-high in the Sigonian desert, Kakavasha was already willing to risk himself in a fight to the death against monsters because even back then he found his own life to have less value than a single memento.

He's the "chosen one" who will lead his people to prosperity... except they're all dead.

He's explicitly suicidal... andddd also a pathstrider of Preservation.

He wants to die... He doesn't want to die. He wants to make it end, yet goes to staggering lengths to continually survive. (Every plan risks his life on purpose--but every plan's win condition is also to live.) He life is the chip tossed down, but his hand is trembling beneath the table. When faced with an otherwise unsurvivable situation, Aventurine literally became a winner of the Hunger Games. He beat other innocent people to death with his own chain-bound hands just to come out alive.

He knows the IPC failed the Avgin and left them to die... and he still willingly sought out a position of power in their organization. Maybe he really is after revenge... but maybe not.

He starts his journey in the IPC with a truly noble goal in mind: to help his people using his newfound wealth and power. He's a good guy who did genuinely want to save the Avgin and repay all those who helped him. But once it became clear he was too late, once it was obvious he would have no use at all for that monetary wealth and power he risked his life to get... What did he do with it? Unlike Jade, we don't see him over here donating to orphanages. (I'm not that heartless; I'm sure he does actually do a lot of good things with his money on the side, but the point is that the game does not show us that--it shows us, over and over again, Aventurine putting on a wasteful, over-indulgent persona toward wealth. We've supposed to feel how meaningless money is to him, how meaningless everything is becoming to him.)

He outright refuses to use underhanded tactics or to cheat at gambles, which is meant to show us that's he's more morally upright than his coworkers. There's an entire exchange where he says that he'll never stoop to using manipulation the way Opal does. But... he doesn't have any issue fulfilling Opal's exact agenda. He was never remotely morally conflicted about denying the Penaconians their freedom by dragging Penacony back under IPC control.

He's willing to risk his own life, which is one thing--but he's also willing to risk other people's well-being. Topaz accuses him of constantly egging their clients on into dangerous situations; we've actively seen him shove a gun into Ratio's hands and pull the trigger with no care for how Ratio would feel about that on their very first meeting... Dragging the Astral Express crew into the entire Penacony plan in the first place was exceedingly dangerous...

To me, I just think it's vital to understand his character through the lens of these contradictions because they demonstrate the extreme polarity of Aventurine's life: from rags to riches, from powerless to empowered by multiple aeons, from willing to kill to survive to killing himself... He has quite literally lived a life of "all or nothing," and while he is the victim of many terrible situations out of his control, his arc as a character involves facing the truth of himself and the future his own actions are hurtling him toward.

Frankly, the Aventurine that canon is suggesting is a little annoying. You want to grab him by the shoulders, shake him, and say "Why are you like this?!" And he won't even have an answer for you, because he doesn't even know why he's still alive.

In the end, to me, this is so, so much more interesting. I can read an endless supply of hurt-comfort fics where Aventurine escapes the evil IPC and Ratio is there to fill the void in his life with the power of love and catcakes and be a perfectly happy clam online, but I want canon to continue to serve us this incredible mess of a man who constantly takes one step forward and two steps back.

Who is fully aware of his role as a cog in the grotesque profit-wheel of cosmic capitalism and still manages to say he never changed from the rags-wearing desert rat of the Sigonian wastes.

Who over and over again flirts with nihility but, ultimately, even if he has to wrest it from the grip of the gods themselves with bloody, chain-bound hands, chooses life.

[wispforever]

original quote under the cut

[2isted-chocol8-art]

It's been some pretty long weeks

-> More Outer Wilds Art!

[myewt]

[ra-vio]

ravio I started drawing spring of last year

[tinkerbellaglowstone]

I am so SICK of people mischaracterizing Ted

I always see people defend Ellen or Gorrister or really any of them. (Please understand I, myself, also constantly defend Ellen) but never do I see Ted. I even see some people comparing him to Jimmy? That’s way too far. It’s always people bashing and writing him off as some asshole who didn’t gaf about anyone

That’s so so wrong.

Ted is literally driven to insanity. Can you imagine constantly being on edge? In a state of panic? Convinced the only people around you are out to get you? It’s gotta be exhausting. 109 years of physical and mental torture. He’s a paranoid and a schizophrenic. He talks about angels singing ‘Go Down Moses’ and bringing Ellen and I think Nimdok back. That did not happen. AM is filling his head with religious imagery to make Ted to see him as some all divine, all powerful God like being. And he is. And it works. Ted sees AM as a masculine deity. I’ve noticed in the book he says Gorrister hits Ellen while only she cries for Benny. While in the radio drama, they are all worried over Benny and Ted actually freaks out and tells them to get back, that it was too late. It’s like he believes they have no control whatsoever. ‘whatever AM gives we just have to take it’ or around the lines of that. 

He’s mental. He cannot help that. So of course you’re a jerk to everyone. I’m sure AM also fills his head with lies about the others as well. I mean why wouldn’t he? He doesn’t want them to work together and thrive, he wants them to break each other and suffer. 

In the radio drama as well, Ted and Ellen have a one on one. After a freak out from seeing whatever he thought he saw and running away for god knows how long (notice how he can’t keep time. I’m sure the others can’t as well but often he says maybe days, months, years) he’s scared and upset. Maybe they were just laughing out of confusion or fear or because it wasn’t them in his shoes but to him that is laughter enjoying his pain, the same way AM later laughs after stabbing him and expressing his hatred. He insults them all but I mean listen to what he says. Benny has been extremely altered. Gorrister has been stripped of personality, Nimdok is a mystery case of disappearances and Ellen sleeps with the others (which personally, and this is my belief, I think she only ever sleeps with Ted to keep his peace of mind. Plus we only hear this from Ted himself, and he’s already insecure saying Benny isn’t gay anymore and he’s got a huge wiener which is also false. I’ve seen some fan theories about this and I actually like them. And also Benny can’t consent to any of that and I’m sure Gorrister misses his wife, I’ve never played the video game sorry if I’m mistaken I just know Gorrister had a wife, But that’s just my interpretation) and overall Ted just seems like a huge dick. No wonder after all his paranoia would he think he’s got the good end of the deal. When in reality, he really really doesn’t. At least everyone understands their situation to an extant, minus Benny, Ted doesn’t. Ted is constantly walking on eggshells. Or he thinks he is. Then after it clicks and he breaks down. And again in the radio drama, in the rat (or was it bat) cave, he tells Benny ‘we don’t do that, we’re not animals, we’re human beings!’ He is desperately trying to hold onto his humanity (which, doesn’t work out clearly as he’s a slug) and somewhat a grip on reality. That he is still human even if this isn’t humane. He’s desperate. He’s alone even when surrounded by people. He��s constantly filled with thoughts and honestly I’d call it grooming (grooming: the practice of preparing or training someone for a particular purpose or activity.) from AM. In the video game AM tells Ted he’s his favorite. At the end of the day hes scared like all of them are. And he can’t keep himself together. He has lost himself completely. Broken down and reshaped. He mentions how AM has made his mind a chalkboard or something like that. He also suffers physically too. In the game, when he stands in his cage with the lazors CLEARLY only aiming for his eyes. He can’t even see that. He still stands there in agony when all he needs to do is duck down. He misses the bigger picture. Ted is so lost, so paranoid so delusional and mental he can barely see it himself. Is he a good guy? No. Is he a bad guy of the story? Absolutely not.

ALSOOO Jimmy killed everyone out of selfishness (yes every single death and event is all his fault I hate him I’m so glad he killed himself). Ted, who was finally given a clear head for once, saved them. It was him or Ellen and he chose to get her out of that hell scape. (Which I like to point how how he said he tried/wanted to bury them, meaning he had at least a small amount of time to kill himself. Which he couldn’t, also a fan theory I’ve seen.) Ted sacrificed himself to help everyone. The complete opposite of what Jimmy did. He is HAPPY he pissed AM off by killing them. Even if AM has won he still knows he has the upper hand. How in the hell in his situation can you think YOU have the advantage? In the radio drama as well, the way he says ‘He altered me’ (or along the lines) I saw a comment saying he sounds violated. Which he has been. I love Ted, I really do. I appreciate his character so much because he’s often so overlooked and just known as the unreliable narrator. He’s unreliable for a reason, not because he’s selfish and wants the story his way, but because that’s how he sees things. (also idk if it’s true it’s this pdf file I found talking about all of them and it talks abt Ted at 19 and like older women. I can’t remember what it says but like, 19? 19 is young, still a boy.)

Yes, I do acknowledge he is a huge dick to everyone. But he’s also in a bad terrible situation. And even if you hate him, I think he definitely makes up for it all at the very end. 

[polycraftory]

Unfortunately, things out here are looking more and more like the Corporation Rim these days, so we are only posting this shirt drop to our trusty neighborhood hellsite this week!

If you are also rereading Murderbot to cope with the everything, you may be interested in our latest design! We all need our escapism, so you can join our favorite SecUnit in repping it's favorite soap opera: The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon.

As always, check out our pinned post for the link to our Etsy shop, where we have this shirt as well as other queer & nerdy merch! To keep things spicy, I will also reblog this post to add the dastardly link directly to this shirt (in the hopes that tumblr will show this post to literally anyone 🙃) If you want to help out a small queer business, a reblog would go really far to help spread the word <3

[starry-bi-sky]

realizing i have. a lot of untapped trauma potential for clone^2 danny because i just Fully Processed Four Months Late the fact that his parents were capturing and torturing ghosts in the basement before he became Phantom. and the fact that he was on house rest for 2 weeks. during that time period. and he wasn't really leaving the house. he could hear their screaming through the floorboards

*points at clone danny* i can give you suuuuuuch a bad time babe ahaha. i've got two untouched years before you meet damian what fucks you up before then

[artistformerlyknownasbutttrumpet]

you wanna know a fun trick? no one can see your ballot. if you understand that harris has to win if we want to like, preserve democracy in our country and also save millions of lives, but optics also matter a lot to you, and you're torn between doing the right thing and telling ppl on your tiktok that you "stuck to your morals" and voted third party or whatever... you can just lie. there's no law against it. no one will know. just check that harris box and then post your little video in your little internet echo chamber about how even tho a third party candidate will never win, and any vote not to harris is a vote for trump, at least you had the courage of your convictions to refuse to do the thing that will actually help people. you can have both. it can be your dirty little secret. you get to maintain your image, and the country also gets to not be on fire. win-win!! hashtag lifehack or something god plz vote for harris you guys i am fucking on my knees begging at this point

[hydrostalgia]

day 6

[torchickentacos]

i will always shout praises of bi4bi but given recent discourse I feel the need to say that I love bi4het too! I just love bisexuality in general in its many forms, and anyone who only likes it when it's 'queer enough' for them is biphobic. Bisexuals should be able to bring their LaMe CiShEt BoYfRiEnD to pride without being made to feel like spectators and outsiders to their own event.

[loversandantiheroes]

Alan Wake is proof of what November's no shave, no nut, and writing a 50k novel shtick does to a motherfucker.