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a-court-of-fics-and-errors · 6 months ago

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Keep Moving Forwards, Part 6

Azriel x Reader Fic

Summary: After finally deciding to leave your abusive and manipulative mate for good, you find unexpected companionship with Azriel, the Shadowsinger of the Night Court. As you navigate the aftermath of your traumatic relationship, you struggle to understand where the mating bond went wrong and contemplate your path forward, vowing never to return to the past.

Find other parts here: Master List

Content Warning: This story contains depictions of extreme emotional manipulation and abuse, mentions of physical abuse, loss of a child, and general trauma.

Word Count: 1.7k

Author's Note:

Just a heads-up that the next part of this series will offer two reading options due to sensitive topics in the upcoming section. There will be the original post titled "Keep Moving Forwards, Part 7" with the unedited content, and another version titled "Keep Moving Forwards, Part 7, Summary" that summarizes the material to avoid any discomfort.

For those who have asked to be tagged, you will be automatically tagged in the summarized part to ensure no one accidentally encounters content they might find triggering or uncomfortable. If you are tagged and wish to read the original, please visit my main page when the next part is posted tomorrow at 12:00 PM EST. The two options will be posted simultaneously.

Thank you for your support and understanding. I'll see you tomorrow.

This is a multi-part series. Unlike my previous works, this fanfiction delves deeper than just fluff, exploring complex emotional landscapes. As I navigate this new writing journey, I kindly ask for gentle feedback. The topics addressed are profoundly impactful, touching many lives with diverse experiences. Please be gentle with yourselves and others. Healing is a journey, and everyone processes it differently. Be kind to yourself. Take what resonates, and leave what doesn’t.

Please continue reading, being aware of the above content warnings, ensuring you are in a healthy headspace. Give yourself time to process and be gentle with yourself.

Days blurred together as you continued to heal. Azriel made himself scarce, sending Anthea to check on your progress and report back to him. However, he still ensured your meals were slightly more palatable than the standard fare of the training camp, often adding fruits or sweets when he could. Over the next two days, you shared your meals with Anthea, who only ever took a bite or two before refusing any more, despite your encouragement. Neither of you asked many questions, and your interactions remained brief. You no longer needed help turning over, but your body was still weak, limiting you to short walks across the room.

On your first attempt to walk, you collapsed, and Azriel appeared like a shadow to help you up. You quickly pushed him away, determined to maintain your independence. You also began hiding knives under the mattress and storing non-perishable food in the bedside drawers, preparing for the day you could leave. Your stash included two apples, a pear, and some rolls. Not much, but it was a start.

By the fourth day, you had enough strength to get out of bed and look out the window. The camp outside was a bleak sight. You could see distant mountain ranges, but the camp was nestled in a clearing deep in the woods, a space likely carved out by the Illyrians. The thought of ancient trees felled, sent crashing into the mud for this camp turned your stomach.

The camp itself was a muddy mess. To your right and left, you saw other log cabin-like structures similar to the one you were in, each with pointed roofs and a few windows. Below, the ground sloped down to rows of small, mud-splattered tents on wooden platforms. Footprints crisscrossed the muddy ground, and soldiers moved up and down the hills. In the center of the tent village was a larger log structure, which seemed to be the mess hall, where soldiers gathered at mealtimes.

Scattered among the tents were slightly larger tents, likely for higher-ranking soldiers, and raised platforms with canopies, tables, and chairs, their purpose unclear. On the edges of the camp were fenced-in pens where soldiers, each with their hulking wings, practiced sword fighting. They took great pleasure in knocking each other into the mud and continuing their fights with fists, resembling wild animals.

A particularly ostentatious Illyrian soldier often removed his shirt during fights, choosing to battle bare-chested, swinging his sword with reckless abandon. You half-wondered if only the strongest survived because they were killed before they could even make it to battle.

You noticed very few females around, and the ones you did see were in the same state as Anthea—battered, seemingly brutalized, and sneaking between rows of tents. They quickly retreated to hiding spaces or even into the woods at the sight of a group of males. Over the next few days, you watched Anthea tread a careful path from the mess hall to your cabin, ducking behind tents and listening intently for male footsteps before scurrying like a mouse to the next sheltered area. Every female seemed fearful of the soldiers, and it wasn’t hard to piece together why.

It rained incessantly here, with daily torrential downpours turning the meadow into a muddy quagmire. Despite the rain, the soldiers carried on with their training. Many ventured into the treeline in groups, disappearing for most of the day or night and returning either exhausted or invigorated. You never saw anyone without wings coming or going from the camp, making you acutely aware that you might be the only non-winged creature among them.

Once Anthea decided you had spent enough time wrapped in bandages, she brought you new clothes. She apologized for the fit, noting that they only had sizes for males, and these were the smallest options available. While they hung from your body and required extra rope to keep the pants up, you were grateful for the offer. Azriel continued to flit in and out at random times. In your time spent at the window, you often saw him leaving early in the morning, wandering into the tented area, and entering the larger tents. He rarely interacted with the soldiers, maintaining his role as Spymaster, keeper of the High Lord’s secrets.

On the seventh day, Anthea brought your breakfast and wished you a good morning as she set it down on the bed. You remained curled up by the window, but as she dropped the tray, you called over your shoulder, “I think I would like to go.”

Anthea paused, turning to you. “Go where?” she inquired.

“Just go,” you replied, stretching your legs out and standing to investigate the meal. You picked up a piece of toast with purple jam smeared on it and met her eyes, which widened slightly at your request.

“I don’t understand. Where do you want to go?” she asked again.

You shook your head slightly. “Go away from here.”

“Where are you going?” she asked, picking at the scabs on her hands.

You chewed and swallowed the toast, the rhubarb and strawberry blend coating your tongue with its sour deliciousness. “Not sure yet. I just need to get moving. I can’t stay here anymore.”

Anthea looked at you, still utterly puzzled. “You... you can’t leave.”

You stopped chewing, placing the toast back on the plate and wiping the crumbs on your pants. “What do you mean I can’t?”

“No one leaves,” she stammered. “They always bring you back.”

A lump formed in your throat. It wasn’t that you couldn’t leave; Anthea just couldn’t imagine a world where anyone could. “You tried to leave?” you asked.

Anthea nodded, her gaze cast to the floor. She didn’t elaborate, just continued nodding.

“What happened?”

Anthea shook her head slightly, pressing her fingers into a wound that oozed around them. She didn’t speak.

“Did they hurt you?” you asked.

Anthea still didn’t speak, just shaking her head as she found a new scab to pick at.

“Anthea,” you said, reaching for her to stop her from scratching. She took two steps back immediately, running into the swords and axes poised at the edge of the fireplace, sending them clanging to the floor. Azriel appeared instantly as Anthea dropped to the floor, trying to pick up the weapons while apologizing profusely. He looked between Anthea and you, trying to piece together what had happened. Anthea continued apologizing until Azriel knelt beside her and began picking up the weapons too. She whispered her apologies again before Azriel placed his hands on her shoulders. She jumped slightly, and her eyes seemed to glaze over.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “Nothing is wrong.”

Anthea nodded, tears filling her eyes as Azriel released her. She quickly stood, glanced at you with a tear rolling down her cheek, then briskly walked out of the room, covering her mouth with her hand. You turned to the window and watched her exit the house, heading into the nearby woods.

Azriel finished placing the weapons back in their spots before turning to you. “What happened?” he asked.

You watched the treeline for a second, and when Anthea didn’t reappear, you turned back towards him. “Nothing,” you said.

Azriel looked around the room, then back at you. “You’re standing.”

“Yes,” you replied.

“That’s,” he paused, stuttering slightly, “that’s good.”

You nodded before taking a few steps toward him. “I want to leave.”

A flash of emotion crossed Azriel’s face, but it was gone before you could read it. “Where are you going?” he asked.

You looked up at him, noting how he towered over you, forcing you to crane your neck to see his face. “It’s none of your concern.”

Azriel sighed, running his hand through his hair—a gesture you had begun to notice he did when nervous or uncomfortable.

“Look, I-” Azriel started.

You interrupted him, “I appreciate what you’ve done, and you’ve been very generous. I just think I need to move on.”

“If this is about what happened earlier-” Azriel started again, but you cut him off once more.

“It has nothing to do with that,” you noted. “I just want to be on my way and out of your hair.”

Azriel paused, searching for the right words. “Let me at least get you where you want to go,” he finally said. “It’s not like your journey was going well the last time.”

You scoffed lightly. “There’s no need for that.”

“Please,” Azriel insisted.

“If I say no, will you make me stay?” you asked.

Azriel paused. “No. I won’t make you stay.”

“Good,” you replied. “I want to leave then. Today.”

Azriel’s eyes widened. “No, that’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

Azriel glanced out the window as clouds began rolling in for the daily downpour. “It’s going to rain soon.”

You didn’t bother looking out the window. “Then I will leave after.”

Azriel looked back at you, his eyes pleading. “Can you just wait a few more days?”

“What am I waiting for?” you asked shortly.

“Just give me some time to plan.”

Your brows furrowed. “Given you aren’t coming with me, I don’t particularly understand what you need to plan for.”

“Just, please,” Azriel pleaded, his eyes filled with yearning. “Stay a few more days, and then you can leave.”

You ground your teeth, feeling like a caged animal. “Fine.” There was no way you could push past him, and it was clear he could outrun you if you tried.

“Thank you,” he said, his face relaxing slightly. He ran his hand over his face. “What happened with Anthea?” he asked again.

You stopped, annoyed he repeated the question. “I asked her if I could leave, and before she could answer, she accidentally knocked down the swords.” You pointed to the weapons now restacked.

“Got it,” Azriel responded. He glanced at your half-eaten breakfast. “Are you done with this?” he asked.

You nodded, crossing your arms, the bruise on your side causing a pang of pain.

Azriel picked up the tray and left, leaving you alone in the room once more. It was clear your request had bothered him as his anxiety left hard rock in your stomach. You wouldn’t be staying long, certainly not a few more days.

Authors Note: Thanks for all the continued support from the following readers who asked to be tagged!

@thatacotargirl @mcuamerica @lilah-asteria @florabelll @fightmedraco @marvelbros-oneshots @mariahoedt @quinzzelx @romantasyreader28 @minnieoo @mysteriouslydeafeningwerewolf @annabethgranger123 @krowiathemythologynerd @scatteredstardustt @romantasyreader28

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bladekindeyewear · 3 months ago

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HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2024-08-24

(Previous post - current page 666)

Section 3 of page 666 is now upd8'd, let's check it out! And as you can expect very much from the topic it's almost certainly covering, they've warned us via the twitter "Content warning for references to themes of physical and mental abuse, flashing imagery, and mild gore". By the way, when Force Refresh didn't reload the game data enough to show the new chapter in Google Chrome for me, I had to go in settings to "Delete Browsing Data" > "Cookies and other site data" for the Time Range "Last hour", because just deleting "Cached images and files" or "Hosted app data" didn't help.

(EDIT: THEY WERE NOT KIDDING AROUND ABOUT THE CONTENT WARNINGS, IF YOU HAVE ANY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE WITH ANY SORT OF ABUSE PLEASE BE CAREFUL WITH THIS ONE.)

Although, before we get into it (AND WAY BEFORE I SCROLLED BACK UP TO EDIT THAT EXTRA WARNING UP THERE), I wanted to cover something that'd been on my mind since my last post, predictionways: How IS Vriska going to escape the Plot Point?

There seem a number of obvious answers that we'll get some combination of, but the last one might not be obvious to everyone, so I wanted to cover it and flesh out / examine the possibilities so we all can feel really smart if it pans out at all the way I'm thinking it could pan out:

(1) Vriska realizes the true power and relevance she'd attained as a Thief of Light never left her heart all along, and this singularity is Nothing, a realm Void of relevance where only she exists. (Very like the Neverending Story after everything was destroyed, maybe?) If she allows herself to divest herself of some of her relevance she's been so desperately clutching onto, she can 8r8k the Plot Point.

Callie hinted that this singularity-center might need to be destroyed, and the fifth section is an 8-ball, a type of container Vriska is famously known to break. It may make a degree of sense that realizing her own power, her ultimate freedom, might be enough to do just that and free her.

(1a) Vriska becomes her Ultimate Self, and is too full of Light for the singularity to contain. This could break it or otherwise get her out of it...

...but I'm not sure it's either possible or a good thing for her to consolidate ALL of herself from the rest of Paradox Space into herself while she's trapped in here? Those versions of her perhaps deserve to keep existing rather than falling into a sea of herself that would need to hold powerfully to the self-actualization and psychological progress she's made as THIS version of her instead of the versions of her that didn't. We're not certain of all the mechanics of being an Ultimate Self, so it's hard to say whether or not it's possible... or could even see her backslide from this Therapy Session, which I really wouldn't want to see because this has been so good, and would definitely make some sense of alt!Callie / AL's warning that what was inside the Plot Point was hungry, because an Ultimate Vriska certainly could be. This doesn't seem the right choice unless in combination with one of the other options:

(2) Vriska finds the collapsed core of the Green Sun's power here and steals it for herself, a hidden treasure that could be intensely empowering, whether via Light or even giving her fancy barrier-busting Black Hole powers similar to alt!Calliope's dead!Jade body. I... feel this option is unlikely. It'd certainly count as something "greedy" inside the Plot Point that "isn't salvation" and could hasten the fragmentation of the Candy storyline because there isn't a singularity vacuuming its power all together, which could apply to breaking the Plot Point too, frankly... eh, I just still think other options seem more likely and better foreshadowed. Especially this last one:

(3) Vriska uses the same communication-across-barriers ability she used to contact (Meat)!Terezi in order to message JOHN and ask the HEIR OF BREATH to free her from the singularity as I once long ago wrongly predicted. If John is the only one who can reach in and pull her out, it would require Vriska to overcome herself enough to realize she needs -- and has the power -- to MAKE a divestment of relevance (as (1) suggested) to John from herself, and let John be the hero in her place for at least a moment. The arms he once reached everywhere with using his ultimate power suddenly become an arm reaching for another hand to pull someone to freedom.

Now on top of everything I mentioned in the old Breath, Blood, and the Flow of Reality post about John being one of the only people possibly capable of freeing someone from a singularity that "not even Light can escape", there's a bunch of EXTREMELY RECENT evidence for this, too. In addition to telling us how surprising and unlikely they would have found it to learn that Vriska messaged Terezi past the barrier sealing Candy's timeline away from the rest of Paradox Space, Callie ALSO just got done asking John to break Vriska out of jail, reinforcing it with an open statement that Breath was the aspect of Freedom, and John embodied the concept. And more importantly, John HADN'T BEEN NECESSARY to break Vriska out at all, and ended up only tagging along for conversation and fun, not even needing to tell Serket where to go! Which makes the entire relevance and narrative choice of Callie asking him to break her out better suited as foreshadowing for this exact necessity while she's trapped in the Plot Point, and all Vriska would need to do to make it happen is pull a trick (communicating across the Breach) we've already seen her pull before in the Epilogues. To have the courage and stability of mind to realize she can't do this on her own, and know who to ask for help. (Roxy, as a Rogue of Void, might even be able to lend her power to the effort too.)

Apologies for the pre-update writeup, I just really wanted to make that last John call for y'all if you hadn't realized the possibility, y'know, before we potentially see it happen a few upd8s from now. :D

Alright, on to all the trauma that Doc Scratch helped inflict on Vriska, manipulating her into actions that only injured her psyche further and her friends moreso, and all the guilt and anger she feels over it. I suspect she'll have to finally at least PARTIALLY realize the trick that's being hinted at regarding "ultimate freedom" -- ie, the answer to the Ultimate Riddle -- and just how much Doc Scratch's talk of inevitability not only gaslit her into thinking her worst instincts were unavoidable, but that even as he was TELLING her that he was manipulating her, he was admitting that he HAD to manipulate her to make this happen, meaning the power had been in HER hands all along, not his. Without Vriska provoked into being the one to inflict the injuries in the entire Team Charge vs Team Scourge cascade, without the fact that this was all FRIENDS hurting FRIENDS, none of them would have experienced enough of the severe psychological trauma required for Doc Scratch's half-Gamzee chucklevoodoos to control them into unknowingly writing his DNA code, and leaving those like Aradia in an inverted, highly manipulatable state for guiding their session into creating the Tumor that would birth the Green Sun. Let's click the White Cueball and start watching Vriska painfully confronting some serious emotional abuse and trauma from her past at the hands of a very-Dirk-Strider-like pseudo-parental figure...

*CLICKING THAT DAMNED CUEBALL NOW*

Okay, NO TIMESKIP notice this time, she looks the same in her room-- it would make sense that Doc Scratch is next on the chopping block this time and I'd WANT to see her live first reaction to it. What's with this poppy hoppy fun music? We're definitely getting something more sinister for Scratch. (Also I have to say, the music so far this entire Vriska Therapy Session flash has been... okay? But not up to the usual Homestuck banger standards the original comic's run spoiled us with constantly, in my personal view.)

VRISKA: Whew. VRISKA: Long day.

Oh gosh I hope she doesn't go into the next one IMMEDIATELY and rests first--

Oh GCATAVROSPRITE is the music this time, I get it! And he's acting more catlike than ever w/ those paws lifted!

GCATAVROSPRITE: mAYBE, yOU SHOULD TAKE A BREAK, fROM ALL THE TOTALLY AWESOME PERSONAL BREAKTHROUGHS YOU ARE HAVING, GCATAVROSPRITE: aND KICK IT WITH ME AND ERISOL FOR A WHILE, ERISOLSPRITE: yeah, you kiinda look liike 2hiit.

THANK you, get her to relax at least a BIT before tackling something harder than her freakin' abusive mother(s). Also,

--just, Erisol looking unexpectedly fly as fuck, and more Dave-like than ever. Like, I'm just surprised he looks so cool. Good damn art.

VRISKA: Says Scarfshades McLopsided.

Hey!!!

ERISOLSPRITE: 2ay2 the bu2ted a22 biitch wwearin the 2ame raggedy jacket 2he2 wworn 2ince wwe wwere liike fiivve.

FUCKIN' OWNED, GOOD SNAPBACK.

VRISKA: Says the guy who literally can't change his clothes.

That's low AND not helping your case, fuck you! You're being incredibly disrespectful AND proving him right!

ERISOLSPRITE: ii cant be held accountable for my dii2cordant cla22-2wwag diichotomy, but here you are a 2weep and a half deep iin a per2onally raiilored realm of 2elf-reflectiion and you 2tiill choo2e twwo look liike thii2.

EXACTLY, that's what we're saying!!! --Not that it can be helped TOO much, from an emotional standpoint she sorta has to take forms similar to her past to face her past to an extent, so...

Also, let me do the math on that... (6/13)*4 ≈ 1.85, so if we're still in "YEAR 4" then 1.85 solar sweeps have passed for her since she entered the Plot Point. If anything, Erisol's being generous as fuck here by rounding down instead of saying "nearly two sweeps". (And this confirms we haven't timeskipped again-- or if we have, must not have skipped MUCH.)

VRISKA: Heh.

What, can't mess with perfection?

ERISOLSPRITE: heh.

Oh shit, they're actually getting on, look at his damned animated grin. This is just some black-vibey friendly jabbing!

ERISOLSPRITE: anyway, come chiill.

Please, please do Vriska for your own damn sake.

Oh no, Tavros, don't suggest cat things.

Yeah, get some R and R. (And pointless playtime.) So you don't burn out. Good advice Tav.

FUCK IS HE STILL ALLERGIC? :C

.....okay GCATavrosprite you make a good goddamned point, you're doing pretty well against the allergies all things considered.

Oh no, she thinks she needs to keep going. :( This is gonna be even less fun for her than she thinks.

VRISKA: I'm kind of on a roll here. Gotta strike while the iron is hot!

Intense trauma-release therapy does not work that way!!! Heavy revelations have to be PROCESSED and mulled over before you subject yourself to more psychological pounding!

GCATAVROSPRITE: [...] aND IT KIND OF FEELS LIKE THE FIRE IS ABOUT TO GET REALLY REALLY HOT,

Ooh, a serious warning from Tav and Erisol that this shit is about to be some fuckin' BUSINESS. Listen to them! (Exactly as you put it Tav, that iron is gonna MELT too long in too hot a fire. I hope this doesn't knock her back at first and then we get ANOTHER TIMESKIP so soon mid-section... D: )

VRISKA: Whaaaaaaaat?

Oh she doesn't fucking see it coming, does she. She thought she just conquered the worst of her abuse with her mother(s) just now. She is NOT ready.

VRISKA: Oh 8lah 8lah 8lah, don't be such a pussy. GCATAVROSPRITE: i LITERALLY CAN'T NOT BE A CAT,

PFFF

VRISKA: How 8ad could it even 8e?

How genre savvy could you POSSIBLY have lost track of being to make such a statement?

...Welp, she's gonna try it. Let's hope it doesn't make her backslide into being too afraid to touch it for another year or two. :C :C :C

ERISOLSPRITE: ok wwell fuck u2 for tryiin ii gue22, havve fun gettiing traumatiized.

PFFFFDHF okay that was pretty funny

VRISKA: I'm not gonna get traumatized!

Lemme guess, smash cut to a dozen and change clicks from now: "...I got fucking traumatized."? X'D

Oh here we go:

{ENTER SCRATCH'S PARLOR}

OH HERE WE GO WITH SOME PROPERLY OMINOUS MUSIC. AND I LOVE THE TYPEWRITER SOUNDS AS HIS TEXT TYPES OUT AGAINST THE PURE BACKGROUND. THIS IS DONE SO GODDAMN WELL

(Even if I still think this music still doesn't measure up to original Homestuck tunes, it's still FITTING AND WORKS GREAT for the scene, and the style and art choices are top notch, especially the pure backgroundless white font.)

Yep Vriska, a "perfectly predictable inevitability", you should have seen this coming. Did you know you'd show up here, or did you not and he's rubbing it in your face? Cause I'd bet it's the latter.

It certainly has been a while, Vriska. You seem to have blossomed nicely.

CREEPY ABUSIVE UNCLE VIBES ALREADY REACHING CRITICAL LEVELS THREE CLICKS IN

Care for a piece of candy?

GOD DAMNIT

VRISKA: Oh fuck your stupid candy, you glo8e-headed little freak.

Congratulations Vriska, you've successfully lost 99% of your chill five seconds in, have fun getting traumatized

Doc hinting at the inevitability theme by saying he'd know for a fact she'd enjoy the candy.

Although it was less the wary hunch of a scared little girl than the delightful certainty that you'd come crawling back to me, sooner or later.

FUCK THIS IS JUST RAW ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIP WE ARE FULL NON-WATERED-DOWN EVERCLEAR HERE

Holy SHIT are they pulling out all the stops with his awful phrasing here, no wonder they put so big an emotional abuse trigger warning on this update on the twitter page. And it's only going to get worse.

Of course I know. I'm always watching you.

Fuck, this is just. Exposing levels of vulnerability and awful fear that Vriska had to contend with in her youth that we hadn't even PUT TOGETHER back then. Every veil of silliness has been ripped straight off to show the gory mess of how this would have psychologically affected her while she was younger, here. I used to hate the epilogues and early HS^2 a little for doing this so liberally, for making clear how RETROACTIVELY FUCKED things were in ways that made my heart ache without any balm or healing... but unlike those earlier glimpses into their past attitudes, THIS time we are fucking going to goddamn RESOLVE the psychological issues and get some clear closure on them. That's part of why the entire p666 Vriska Therapy Session / Hyperbolic Therapy Chamber is already quite nearly my favorite part of all Homestuck so far, and I DO mean ALL of Homestuck so far.

VRISKA: You know what? VRISKA: I've 8een pretty damn good. VRISKA: 8een losing track of the sweeps I've spent in here fixing pretty much everything other than the thing I actually came in here to fix, 8ut it's paying off! There's a convenient timer for the express purpose of tracking that.

Oh god don't show her. Don't make her worry about how much time she's losing in here or how much it might be reflecting out there.

VRISKA: Yeah, and I never look at it 8ecause it pisses me off!

Phew. At least she's had TIME to come to terms with worrying about it.

VRISKA: 8ut it's fine. VRISKA: It just means I've had a lot of time to think stuff over. VRISKA: Stuff that was holding me 8ack, throwing me off-course.

I get the feeling he's about to do a pretty good job trying to convince you that you can't escape this so easily. To throw the wrong sort of doubt at you about what exactly you're barreling towards. About who the real "YOU" is-- he's going to try and convince you you're the one who hurts people.

I like to think that I'm far and away the most prolific contributor to your baggage.

Fuck. This won't be good.

VRISKA: Man, I figured may8e this place was working up to something really intense, 8ut instead all I get is Glo8ehead the Gru8toucher playing puppetmaster again.

Eueuuugh that nickname D:

...Is Vriska shaking or laughing? I think she's shaking. D:

VRISKA: You fucked with a 8unch of little kids and 8lew up, then you LOST.

Lord English might have lost, but I don't feel quite like Doc Scratch really did. He pretty much gave his master the Paradox-Space-spanning story he wanted, from beginning to end.

VRISKA: You could 8arely handle me when I was six, I'm supposed to 8e scared of you NOW?

It doesn't matter that you're not six sweeps anymore, that's-- you're visibly shaking. This is a big fucking deal. This is digging into the creepiest and most disgusting parts of what was done to you.

Well, you're shaking.

There we have it.

...Vriska is pulling out the whole-ass PDF File word. I... I hope she's just trying to taunt him for manipulating children, here, and playing the uncle angle. He's not-- I mean nothing actually happened, right? Please tell me nothing physical actually fucking happened besides the cueball-explosion physical-abuse-ways, I don't want sexual abuse retconned into existence here...

Exquisite. I missed that fumbling braggadocio. It's heartening to know that this place hasn't cured you of it yet. It makes you so much fun to play with.

Yeah... the parts of Doc Scratch that Vriska is going to remember most clearly are the times where he was condescending in ways that denigrated her and confirmed her worst fears about herself, intentionally. :C

WHOA DID HE JUST SPACE SHRINK HER??? IS HE GONNA PUT HER ON THE TOY BATTLEFIELD?!

{o} ==>

Matching the scale and visuals of the situation to how she always felt. :C :C

And SICK that the music is breaking down, I'll freely give it credit for shifting to action mode.

Now then, why don't we have ourselves a little game?

Just like Dirk and Caliborn, and their union in Doc Scratch, always love to do to people.

FUCK he glitched away the "WHAT WILL YOU DO?" prompt. This is DEFINITELY about the Ultimate Riddle and Doc Scratch's ultimate lie that Vriska never had any autonomy, a lie he poisoned her with from an early age to make her even easier to manipulate both then and down the line.

DAMMIT, changing her clothes by force?! D: D: D: D:

FUCK FUCK FUCK NO THAT'S EVEN WORSE HE CHANGED HER INTO KID FORM HUGGING HERSELF FROM WHEN SHE WAS ABOUT TO BE INJURED THAT'S CREEPIER AND MORE AWFUL THAN I EVER EXPECTED NO WONDER THEY CONTENT WARNING'D THE FUCK OUT OF THIS, I'm going up there and putting some EXTRAS on there.

I don't have personal experience with this sort of abuse but I do have experience with some who HAVE and some who WORK therapeutically with those who have so this is playing out like a critical hit to triggers I can only empathize from a distance with and it's STILL getting almost too much already. Wow wow wow wow wow they didn't pull any punches.

Ah, and there she is. My favorite piece.

AAAAAA

Thief to E4; Thief takes Page.

That loud BLAM just then and the brown blood knocking her back along with her injuries, so pithy yet so HEAVY and with the meaty SFX to go with it, just, brutal, auughh.... Vriska's NOT getting out of this one lightly. She's not going to want to come back here. She's going to be too traumatized for a good while isn't she.

Thief to F5; Thief takes Maid.

Oh god I don't want to screenshot each of these...

Another meaty THUNK and some rust blood splashing her. God.

Thief to Z8; Thief takes Seer.

Even after all Terezi taunted her and so clearly loved being blind, she STILL hates herself for what she did to Terezi?? :'C

Her blood too D:

Z8 ISN'T EVEN A F8CKING P8SITION, YOU HACK!!!!!!!

She didn't even get the number of exclamation points right...

All the world's my board.

No Escape.

Thief to ∫40; Thief takes pawn.

Wait what, who?

Is that Gamzee's blood or Eridan's? She only killed Gamzee just recently in Candy... (Checks with digital color meter--) That's #680768 blood, which is closest to... Eridan's, huh, weird. Maybe Erisol will be able to help her with this later after she's run away. IF AND WHEN she can finally run away. It looks like he wants to reinforce the impression that he can make her kill ANY AND ALL of the people friends she knows, COULD have made her do it. That's horrible for her to think of herself.

Now Equius's blood. She's swearing but can't make it stop.

He even calls Kanaya (and her blood splash) nothing but her killing a pawn of his choosing.

Thief to Ω413; Thief takes pawn. Check.

This is one of the first reappearances I can remember of the arc number 413 since we started HS^2, I don't even recall it in the epilogues. What's in Check here, the kids' whole universe, the one the trolls created? Is he getting her to blame herself for that, too?

KARKAT'S BLOOD AUGH that's always tough to see whenever I have to see it, it just makes you want to protect him when you know you can't.

Vriska calling him a cheap fucking karma ghost, this a stupid fucking charade... won't stop the fact that this is real emotional pain she's feeling and real pain that was already inside her for nearly her whole life up until this vision brought it out into the open.

VRISKA: AND I'M NEVER GOING TO 8E CAUGHT UP IN YOUR FUCKING G8MES EVER AGAIN!!!!!!!!

Then why are you so afraid you will be?

Of course you will. You think you're better than me? Better than fate? Vriska, I am going to put you in situations where you have the potential to do terrible things. I am going to make things ugly. I am going to corner you. I am going to pressure you. And no matter how much "better" you claim to be, all I have to do is catch you at the wrong moment. You're one bad turn from burning all your quaint little progress to the ground. One lapse away from being mine again.

Yeah, these are ALL just more and more of her deepest fears about herself. That she can be made to kill again, so easily, no matter how far she thinks she's moved past it all. Until she internalizes the answer to the Ultimate Riddle and realizes she has the power to make the better choice-- to ALWAYS make the better choice, and he was just fooling her into thinking she never did-- how could she possibly escape this sort of trap? She can't, not yet. And that abusive cueball asshole INTENTIONALLY made sure she felt that way, because that's what kept her easy to control. Learned helplesness.

VRISKA: Get me out of here.

Fuck, she's so defeated... so helpless. Please, PLEASE let this work. Please make it so she CAN escape this memory RIGHT THE FUCK NOW and confront it later. Because I'm very afraid it won't.

VRISKA: I want a do-over. Oh, please. You of all people should know that you don't *get* do-overs. The rest of these frivolous little vision quests may feel like sparing you the effort of getting things right the first time around, but the real world doesn't work that way.

FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK THAT'S EVEN WORSE THAN I EXPECTED

No, you'll just have to endure it. This won't take long.

LET HER OUT YOU FUCK

You had a good run out there, flying solo and swashbuckling around as if Light itself were yours to command. It'd be wise to remember that it's a borrowed blessing. You flourish at its whim. Continue to spit in its face and take it for granted, and it will abandon you once again, perhaps for good.

Back to the ultimate riddle shit again. Doc Scratch conning her into thinking "everything you've achieved, I made for you, or you stole from others".

Being a true Thief of Light doesn't mean being at the whim of Light, at the mercy of what she can borrow. Kanaya tried to teach her back when she wanted her to clean her room that anybody can make their own luck.

Instead Doc Scratch is playing the role of Demiurge, standing in place of the Sun and claiming all Light radiates from him, when there was plenty inside her all along.

Do you remember who you were, before it chose you? The choices you made when luck wasn't on your side? You were such a delectable little victim.

Bluh!!!!!!

Poor Vriska, with her voracious lusus. With her demanding legacy and her uncooperative, fickle little friends. So much was out of your hands, then; how could you help but mbe my lovely assistant?

Doc Scratch inherited every last ounce of Equius's nonconsensual creep factor from Arquiusprite.

And this is going into the relationship between Light and Agency again, Void and the Lack of agency-- when Vriska felt trapped, felt she didn't have a choice, that was Void hemming her in, her "bad luck streak". Agency is your ability to choose what you do next, and so is Light. That's the privilege sometimes but not exclusively known as Luck.

Vriska: You didn't fucking own me.

Still so helpless-looking, but at least a bit of defiance in her expression. Which I expect handily crushed, unfortunately...

Exactly.

Fuck! And yeah, that's his point-- he's trying to say she CHOSE to do the wrong thing when the chips were down, which is what she's most afraid she'll do again.

But she needs to internalize the fact that it was a choice... that it HAD to be a choice... is an important flaw in the way he gaslit and conned her.

But what matters is that I might as well have. You let yourself believe you had no option other than to take me up on my hard bargains, again and again. For all your talk of independence, all your combative posturing and insistence on your own freedom, you barely bothered to put up any actual resistance to my suggestions. You took the easy way out, swearing all teh while it was your move. What a phenomenal waste of your considerable talents.

Her psyche is playing against her with the cards face up here... she just has to read them correctly. This is what she's afraid of, but it's also the flaw in his logic, the source of his power over her. The idea that she never possessed Ultimate Freedom, even though he's practically telling her that she DID, just to convince her she's an awful person.

It was an insult, and a warning. You're a trump card, Vriska, but your potency is a double-edged sword. One you've gotten far too comfortable swinging around, in the past. What do you intend to fix, when you leave this place? What, I wonder, will you break? I'd encourage you to be mindful of both. Of course, you could always cast aside those pesky trivialities and go with the flow, smashing through circumstances with nary a thought for the consequences. It'd be easier. We could dance together again, just like old times. You choose.

This isn't the real Doc Scratch-- this version of him IS, in its sick perverse way, still helping her. Still giving her the hints to realize that true balance between embracing your role and yielding agency to others is CRUCIAL to make sure you're doing your best to do the right thing. Which is especially difficult when your role, your best methodology, is that of an Agency Thief. A dangerous role which must be careful with its moves so as not to gluttonously trample over the wills of others who deserve a say.

But in order to choose, to take up the mantle of Ultimate Freedom, Vriska has to TRUST herself enough TO choose.

Trusting yourself enough to entrust yourself with CHOICE is one of the hardest decisions you can possibly make. Few ever truly make that decision.

What'll it be, Vriska? Player, or piece?

Well?

Thief to ∞108.

Whoa, what now? What the fuck is this going to be?

I look forward to finding out. Good luck.

Oh, so it's sending her back to the Plot Point. ∞108, or 8108. Is this the elusive arc number of one of our timelines, of Candy? One of infinite... or 1 and 0, creation and destruction, sandwiched between two 8s, two Vriskas with perpendicular orientations, Vriska and Vrissy? Hmm...

Oh thank fucking god we're back...

HAH

thanks so much I needed that mood lifter XD

{Level Complete!}

Thanks for ENDING it too, holy shit. I don't think I could have taken much longer of something THAT heavy tonight. Wow, that was masterfully done... not dragged out, just enough to get to the true point. To a setup for her decision, for her personal answer to the Ultimate Riddle.

Which makes plenty of sense why the NEXT section seems like it's likely a weird colorless version of one of Davepetasprite^2's feathers. They're the perfect person to talk to about her Soul/Heart, the greater self and the meaning of Ultimate Freedom, just as they hinted at during their last big talk in Homestuck.

--Yeah, she didn't get as much help from that as she would have wanted... and now the candle is ABSOLUTELY burning down.

The glimpse of the next unclaimed tiers, here... are these hinting at the start of the next section? We have her inhibitions bound, then a reference to a child development psychologist, then a somatic spark-- physical contact?! Then Deja Vu, a flash of the past (or possibly even meeting her GHOST self from the ghost rain, the more vulnerable (Vriska) inverted to Page of Void mode that she BERATED TO TEARS back toward the end of Homestuck to prove how much more (Vriska) had grown than Vriska before leaving her crying and for Ghost Terezi from the pre-retcon timeline to meet)... Heuristic Grace, getting her luck back possibly... burning, getting hotter, and then a transcendental gleam? No, no that's got to just be a candle and it burning out the rest of the singularity... I still don't think Ultimate Vriska is the solution to all this, could it be?

Oh shit, I forgot about how the BLACK CANDLE is burning down due to VRISKA'S blue flame.

Recall my proposals at the beginning of this post? I completely forgot about yet one more opportunity for her escape:

(4) That Vriska's Light has been burning away at the singularity of the Plot Point this entire time, and will naturally destroy it no matter what, especially if she embraces her Agency and her inner Light. The Green Sun was not just a symbol of Light but an ultimate manifestation of Space power... and collapsed into a singularity, it could indeed also have been not just a Void but an ultimate manifestation of Time power. The years, sweeps, that Vriska is spending inside of it could be wearing it away all on its own, rapidly exhausting a reservoir of Time that alt!Calliope preserved at the center of the singularity just to give the noncanon timeline more time to exist than it otherwise would have had?!! Instead, Vriska is burning it up, and the sprites and ghosts who fell into the Black Hole during the Ghost Rain and concentrated themselves in this singularity are helping her use that naturally limited Time to arm herself and become the best version of herself she can be, so when the Plot Point collapses and shit really starts hitting the fan for the Candy timeline, they can execute a NEW plan to breach into the Canon/Meat timeline and do something so incredibly important that it reseats the timelines outside Paradox Space in new relevance stolen out from Canon. Something incredibly important, like unexpectedly facilitating Sburb's creation in what Dirk and Rosebot are trying to do, or sendificating the kids the final frog they used to create this Universe, or something, which came from somewhere we've still never resolved...

So many interesting possibilities here. And only two or three more updates until we'll know for sure what and how!

I'll probably continue to be too busy the next week or two to be in the mood to chew through bonus material or commentary. Talk to you next upd8 instead, most likely! :D

#Homestuck #hs2 #Homestuck Liveblog #Homestuck^2 #upd8 #spoiler #spoilers #Vriska #Doc Scratch #John Egbert #Breath and Blood #Light and Void #Classes and Aspects #Calliope #Roxy Lalonde #Erisolsprite #Gcatavrosprite #cw: abuse

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probablyfunrpgideas · 2 months ago

Note

So Campaign Idea

The setting is a digital world that is presented to the players as an actual world with actual history and actual people living within it.

The digital world, however, was created by a now-extinct Mindflayers who created a data version of a mindflayer long ago to create a world to which the Mindflayers can move to. But sadly, the world wasn't finishee before the Mindflayers went extinct.

The Data Mindflayer is completely aware of their kind dying, but it knows nothing else but to create the world overwriting the previous one again and again essentially recreating a loop.

The party, during the "final" session of the campaign find out about the data mindflayer and decide to confront it - in which they fail.

Now, back to the first session, where they restart at their starter levels. The characters themselves don't know anything BUT THE PLAYERS DO, and the characters essentially start to remember things as they go on through more loops and resets, creating possibly different builds each time so when they get to the final loop and get the most info and ways to defeat the Data Mindflayer they would be able to "merge" their two fav builds for the ultimate showdown.

Thanks for this idea! I was trying to put together a list of some other time loop posts on this blog, but thanks to our impeccable search function I only found this one. I think the best way to do this campaign, though, is if you purposefully add some new options and paths and adventures on each loop!

If the Dataflayer is rebuilding the world, that implies a few things: one, there's a limited amount of storage or some other resource! As characters and places get recycled, you can offer the party a quest they didn't take last time, or even a new ally or patron who's been programmed in to make the digital dimension more convincing. The other thing you can do is (especially at the end of the first run) use the digital universe to inspire a sense of dread.

"As these brave heroes sink down, lost in the dust of history, the world moves on. Generations come and go. Your hometown grows to a city, then becomes abandoned when the droughts consume the land. Thousands of years pass, and the world is unrecognizable, with towering spires and vast amphitheatres - all empty. As if they were built for a people who never existed. Millions of years pass, and everything crumbles. The stars go out one by one, like electric lights switching off. And when all is dark... a light blinks on once more. A new planet, a new sun, forming over millions of years, shaped by invisible commands, until we see a small village in a valley, where a group of heroes is meeting for the first time. Everyone, please introduce your character!"

The last bit of advice I'll give is that there has to be a way to solve the problem or convince the Dataflayer to change its ways or escape the digital world without having to win this crazy difficult fight. Maybe the PCs can find out why they're special, why they're the only people in this world who discovered it's a simulation? Or maybe they can create or find evidence of real mind flayers, allowing them to take control of the program...

#idea #tabletop rpgs #d&d #d&d 5e #d&d 3.5 #worldbuilding

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rocketturtle4 · 1 year ago

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Be My Favorite - When is the present actually the future?

I’m pretty sure writing this is about to consume my entire Saturday but by the time I wake up tomorrow La Pluie will have been out for 6 hours and my Sunday brain will have other things to think about! (it actually only took about half of it so I'm considering that a win)

I have read through my Tumblr feed for people’s thoughts on the latest Be My Favorite episode and I absolutely have to share because I found that while ideas and themes explored mirrored my own thoughts, the conclusions people were putting forth about where the show might be going were completely different.

(Posts I don't specifically reference in this but that which I definitely read and you should too include @syrena-del-mar and @shouldiusemyname here and @chickenstrangers here )

Also shoutout to @bengiyo because I used your sarge watches to reduce how much I had to go back and watch things.

LETS CLOWN

(am I, am I using it right? I have so many questions about the LINGO and I don’t know who to ask)

My Hypothesis: Kawi is going to be faced with the ultimate choice of remaining in the past or the present when the crystal ball runs out of charge and he will choose to remain in the past where he must face his uncertain future.

Okay, stay with me please

Question 1: When is Kawi actually in the present?

Last week I made a throw away post about the time travel being a metaphor for being unable to skip ahead in life without consequences. In particular this scene (a flashback at the very end of episode 4):

Got my brain thinking about how Kawi and the people around him freeze in their character development whenever he jumps forward, so maybe his present is actually in the past.

EVIDENCE

Timeline 1: OG Future

In this timeline Kawi essentially froze the moment the crystal ball was broken. In the OG Future he is distantly acquainted with classmates, sad for the death of his father (from whom he was distant), distant from Max and has never drunk any alcohol. This is all directly reflective of where he was at the time he broke the crystal ball.

Timeline 2: Future 2 – He’s Pisaengs best man

In this timeline he’s been back in the past, and acted very unlike himself because he assumes he's dreaming. At the end of this timeline he ends up in the very early stages of becoming Piseang’s bestie. We have not yet had serious (feelings) tension between Piseang and Kawi, only a single night of bonding and I would argue that in this particular future timeline, Piseang is not in love with Kawi. He has become a platonic bestie (something that could never happen without the time skip) because these were the emotions Kawi and Piseang had for each other in the past even if these were pretty fledgling emotions when Kawi left. (Also, Kawi now drinks heavily, something he did for the first time in this immediate past when he thought it was a dream).

Timeline 3: Future 3: Piseang is in love with him and abandons his own wedding.

In the past Kawi is more intentional with his actions to change things. We also see his confusion around how he became Piseangs best man because as Kawi continues to grow and learn this option doesn’t make sense (But as a frozen version of the previous past's future…) (I'm losing track of the tense I can feel it)

In this timeline we have only progressed slightly further through the past but all the development was around Kawi and Piseang and Piseang’s growing feelings (Piseang getting Kawi the plushie happens in this Future’s linked Past). And we come forward to Piseang finally giving into his feelings and kissing Kawi. This scene is very similar to Piseang almost kissing Kawi in the past in the following episode (episode 3) when they fall over because in Piseang’s arc these things happened at a pretty similar point in time, its just that in this future he was frozen at his point of realization until Kawi’s consciousness returned to his body on the morning of Piseang’s wedding. He could only act after Kawi was back to being old!Kawi, because of things being frozen.

Timeline 4: He’s Famous and it’s a mess

In the linked past here, Kawi has JUST debuted as a lead singer, has turned down Piseang kindly but Piseang has made his devotion clear, has decided to date Pear ‘because he’s in love with her’ BUT Pear is feeling uncertain about her place in Kawi’s life (evidence: both the bar scene with Not, and the hospital scene) and is friends with Max again. (Also I'm not sure if I already linked @lurkingshans post with Kawi 'interupting his own growth arc midstream.' it definitely kicked my brain into gear)

In the future he is a famous singer, distant but close to Piseang, and friends with Max (why has Max stuck with him huh?) also Not and Pear and Kwan provide, in my opinion, strong evidence for their frozenness because we’ve just seen in the past that Not has feelings for Pear and Kwan has feelings for Not, and this is the exact feelings scenario we get in the future. There has been no change. They're frozen in their feelings from 12 years ago.

We also have had posts about the idea that Kawi has gotten drunk and kissed Piseang multiple times through this jump. (Which makes perfect sense if you freeze his character at this exact point of uncertain feelings that are being ignored) (@piningintrovert here) (also this post where for some reason my @ won't let me tag dropthedemiurge IM SORRY) (also here) @becomingabeing

Also his alcoholism is spiralling because he has not learnt anything about drinking responsibly in the (mere days/weeks) it’s been since episode 1 started (and alcoholism is definitely more complicated, but in this specific context you have an individual that’s just started drinking heavily because they’ve discovered alcohol and their life is super confusing and these habits aren't checked or changed because his growth is frozen, there are simply the consequences) (not saying this is the case just the case in the context of this theory)

Counterpoint

Kawi’s dad has survived surgery in the past but is still dead in the future.

I don’t necessarily think this is strong evidence against my point but it’s worth mentioning.

Question 2:

How does Kawi’s Memory Work in these Futures?

This is a separate thread but it’s related to my theory because in Timeline’s 2 & 3, Kawi appeared to have no memory of the intervening years. (Inference: He hasn't really lived them)

Timeline 4 was a little different but the memories seemed to need specific triggers (speaking aloud, seeing a person) to come back. We saw in his arguments with Pear and Piseang that he DID seem to gain and settle into his memories more as he thought about the intervening past (intervening past = the time between when he left the past and arrived in Future 4).

We see 2 different flashbacks of the ‘Pear leave’s Kawi’ moments. 1 seemed to be Kawi remembering (trigger is when he sees Pear for the first time). 2 seems to be Piseangs own memories (flashbacks are always so frustrating because who is remembering? Is Kawi remembering this too?.

Kawi also just slips into being less jaded and work focused than his (frozen) future self apparently is. (Sudden carfree metaphorical ocean romp definitely relevant here)

ALSO Kawi freaks out about his own memory in episode 7 3/4 10.30 (re Piseang’s new number) (this almost felt like young!Kawi was overlayed with old!Kawi and so we were getting conflicting reasons for the memory lapse (is he sick? did he call Piseangs old number as young!Kawi without thinking?)

Counterpoint

The scene at the very end of episode 7 threw a small but solid spanner in the works of my brain because when does this scene take place? Piseang says eight years, original jump forward was 12 (I think) so therefor this is in the intervening years. Which I kind of thought of as frozen/fairly nonexistent (Except specifically when a character thinks about them) so I am not sure how this scene fits in.

This could be something Kawi will specifically think about before going back in time

(see this post for more clowning @sparklyeyedhimbo)

(side note, his jacket looks super similar to the flashback jacket in this counterpoint scene - it's not the same one though)

How old is Kawi’s brain?

I also made a throw away post about this last week, I have no clearer thoughts on this except that it’s intriguing to ask how old the Kawi traversing between the past and the future actually is? This post is so long I’m just going to link it. It’s not very fleshed out.

Side Point

One thing that floated into my brain while thinking about all this was the recent Step By Step episode and the dissatisfaction everyone felt about the time skips. So often used as a means of progressing a characters life while rarely showing meaningful character growth.

Could this whole show be a commentary on time skips and their conceptual flaws as a means of fast-tracking character growth?

I think it’s a bit of a reach, but I also don’t tend to read into directors/creators intentions as much so I thought I’d put it out there for people to chew over.

Additional hypotheses/questions I’m chewing on:

Q: Will his dad survive if he chooses to stay in the past to take care of him?

Q: How many sets of memories does he have, does he remember any of the intervening past between main past timeline and future 2 and main past timeline and future 3? Are the memories getting overlayed?

Conclusion

As @lurkingshan pointed out, Kawi interrupts his character growth when he jumps forward in time. We have to go back in time to keep growing. Yet we’ve gone back and forward and back and forward 4 times now and the future is always messy because the characters can’t live on without change for 12 years and still grow together. I could absolutely see the show choosing to go in the direction put forth by @wen-kexing-apologist and @stuffnonsenseandotherthings here also @lurkingshan and @ginnymoonbeam have interesting thoughts about Kawi having to stop trying to change the future and live with his choices to move forward.

It's just that I think he is going to do that in the past giving up his chance to jump forward without growth. Because he has to choose not to know where he is going, to truly live in the present.

Savy?

(please point out all the holes in my theory, I am so invested I need some PERSPECTIVE)

#be my favorite #be my favorite meta #be my favorite time travel #be my favorite the sereis #rturts is wondering

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thesimscurator · 10 months ago

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For Rent Update to Career World is Live!

The For Rent update to Career World is here! Before I link it, though, a quick:

CAUTION: There is a serious bug in the game right now that causes irreversible save file corruption. The causes of it are unclear, but it seems to have something to do with residential rentals. I actually GOT this bug while doing this update, and had to scrap two weeks’ worth of work on the update and start over completely from scratch by downloading the previous version of Career World from my own Tumblr—because once it’s in, it can’t be fixed. Luckily, I did not get it on the second attempt (I checked obsessively as I was going), but I don’t know: A) why I got it the first time, B) why I didn’t get it the second time, or C) how to prevent it from happening again in the future.

Because of this, I have not opted to overwrite the previous version of the save file with the new version as I usually do. Until this bug is fixed (please go click “Me Too” on the bug report, it’ll encourage the devs to give this more attention), I want people to have the option to play with or without rental residential lots, knowing that there may be more risk of save file corruption by playing the version with rental residentials. To be clear: neither of these two versions of Career World is currently corrupted. I have uploaded clean saves for you to download. But since I don’t know what triggers the bug, the save may become corrupted as you play, and it looks like this is marginally more likely to occur in the version that has been updated to incorporate For Rent. You will know you have triggered the corruption if you begin to see exclamation points over lots instead of the usual lot identification symbols.

If you get this bug as you play, do not save your game! And perhaps even more importantly, do not close the save you were just playing and click into another; exit the game entirely. There is some evidence that this can spread from one save file to another if you play several save files in the same session. There is, I repeat, no fix for this. The only thing you can do with a corrupted save is restore old versions until you find one that doesn’t have the corruption yet. In the case of Career World, you can always come back to this page and re-download a clean copy from this website.

That was the important info for everybody, but for a few players, I must also give the usual . . .

IMPORTANT MOD NOTE: If you use Frankk’s Language Barriers mod, you must download and install the latest version of that mod before opening the save file in order to retain language data for Tomaru, the newest language.

OK, now that we’ve covered the important need-to-knows, here are links to:

Career World updated for For Rent

Career World only updated as far as Horse Ranch—i.e. without any content from For Rent

Both are also now linked in the main post.

Phew! Alright, now we can get to the details of:

What’s New?

Rental residentials, of course! The thing to know about them first off: there is another, far more minor bug in the game right now that hard-codes the names of all rental residential lot types as whatever EA originally called the lot rather than any new names the player might have given that lot. So, many of the existing apartment buildings—which used to have names that told you what they were, like “Sunny Retirement Village” or “FutureSim Employee Housing”—have reverted to having unchangeable informationless names, or worse: misleading and defunct names, like the house with a basement rental in Britechester that has gone back to being called “Pepper’s Pub” even though I moved Pepper’s Pub and it already has that exact name on a totally separate lot (ditto for the now-duplicated “Thebe Estate”). This is a mess. I will fix it if they ever change this bug/feature/whatever it is, but at the moment, please know that rental residentials have weird names that I can’t change, and the real identity of the building is probably buried several clicks deep in the unit descriptions.

In order to combat this somewhat for players who are willing to read these Tumblr updates, here’s a list of rental residentials with specific gameplay identities that I think should be more obvious than they are with the locked lot names:

Special Rental Residentials:

1) The apartment building on the FutureSim campus (Mirage Canyon) in Oasis Springs is employee housing for employees of FutureSim Labs (the scientist career employer), or its subsidiaries Obscure Logistics (the engineering employer) and Rainy Day Entertainment (the tech guru employer), and their families. If you do not have a scientist, engineer, or tech guru in the family, you are not eligible to move into these apartments.

2) The trailer park in Bedrock Strait in Oasis Springs is a retirement community. We don’t want any young whipper-snappers here, nor any of these go-getter old folks who still work and will just remind us of the daily grind we’re trying to forget. Don’t even dream of moving here unless you are 1) an elder, and 2) retired. And no live-in children or grandchildren, either! If you can’t remember the golden age of landlines, find somewhere else to live!

3) I did a little playtesting of the solar farm in Oasis Springs for this version of the save file, and discovered that A) you couldn’t even get to any of the solar panels to maintain them the way this was originally set up, and B) it wasn’t actually possible to make money from selling electricity—the lot value was too high relative to the payback from the solar panels. But, I discovered, it is possible to have the electric payback exceed your bills if the lot is changed to a rental residential with the living quarters set as the one and only unit and the solar farm itself as common area. So that’s what I did: I fixed the solar panels so you can access them, and set the place as a rental with only one unit. You can now functionally play as a solar plant operator. And of course, the Landgraabs are your landlords. They do own the whole electric utility, after all. (This is also now true for the power plant in Evergreen Harbor and the hill house/micro wind farm in the Windslar neighborhood of Windenburg.)

4) The cluster of huts at the top of the hill in Sulani’s Ohan’ali Town is an eco-living commune that blends traditional Sulani ways of life with new green technologies. Residents live in separate off-the-grid huts with little more than bedrooms and kitchens, powered by the commune’s on-site solar panels, windmills, solar hot water heaters, and dew collectors. In the collective space, however, you’ll find a thriving taro patch, a communal art studio, game tables, a full bar, a small basketball court, chickens and insects to raise, a roadside stand for selling the commune’s produce and crafts, and lots of opportunities to interact with fellow members of this intentional community. One of the huts is generally reserved for students on study abroad who have come to learn about Sulani culture through this communal living experience—see the List of Study Abroad Opportunities (now updated for Tomarang!) for details.

5) The defunct motel in StrangerVille was bought for an almost-literal song by an eclectic throuple of artists who are very flexible about making changes proposed by tenants. Currently, all the former hotel rooms are just in the state they were when the place was a hotel, but if you move in here and want to—say—combine two units into a larger, single unit like they have done with their own, they’d be open to that. If you want to add a rooftop space to your top-floor unit, or even create some kind of wonky townhouse by linking two units that are directly above one another with a rooftop space, they’re open to that, too. If you want to install blackout curtains over all the windows, paper the walls with conspiracy-theory notes, and run secret experiments in your former hotel room, go nuts! They’ll really let you do just about anything. All you need to do is play as the owners for a minute to change these things before moving your sim in.

6) The big house where Pepper’s Pub originally was in Britechester is just that—a big house. They rent out their converted basement to university students, but this isn’t really an apartment building. The understanding with this one is that whoever lives in the above-ground house portion will always be the property owner and not just a renter—and in order to make this true, I have had to add an owning family to that section of the property, which means the college administrator Jade Rosa has been house-sitting for all this time has returned! You now have the option to dive right in to professoring or college administration with the new family that now lives there (thanks to Ivelle_creates for making the couple).

7) Both the large piazza in Tartosa where the Thebe Estate used to be, AND the apartment building at Ro Kaya Rockside in Tomarang, are mixed-use areas with commercial establishments on the ground floor (and sometimes into the upper floors) with apartments above. This is not exactly possible yet in The Sims 4, but several of the businesses are still usable—you can buy wedding dresses off the mannequins in the Tartosan bridal shop, for example, because that gameplay is tied to the mannequin object and not the lot type. Mostly, however, these commercial areas are designed with gameplay as their associated workers in mind, allowing you to live in an apartment but do work tasks in one of the on-site businesses (EX: be a cosmotologist who works in the on-lot salon).

(And a quick sidenote on the piazza in Tartosa: there is the potential for A TREMENDOUS NUMBER of apartment units on this lot. I have only designated the three that are occupied as actual units for now, because I was already running up against the per-save-file unit limit, but if you want to move your own sim in, just pick whichever of the many empty spaces suits your fancy, create the perfect apartment for your sim, and designate it as a new unit. Or, if you are really into furnishing/interior decoration and you want to turn this into basically an entire town, you can just bulldoze the existing rental residentials in other worlds, use the bb.increaserentalunitcap on cheat to allow yourself all the space you need, and go to literal town.)

8) Tam Nang Sands in Tomarang is a resort hotel. The place is set up for short-term rentals only, and is really meant to be played from the property owner perspective, to create a faux active career as a hotel manager. While it is possible to play from the tenant perspective and “stay here” on “vacation,” the game does not register it as a vacation and will make you sell your current residence in order to move here. I don’t really recommend doing that unless you live with someone else and are planning on going on vacation without them; then you can use the “split household” feature to send part of your household for a temporary stay while the other part of the household holds down the fort. If the Sims team ever release an honest-to-goodness hotel system, I will update this, but in the meantime this is better played as the manager.

9) Isda Riverfront in Tomarang is the site of the Linh family compound. While most Tomarani people have abandoned this traditional mode of housing the entire extended family in a walled compound with central courtyard and a special family spirit house, the Linh family is determined to stick to it, no matter how many foreigners marry in. And that, of course, means that unless you’re marrying in, you may not move here. Marry in or be born in, that’s the deal.

10) The colonial mansion on the former site of The Screaming Gecko in Tomarang has been set “for rent” so it can be used as a private second home by a wealthy sim. One of the new and unique things the rental system now allows us to do is have sims own multiple homes and just swap between them at will; all you have to do is set all the homes you want to own as residential rental lots, assign all the rooms to a single unit in each, and then buy all the homes as a property owner. Since property owners pay no rent to live in a property they own, voila! You can live that snowbird life and just move to Tomarang when you get tired of winter, then move back to your original house (or any other vacation homes you own) when you need a change of scenery. I seriously considered having Judith Ward buy this house, since there is text in the tiger sanctuary about her having a particular connection to it, but ultimately decided I wanted you, the player, to have the opportunity to buy this with whatever sim you’re playing—whether Judith Ward herself or any other. And bonus, you can actually use this method to play out tax-evasion-by-the-wealthy storylines, because the property taxes on a big, expensive mansion that you own outright are astronomical, but taxes on “rental” properties you “manage” is just a flat $50 per unit per day, which is often far less than what you would have been paying on an owned house. This pack introduced lots of new paths to crime, for rich and poor alike!

All in all, there are 22 rental residentials in the save file now, with a total of 90 units (so you have 10 to play around with still!), the overwhelming majority of which are just empty and waiting for you to select and move your own sims in. If you choose to live in one of these buildings and want to have more neighbors, just move a few in from the gallery or elsewhere in the save.

And a quick note about a choice I didn’t make: I have not split any of the boarding houses in Copperdale into separate units for different students, because having a whole bunch of high school students with common interests in the same household is what allows you to control them as a group at the school and have them engage in active club activities together. This was half the point of creating the boarding-house system for Copperdale in the first place, so they are always going to be giant, unwieldy households full of sims. Embrace the challenge! You can play single high school students in any old save file. The same goes for the three movie set households added in the last update: all those sims need to be in the same household and simultaneously controllable for the gameplay to function correctly, so they have not been subdivided.

Tomarang Makeover:

As with some previous worlds, I’ve tried to lean in to the differing neighborhood identities by making Morensong bustling, crowded-together, modern, and rundown, while Koh Sahpa has a much more chill, spread-out, traditional, and upscale vibe. Morensong is overrun with street cats (i.e. it has “cat hangout” as a neighborhood trait), while Koh Sahpa has “peace and quiet” as its neighborhood trait. Both neighborhoods of Tomarang, however, have “mold” as a world challenge, because the air is just so heavy with moisture—the only exceptions to this are lots with absolutely no indoor space whatsoever, and therefore sufficient airflow to prevent mold growth. But if there’s an interior, there’s going to be mold.

The limited number of lots presented a challenge for filling Morensong with businesses and activities, but I think I did pretty well, considering. Its four lots are split half-and-half between residential and community, but one of the residentials is a mixed-use building with businesses on the ground floor, including a functional street market where you can play as a vendor if you’re living in the building. And I managed to pack quite a lot into the two community lots, as well! The one currently set as a thrift and bubble tea shop can have its lot type changed to karaoke bar, bar, lounge, or nightclub at will, depending on which spaces you want to focus on, what events you’d like thrown there, etc. And for the other lot, simmers made so many wonderful and creative alternatives to the bland national park that I couldn’t pick just one, so I picked four. I have turned this into one of the Eco Lifestyle four-in-one community space lots, with each of its states a completely different venue by a different simmer. If you want to keep it as a botanical garden, just leave it on the “community garden” state and you will have a fuller version with actual plants for your sims to tend (all flowers and tropical plants), spirit houses, and a picnic area—great if you’re playing as a botanist or a florist. If you’re some kind of vendor who doesn’t live at Ro Kaya Rockside and you want a more playable version of the night market, just set it to “marketplace” and now you’ll have easily editable stands at which to sell your wares. If you want a community center with tons to do, set it to “makerspace,” and if you’re looking for a non-rabbit-hole temple / Tomarani wedding venue, set it to “community space.”

In Koh Sahpa, I played around a bit with the new career and lifestyle possibilities unlocked by the new rental residential venue type. Three of the five lots out here are rental residentials, but none of the three are classic apartment buildings or townhouses like you’ll find in Morensong. One is a luxury hotel, where playing as the property owner means keeping the guests happy and the place in tip-top shape with very short leases and lots of rules. Another is a traditional family compound, where your “tenants” (or your “landlord,” depending on which household you’re playing) are actually your family members, and the point is to do lots of gathering and socializing in the common space, throw potlucks every night to represent big family dinners, and all pitch in to help when a maintenance or emergency event hits. In this “rental,” there are no rules and the leases are basically forever. The final “rental” is only marked as a rental residential to enable you to buy it as a second home—once you’ve purchased it, all you have to do is turn your own home into a rental residential and you can move between your two houses at will. In addition to these rental residentials, a straight-up vacation rental and a spa round out the primarily vacation-oriented neighborhood of Koh Sahpa.

Of course, this is a career-focused save, so a lot of the choices I made with Tomarang’s lots—like the ones described above—were career driven. But identifying careers for Tomarang was a bit tricky. For Rent certainly came with new ways to make money, a new part-time career, and several interesting gameplay features that fold particularly well into existing careers . . . but interestingly, none of these new features were particularly location-specific. You can be a landlord or a handyperson anywhere, and the same goes for blackmail or break-ins. So while I made many additions to the Career Chart as a result of this pack, none of these new career options are limited to Tomarang. Instead, Tomarang has joined the lists of especially good places to pursue several other pre-existing careers, like fisherman (I mean, those waters!).

That said, I did make Tomarang an especially great spot to pursue anything that jives well with vending your wares at the Night Market (and the many extensions to it I added), so being a freelance crafter, artist, food stall owner, fisherman, gardener, florist, jeweler, or anything else that consists primarily of making or collecting small items to sell will be particularly rewarding when playing in Tomarang. I had also listed a new ministry of labor career as a masseur back when the Spa Day refresh came out, but never had much of a dedicated space for it. Now, with Tomarang, I decided to lean into the well-regarded tradition of Thai massage by including three different venues of varying quality where your masseur sim can give commercial massage in this world: a seedy downmarket massage parlor on the Ro Kaya Rockside lot, a mid-tier venue at the historical spa in downtown Koh Sahpa, and an upscale open-air massage area at the four-star Tam Nang Sands Resort Hotel. Plus, there’s a private massage room in the colonial mansion, so if you’re playing as a massage therapist and someone moves in there, feel free to invite yourself over and charge them for private massage services.

On the subject of things at Ro Kaya Rockside being seedy, I chose the building I did for that lot because the builder, eenitmartini (Matinee on YouTube—go check her out!) made this absolutely fantastic criminal lair/hideout/underground nightclub as part of her building, so all credit to her for the fact that there is now an “Illegal Gambling Ring” club in this save file, hosted at Ro Kaya Rockside and open only to criminals, secret agents, and undercover cops. This means that, while not exclusive, Tomarang is also now an especially good place to be a criminal—which is great, because the For Rent pack enabled me to create a plethora of new specialties within the criminal career, including things like “B&E specialist” and “blackmailer” (see the Career Chart for details).

As usual, I have also used the T.O.O.L. mod to add extra activities to the open parts of the world—most notably, I added several extra stalls to the night market, so you can play there as a vendor. You’ll note that most of them do not have sales tables/food stalls at the front of the tent; this is because, as I was testing, I discovered that you can’t actually sell anything using these objects unless the game knows you own them, so you’ll have to bring your own and place it from your sim’s inventory for these spaces to be functional. There are two that are already complete: Alon Sadya’s food stall in the main part of the market, and Chánh Linh’s fish stall on the other side of the buildings, over near the public toilets. These stalls are completely functional for these individuals, but will not be for anyone else unless you have the owners remove those key objects so you can replace them with others that belong to your active household.

Townie Updates:

Vanesha Cahyaputri, poster child for the pack and model landlord, is now running a four-star hotel in Koh Sahpa! She has quite the job trying to keep her little sister from breaking into people’s hotel rooms to snoop, in addition to keeping the buffet table stocked with local delicacies, making drinks for guests and offering them massages when they emerge from their rooms, and of course keeping up with maintenance and bookings.

The extended members of the Linh-Sadya clan now live in a traditional Tomerani family compound that has allowed me to split them into three households instead of two. They routinely throw big potluck-style family dinners in their shared courtyard. The elder patriarchs have both retired from their more demanding careers and are now in relaxing part-time jobs that cater to their interests—namely, fisherman for Chánh (complete with functional night market food stall!) and handyperson for Arturo. Their elder daughter Liên and her husband Alon both work in Morensong, where Liên makes over sims at the salon at Ro Kaya Rockside and Alon runs a night market street grill. Auntie Thi is still a secret agent, but as part of her work she has now infiltrated an illegal gambling ring in Morensong and is trying to uncover secrets at their weekly poker night. She also adopted a new cat, Bub II, a toyger who is a smaller, more approachable version of the tigers that are Tomarang’s special animal. All members of the extended Linh family now know learnable recipes for Vietnamese and Selvadoradian dishes, reflecting their mixed heritage.

The Bun Ma family have established themselves as fixtures at Ro Kaya Rockside, Morensong’s shadier district. Bua runs a hole-in-the-wall noodle soup place, Nin gives massage at various locations around Tomarang, and Kasem runs the illegal gambling ring under the building that Thi has infiltrated—in between break-ins and expert hacking of various trust funds. Yes, you wouldn’t expect it from the sweet-faced young father of an adorable toddler, but that’s part of what makes him such an effective criminal.

But wait, there’s more! A few sims outside of Tomarang have also been updated:

Eliza Pancakes has become much more investigative since becoming a cop. Some people might even call her nosy. Kasem had better hope she never uncovers any of his secrets.

Katrina Caliente took the scads of money she has gotten from selling expensive Selvadoradian artifacts to museums, bought the other three condos in her building, knocked the whole building down, and built a modern desert villa for herself, her two daughters, her dog, and whatever boy toy she’s currently entertaining (still Don, at the moment). She was tired of sharing space, and there are more than enough apartments in Oasis Springs, anyway.

Geoffrey Landgraab got tired of playing secret agent and has returned to what he really always has been: an electric company mogul who owns and operates power plants around the worlds. It’s up to him to fill job vacancies in these plants by “hiring” onsite managers, keeping them happy, and handling maintenance on the plants. What is more, at the same time that he realized he was only fooling himself about the secret agent thing, he also realized he was only fooling himself about being family-oriented, because let’s face it: he disowned one of his sons, the other one is evil, and his wife is a criminal. Instead, he has decided to focus his love and attention outward to the world by re-branding himself as a generous philanthropist. He now regularly attends charity benefit parties, gives to online charities, says yes to anyone who calls him asking for a donation, volunteers his time, and will even go on sprees where he goes around just handing money to random sims on the street. Good thing he has so much that he could live off just investments for the rest of his life.

SimTube star Dustin Broke is running out of material. His jokes, memes, and dances have gotten a little dated. Over time, he has become—well—cringe.

Judith Ward has adopted a tiger (and given a boatload more money to the tiger sanctuary, besides!), as per her lore in the new pack. Her in-house handyman is also now in the actual handyperson career. It’s good to be the queen!

The university administrator who had Jade Rosa house-sitting for so long has returned from the family vacation she took to Tartosa to show her kids their father’s homeland. The family is now happily reinstalled in their big fancy Britechester home, back to work as Dean of Admissions and adjunct art professor, respectively, at the University of Britechester, and back to charging Jade rent for her basement apartment underneath their house. If you’re looking to play either of the advanced branches of the Education career, they are now an option.

The group of salarypersons I downloaded originally as unhoused NPCs in order to give Kado Akiyama some co-workers to do karaoke with have now moved into houses on his own street! While I left most units empty in the places I converted to rental residentials, I did feel kinda weird about leaving an entire street’s worth of stand-alone houses empty except for the Akiyama family—it was just a little too post-apocalyptic for my taste. So since I already had this Mt.Komorebi-based club, I figured I’d turn its other members into neighbors and integrate them into the community a little more.

For users of Frankk’s Language Barriers mod, which is a supported mod in this save file, I have updated the native languages of some previously-existing townies for the new inclusion of Tomaru. Before this pack came out, I used Komorebigo as the stand-in for all languages originating from Eastern Asia writ large—now, I have separated it out into Komorebigo for East Asian languages (not only Japanese but also Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Mongolian, etc.) and Tomaru for Southeast Asian languages (Vietnamese, Thai, Tagalog, Malay, etc.). So now, for example, the Filipino sim Jules Rico, who shipped with the Eco Lifestyle expansion, is natively bilingual in Simlish and Tomaru (previously, I’d had him set as natively bilingual in Simlish and Komorebigo). So there have been a few alterations to townies like that. I hope to get to do more updates like this in the future as the Sims team diversifies the worlds on offer and Frankk—who absolutely makes my game with this beautiful mod—continues to expand the language offerings of the Sims universe.

Other stuff that has changed:

I took that excellent new object that looks like a “for sale” sign and stuck it outside every unoccupied house in this save file. I just thought it was a nice touch.

While I was working on this update, I saw a YouTube video that reminded me what a great object the photo booth from High School Years was, and realized I was under-utilizing it. I have now gone back and scattered several more of these around, ensuring that each world has at least one photo booth somewhere. Thanks, lilsimsie!

Pressure cookers and kettles have been strategically added in places where I thought they were needed.

A few of the more run-down houses have the new “maintenance” lot challenge—and some have mold, as well!

I realized there was nowhere to get nectar in Tartosa (a serious oversight), so I scattered a bunch of bottles around the public areas of the large piazza that is the local rental residential in Porto Luminoso. They are just debug bottles and nothing special—for that, you’re going to have to help Hugo Villareal restart Tartosa’s defunct nectar-making business. I’m sure his bottles will be better than the debug ones.

All this updating took me into spring, so seasonal lots (including prom!) have been updated.

That’s it for this update! When you don’t randomly get the corruption bug, it’s actually quite enjoyable. I had a ton of fun doing all the building conversions and playtesting, and I hope you’ll have fun playing, too!

Download now: Career World For Rent update

#career world #sims 4 #the sims 4 #ts4 #sims 4 save file #the sims 4 save file #ts4 save file #ts4 gameplay #sims 4 gameplay #the sims 4 gameplay #the sims 4 for rent #sims 4 for rent #ts4 for rent

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hobgobbin · 1 year ago

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Forgot to post these earlier but heres some fresh new D&D mini adopts :)

PRICES: $10 -- Transparent version of your adopt as-is $15 -- Transparent version of your adopt plus I'll make small edits $25 -- Transparent file + edits + additional headshot $45 -- Transparent + edits + A more detailed full body of your adopt $55+ -- previous + we can discuss more art DM or send me an ask to claim !

Availability + Rules under cut

1. Goblin Ranger ♀ CLOSED 2. Gnome Cleric (of Tyr) ♀ 3. Dwarf Rogue ♀ CLOSED 4. Halfling Barbarian ♀ CLOSED 5. Yuan-Ti Artificer ♀ CLOSED 6. Half-Orc Cleric (of Selune) ♀ CLOSED 7. Drow Druid (Circle of Spores) ♀ CLOSED 8. Air Genasi Paladin (of Leira) ♀ 9. Hobgoblin Monk ♀ CLOSED 10. Tabaxi Bard ♀ 11. Lizardfolk Artificer ♂ CLOSED 12. Aarakocra Sorcerer (Wild Magic) ♂ 13. Dragonborn Wizard ♂ CLOSED 14. Tiefling Sorcerer (Divine) ♂ CLOSED 15. Elf Blood Hunter ♂ CLOSED 16. *Kobold Warlock ♂ CLOSED 17. *Goblin Warlock ♂ CLOSED 18. Goliath Bard ♂ CLOSED 19. Bugbear Ranger ♂ CLOSED 20. Earth Genasi Fighter ♂ *will give a discount if you buy these two together. they are fighting for specialest lil guy of the cult

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shastafirecracker · 1 year ago

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For previous context, see @mydetheturk‘s post about Vash fearing Knives & the violation of Vash’s autonomy, and the followup Stampede-specific post by @pancake-breakfast about that Vash‘s relationship with guns.

Now for my ramblings, which are ALL SPOILERS ALL THE TIME for all versions of Trigun but particularly the manga - so please be mindful if you’re doing book club and don’t want to know things before you get to them!!

ETA I made a couple of edits because I didn’t realize I copy pasted the pre-proofreading version of my doc, lol my brain is fried like an egg (it’s feels-like-110F outside rn)

So I tagblogged before but I'll own my shit this time: I wanna talk about Vash-as-gun. Vash's three guns move from external to his body (revolver) to implanted foreign object in his body (gun arm) to literally part of his cellular structure (angel arm). His reluctance to reveal each one steps up in magnitude. His angel arm is the primary reason he sees himself as monstrous.

Pancake’s analysis of Stampede is fantastic and I just want to loop in the other two versions because I have had the brainrot for decades and adore them all. First, it's really interesting to me that what pancake said about Knives giving or creating the conditions for all of his weapons is also explicitly true of the 98 anime but not of the original source material - it seems like adaptations really like to source Vash's access to weapons and/or ability to use weapons back to his brother, "the violent one," positioning Vash as almost ontologically nonviolent. But I want to look at Maximum for a minute because the difference there is absolutely fascinating to me.

In 98 and Stampede, Vash shoots Knives with a gun Knives gave him. In Maximum, the flashback where he loses his arm, Vash simply picks up a gun that was nearby - specifically a gun that belonged to a human who was brutalizing him, and whom Knives had just murdered in order to rescue Vash from harm. Vash doesn't need to be handed a tool of violence; he doesn't have that moment that he has in both 98 and Stamp where he looks at it in shock, as if he'd never considered touching such a thing. No Vash is easy to anger, but Maximum Vash is the only one, upon feeling extreme anger, to immediately turn to the nearest option for retaliation. In Max we also never see how Vash got The revolver - it isn't special, it doesn't have a backstory or a secret extra purpose, it's just a gun. Just a gun that Vash has trained himself to be very, very skilled at using, presumably one in a long line of guns he has trained with.

Something I was talking about on Discord recently with some folks is that Maximum Vash is extremely willing to hurt people. He does not kill, but he does not shy away from committing violent acts, and it is much more clear through the artwork and expressions that when he shoots people, it fucking hurts them. 98 Vash retains his willingness to shoot basically anyone, but sanitizes it somewhat - his shots to the shoulders, hands, legs, etc all just get an "augh!" voice beat and someone falling over. Obviously there's real-world reasons (rating, distribution, animation style) for the lack of blood and for simplifying artwork; this is not a criticism. 98 is more cartoonish all around and I adore it and want to squish its little cheeks. BUT, back on topic: in the cases of both 98 and Maximum, we see Vash very willing to shoot people nonlethally, to subdue them - but nonlethal gunshot wounds are still an extreme physical trauma! Everyone Vash shoots suffers for it. They will have pain, possibly surgery, they'll need recovery time, they'll need medicines that might be limited in availability, they may lose function in parts of their bodies. Maximum I think invites the reader the most explicitly to think about these things, as a couple of times we see goons post-fighting-Vash in hospitals (right? I think that's true).

Stampede is fascinating in that it's chosen to make almost all of Vash's nonlethal, subduing combat moves based around using his gun as a cudgel. He smacks people unconscious all the time. And that's not to say that concussions don't have their own long term consequences, but his unwillingness to pull the trigger is part of that whole this-is-a-younger-Vash thing. I do wonder how much more willing to fire he will be in season 2. Anyway.

I'm going to gloss past his prosthetic for the moment because I haven't fully formulated my thoughts about it yet - something something body horror, something something self destructive choices made while depressed, the use of grindhouse aesthetic, the complex set of social dynamic & psychological differences between open carry and concealed carry, idk idk more other thinky thoughts I haven't thought yet.

I want to return to the angel arm though because the thing I restrained myself from saying in the book club tag due to spoilers is that: this is a gun only Knives and Vash can fire. For the first ~massive number of pages of the manga, only Knives ever fires an angel arm, and he always only fires Vash's angel arm. Knives is also perfectly capable of summoning the same sort of vast destructive potential, though in the manga his takes the form of giant blades instead of a gun (whooooole other post about bringing a gun to a swordfight & vice versa, please refer to volume 14 of Maximum). But he desires to access Vash's destructive potential instead of his own. Knives' motivations are also a whole other post. The point I wanted to make was this:

Vash voluntarily fires his own angel arm ONCE, as far as I can recall. Correct me if I'm wrong. But the only time he fully generates the arm under his own power, in his right mind, of his own volition, is to escape the Ark. He has just emerged from the most oppressive and gruesome violation of his bodily autonomy he's ever experienced and, as far as we know, ever will. He has no other weapons available to him, barely even any clothes: all he has access to is his body, so he uses it. Knives shows clear shock and rage, potentially at Vash using a power Knives has come to feel belongs to Knives. Shock and rage at Vash reclaiming not only his body but the part of his biological identity that Knives knows Vash has been trying to excise for their whole lives. This may be the single most psychologically impactful moment of defiance towards Knives that Vash has ever shown, except for one other, which I will get to.

Not only does Vash fire the arm, he displays a shocking mastery of it. Somehow by putting him in a pressure cooker for months Knives has turned coal to diamond here: Vash went from unable to access his own latent power to, from then on, exhibiting comfort and even finesse with using it. He generates the arm on the Ark oriented to fire at Knives, and then effortlessly reverses the orientation to fire behind himself to make an emergency exit. Later, when Vash accesses his power again, he is able to use tiny, controlled bursts of it to not only destroy things but to load other objects (bullets) with unreleased power which he can activate at his choosing. That is a truly bonkers shift in skill and I love how the manga underplays it, because Vash so rarely says anything about how he feels about his own relationship with power, so you have to take these readings from his actions.

The other impactful moment of defiance I mentioned above is related to that total mastery of the angel arm/gate: Vash ultimately brings his trio of guns full circle by imparting the inherent quality of himself-as-gun into the most external of his guns, the original revolver. [Tangent: It's a neat visual in Stampede that they had him making gate bullets in the final showdown in episode 12, but I kind of dislike its placement in the narrative, because to me Vash's gate-bullets from the very end of the manga are a powerful symbol of his journey through his abilities. Maybe Stampede is suggesting that being plugged into the matrix and like, turning inside out through his gate or whatever in ep 11 did the same thing as the pressure cooker of the Ark in the manga, idk, we need season 2.] He makes the gate bullets for his final fight with Knives for perfectly valid strategic reasons (total control over his energy expenditure so he doesn't risk burning out by miscalculating mid-fight) but beyond strategy, there's just the fact that he's truly spitting in Knives' face by putting Plant/Gate power into a human tool. In Knives' eyes, the tool of their oppressors.

Vash melds the tool of the self with the tool of the oppressor to defy both. To prove that power is just power, it's all malleable and interchangeable, and that what matters is what you choose to do with it. Vash epitomizes "guns don't kill people, people do." (Another tangent to say that I'm not expressing my personal beliefs here; I'm sketching out stuff I'm reading into the narrative of a story, not writing a manifesto. Character study doesn't mean agreeing with or lauding everything a character stands for.)

Anyway. Vash's ultimate victory comes from two distinct ways that he chooses to use his inhumanity: first, he externalizes his destructive potential by placing it into a human-made, nonliving tool - essentially, finally able to excise from himself the part of being a Plant that had always felt monstrous to him. Second, he finally fully internalizes the part of being a Plant that he had rejected out of fear and self-disgust: intergenerational communication. He wins by talking to his sisters. He wins by allowing his selfhood to be subsumed by the collective and by trusting his own kind to love him and listen to him and not try to take away his hard-fought sense of self (all things that Knives did to him multiple times). His sisters listen to him and then they let him return to himself. I don't think he'd ever felt safe talking to them before - maybe guilty and scared, that by so thoroughly rejecting his own species, they would reject him right back. Along with the trauma reactions Knives caused, of course.

I think that's all I had at the moment about Vash-as-gun in the manga... I might return some time to the prosthetic, or go back to the other versions for more thinky noodling. But yeah! More meta plz! Delicious Trigun meta in the year of our lord 2k 23 absolutely unbelievable, we are feasting well.

#trigun #trigun maximum #trigun meta #trigun spoilers #trigun maximum spoilers #HEAVY SPOILERS meta post #vash the stampede

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lanland04moure · 2 years ago

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Daniel Ricciardo - I'm here baby

I admired the photograph in my hands sadly, feeling my eyes burn with held back tears. I couldn't cry, not in the privacy of an aeroplane. I miss her so much, I have missed her so much these last few difficult months.

My heart is full of desire to see her again, to hold her in my arms again.

—Passengers on flight 6033 France Airways to Perth, this is Captain Antoine Bélanger, I am pleased to report that we are about to land—.

The Captain's voice broke the silence that had settled on the plane, everyone began to prepare for landing, and I couldn't help but think that I was just a few minutes away from seeing her again...

When I finally arrived home, I entered in total silence, I tried to remain as quiet as possible, I wanted to surprise her.

I left my luggage at the entrance, I took one of my cameras from a cabinet nearby, I used to leave them within reach for special moments. I started to look for her around the place, it was about 10 in the morning, there were three options; 1.- In the kitchen, having breakfast. 2.- In the living room, studying. 3.- In the greenhouse.

I knew the answer very well, I was in the last one, I loved taking care of her flowers.

I approached slowly, I could see her through the glass door, surrounded by chrysanthemums, carnations and tulips. Her beauty stood out among those colours and flowers.

She looked as beautiful as I remembered, my heart fluttered. I moved forward to slowly open the door, positioned my camera at the perfect angle and pressed the little button. I captured her image, her scenery and her beauty in a picture next to a path of flowers.

The sound emitted by the camera surprised her, making her jump slightly and turn in my direction. She opened her small lips slightly as she looked at me even more surprised. She brought her hands to her face and let out a small sob. I walked over to her and took her in my arms, wrapping my arms around her with all the love I had to give.

—I'm here baby, I'm back—. Little sobs left her body as her hands clung to my back.

—Dan, I missed you so much. The time went on forever—.

—It's okay babe, now I'm finally back, I promise I won't leave you alone for a long time—.

I was promising her something that I might not be able to keep, but I couldn't think beyond the fact that I had her in my arms, I had her with me. I was back home and I didn't want to go far away again.

—I missed you, I missed you so much. Damn it Daniel, I love you so much—.

I pulled away from her and took her face in my hands, gently wiped the path of her tears and looked her straight in the eyes.

—I missed you too, you have no idea. I love you so much—. I pulled her face slightly to join our lips in a kiss, because after months we were together again.

———————————————

This is my first time posting on this platform about F1, I hope you like it; in case you like to read any of my previous posts in F1 version, you can find them on wattpad (Hira hdx).

#f1 x reader #f1 imagine #f1 one shot #f1 x you #f1 x oc #f1 drabble #f1 #daniel ricciardo #dr3 x reader #dr3

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netscapenavigator-official · 9 months ago

Note

I need to see the spreadsheet please

Also if CUR doesn't rank top 5 we are mortal enemies

I hate to inform you, but the reason I've been rather protective of the spreadsheet's entirety is because I know, for a fact, that I have some rather unpopular opinions on these games that the more dedicated fandom would probably not like.

Also, my rankings are very subjective, and they tend to come down to one thing: How stressed I was playing the game. A lot of factor's can contribute to this. For example, how often I got stuck and had to use a walkthrough guide to get unstuck; how rewarding the plot was; how intuitive the controls were; etc.

That being said, I'm a massive weenie, and spooky games tend to do unfairly worse in my ratings because they stress me out. Meanwhile, cozy and snowy games tend to do unfairly better, which only pushes the spooky games further down the list.

Having said all that, I regret to inform you that Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor placed 24/34. It placed below Treasure in the Royal Tower, and above Message in a Haunted Mansion. Here's the full spreadsheet where I also account for if I had watched Gab Smolder's playthrough beforehand and which order I played the games in. The more games I played, the more familiar with the series I got. It also doesn't help that the first UI had awful click-points and navigation arrows, but I digress. Here's the full thing:

Of course, this was all for my own personal fun, so nobody take this too seriously. If you wanna know why I ranked a certain game the way I did, you can always ask. I might not always remember, but I can try giving my reasons. I ranked them in real-time, immediately after finishing them, so while I have fondness and neo-nostalgia for a lot of the games I ranked poorly, they're often ranked so because my first playthrough was stressful.

Also, each of the red squares in the "Ranking" column is a comment I've added because something abnormal occurred during this game that affected its rating. I will post the red-square comments below.

Nancy Drew Ranking Addition Comments

The additional comments will not appear in the order in which they were ranked. Instead, they will be organized by the release number of the game.

Game 01 - Secrets Can Kill (Original Version)

I encountered a bug that softlockered the game, forcing me to start over from a previous save. It then happened again, and instead of loading, I saved over my previous save, meaning I had to restart from even further back.

During her second-to-last conversation with Daryl Gray, Nancy receives a note. Daryl mentions this note; however, if the player chooses two out of the five dialogue options and then doesn't end the conversation, the note is lost and broken forever. The game cannot progress until Nancy sees this note.

Game 02 - Stay Tuned for Danger

This game is notorious for being easily softlocked. The wire-cutters, which cause the issue, would've softlocked my game, too, if I hadn't been using a walkthough guide for the majority of the game.

Game 14 - Danger by Design

This game was previously "disqualified" because I softlocked it and was unable to complete it without restarting.

There is a book Nancy must buy from one of the merchants in order to escape the art vault. However, when diving in the catacombs, a rat will steal one item from the player. The rat stole this essential book, and I did not know it was essential. I had not opened or read the book. As a result, Nancy made no note of it in her journal. As a result, the game was softlocked because it incorrectly assume I had the information I needed. This game would've been the first instance a softlock would've forced me to start over, completely, if I hadn't used a walkthrough guide to cheat.

This initially made me so upset that I "disqualified" the game for it. However, in hindsight, The Deadly Device literally made me cry, and I spent four days on it. Still, though, Danger by Design is not a fantastic game and only gained one point.

Game 22 - Trail of the Twister

I managed to softlock this game. However, the problem was not the game, itself. Instead, it was Wine/CrossOver. I was playing the game via CrossOver on Linux, and for some reason, the entire game worked flawlessly except using the key to open Scott's desk. You have to open his desk at the end of the game in order to trigger the final task. As a result, the game was softlocked. However, when I moved my save files over to a Windows machines, the desk opened, no problem.

Game 33 - Midnight in Salem

This is probably the hardest rank in the entire spreadsheet. This is because the story and plot within the game were fantastic. This was probably one of the best Nancy Drew plots within the entire series. However, this game had serious graphical and performance issues. In addition, the navigation controls were a regression back to the original few games, with clickboxes that were not only difficult to find, but also led you to places that you didn't expect them to. Overall, the plot was fantastic, but the graphics were abysmal. I'd say this game looks even worse than STFD. At least that game has a somewhat neo-nostalgic charm to it.

#nancy drew #nancy drew games #retro gaming #ranking #ranked #spreadsheet

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that-girl-lyra · 10 months ago

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My Fitness Favourites (2024 Master Post)

This is sort of like my own master post and or an update upon my previous one on Reddit, but please remember that like all things, not everything will work for everyone. I am not a doctor or certified PT (yet!). I'm just a girl who wanted to lose weight and found a passion for all things gym and fitness related :) With that being said, I hope that you guys find the tools that I used helpful to you, and I can not wait to see your progress <3

Apps

Here are some of the apps that I used and still use to this day to help track my fitness progress. I’ve gone through a bunch of different fitness apps and these are by far my favorites.

FitNotes

This app is super straightforward. I use it each time I go to the gym or do a home workout to track the number of sets, reps, and weights. There are no ads and it's completely free. You can also add in your own workouts and machines if you can't find what you’re doing in their list. 10 out of 10, highly recommend!

FitBod

I no longer use this app HOWEVER, if you’re just starting out I think this app would be a good place to get started. It lays out a workout plan for you based on what your goals are, and it even shows you HOW to do each workout if you’re unsure of the movements and form. I found it super helpful when I started out and I hope you do too! I will say, the free version does give you a lot, however it does have a paid plan to which I am unfamiliar.

Tabata Timer

Personally, nowadays I only use this app occasionally but if you’re not a fan of counting reps, this may be a better alternative. You can create workouts and customized times for sets, breaks, rests, etc. I like to use this for my kettlebells and mace work at home, but you can use it however you wish! Bonus points because it's also 100% free. We love free shit here lol.

MyNetDiary

Similar to MyFitnessPal, this is an app that tracks your calorie input and output. I prefer it’s interface over MyFitnessPal personally, and this is the app I used to lose 40+lbs in 2022. Along with a food scale, this is a very useful tool, and I still use it when I go into a cut. The free plan is great and it doesn't force you into a paid one. You have the option to upgrade, but its not necessary unless you really really really wanna see all of your macros besides calories, sodium, protein and carbs.

Alarmy

Sleep is probably one of the most important things for your overall mental and physical health. I used to suck at waking up early but I really really wanted to become an early bird and track my sleep. I found Alarmy and I haven’t looked back. In the free version, you can be awoken with annoying sounds and tasks to turn off your alarm, as well as track your sleep and sleep quality.

Websites

TDEE Calculator

As I said in my previous master post, a good place to start is to find out what your TDEE is (total daily energy expenditure). Basically, how many calories you burn just by being alive. You can go from there to find out how many calories you should eat depending on if you're trying to lose/gain weight, as well as protein intake on top of your desired fitness level. A very handy tool. Just plug in your current height, weight, age, and fitness level and you’ll be good to go!

Equipment / Tools

Xiaomi MiFit Band

Ima be honest, I really hated the samsung fitness watches. I went through 2 of them due to battery issues and I never even physically damaged them. I got the Xiaomi MiFit band because I was sick of paying so much money on fitness watches and this thing has the durability of a Nintendo 64 I swear. I only charge the sucker like, maybe once a week, and it gives a pretty accurate read of how many calories I burn during walking, workouts, etc. Also, the thing was like $40 or something. Ive had it over a year and the only thing I’ve had to replace was the strap (a pack of two was like $6). The strap was also my fault for breaking it lol.

Renpho Scale

Sort of a tool/app combo. The scale is around $20 on amazon and it tracks your weight (duh) as well as body composition to a fairly accurate degree. The gym I currently go to has a body composition machine and I’ve done a DexaScan in the past and the information between all of them is a close match. The app is free as well and I love it.

Adjustable Dumbbells

I love the gym, I do, but my heart will always belong to dumbbells. There is so much you can do with them from arms, legs, core, back,etc. They’re a great piece of kit and I will never stop using them. A set of adjustable dumbbells will put you back a few bucks sure, but imo, it's a worthy investment in the long run. Plus if you’re like me and you have limited space in your home, they’re a great choice.

Supplements

I wanna reiterate the fact that I am NOT a doctor lol but I'm sure everyone has seen a metric ton of influencers and PT’s recommending this or that supplement. Truly, I don’t take many and the only one I can recommend personally is Creatine. Just remember to drink water with it and you’re golden. Some people get a mildly upset stomach on it but again, that all depends on the person. I’ve personally never gotten an upset stomach with it and I take/have taken 2 types of Creatine (Monohydrate and Alkaline).

You’ll hear about a “loading phase” but you don’t have to do that if you don't want to. It's not necessary.

The only other thing I take is magnesium but that's just to help me not have hypnic jerks when I go to sleep. Literally no other reason lol.

General Advice/Tips

If you’re just starting out with your own fitness journey and begin to tell people that you’re working out, eating right, etc, you may experience some negativity from others. Once you say anything like “Im working out/losing weight!” everyone and their mother becomes a health expert. I’ve gotten people telling me to not lift weights because “Its bad for your bones!”, or “Your heart will explode eventually!”.

These are people who are just jealous and they envy your dedication to yourself. Ignore them. Misery often demands company.

You may also find lovely little messages in your dm’s from that one girl in high school who was a bully and is now shilling MLM products. Please for the love of all that is good and green on this earth, do not interact! They will send you really crappy copy and paste messages saying that they can help you on your journey with “insert snake oil product here”.

There is no magic pill, drink, juice, cleanse, detox, whatever the hell that will do the work for you. Pyramid Schemes that are the most common for this are ItWorks, JuicePlus, Herbalife, and BeachBody. Idk if Plexus is still around but still. If you’re ever unsure about anything, I would pay a visit to r/antiMLM for more info.

Diets, diets, diets are all the rage (as they are always). Guru’s telling their followers to eat only animal based because “its how our ancestors ate!” or “do x to lower your cortisol levels”, and “STAY AWAY FROM BREAD AND SEED OILS!”. Block, ignore, and unfollow.

I don’t know about you, but I absolutely fucking love bread and cheese and will turn any Olive Garden within a 20 mile radius of me into my bitch with unlimited breadsticks and pasta.

Yes, we all know certain food is healthier than others, but at the end of the day as long as you are watching what you eat, and getting your workouts in, it doesn't matter. If you want a burger then eat the burger.

In Conclusion

I could go on and on forever about anything and everything fitness related. Book recommendations, creators to follow/unfollow, routines…I love it all, I truly do. And one day I hope to become a certified PT myself, but until that day comes, I simply am not. I'm just a girl who got fit, and want to see others achieve their goals as well. I know how hard and awful the process can be, but I guarantee you that every step you take up that mountain is worth every second of the view at the top.

Movement is improvement, and as long as you keep moving, you’ll keep improving.

If you’re here reading this, then you’ve already taken step 1 and I couldn't be more proud of you. Its a hard thing to look in the mirror and say to yourself “I need to change ''. Self confrontation is often very difficult and disheartening. But where many have chosen to give up, you chose to step up. And I am so fucking thrilled that you did <3

If anyone has anything else they’d like to share in the comments about tools and what not that you’ve used, please feel free to post them! This is a safe space for all of us.

Thank you all for reading and I hope you find what I’ve written to be useful in your fitness journey. Keep up the good work.

Lyra

#blog #that girl #becoming that girl #fitness #fitblr #gymmotivation #gym aesthetic #girl boss gaslight gatekeep #it girl

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nomenomens · 1 year ago

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Nomen

Chapter XXVI - The Messenger

TW : suicidal thoughts (more as an explanation of what happened before, not morbid)

WC : around 2800 words

Previous Chapter : One Last Breath

Next Chapter : Sorrow I (Anger's version)

Masterlist

**********************************************

May 11, Wednesday, 8:08 (present time)

“Roni, sto uscendo. A dopo, cucciola.” (*)

Those were the first words I heard. My mother’s sweet and familiar tone and the same sentence she used whenever she was going to work while I stayed at home. She was aware of the fact that the world could crumble and I would continue to sleep undisturbed, but if just a few words were whispered from two rooms away, I would wake up immediately. It had been that way since I was little. I heard the front door closing and the light scurry of Ted before he jumped and positioned himself on my bed, placing his head on my feet. That was another habit, part of the same routine I lived as Roni, something that now more than ever seemed warm and precious as much as fragile. I opened my eyes and started to scan every detail of what was in front of me. I was lying on my side, something very unusual that explained the pain I was feeling over my left shoulder, and all I could see was the light grey of my room’s wall and something white climbing on my pillow with two big green eyes staring back at me. Even in his snake’s form, his eyes were clear and gentle, at least to me.

“Mizuki, you know I’m not that fond of snakes. Please, show yourself. And don’t stare at me while I sleep.”

That was the sentence I was going to say, but the sounds that left my lips were harsh wheezes. Suddenly my throat started burning and I remembered everything that happened the night before, accumulating memories as in a flash. It was like observing stills of a cinematic record, a movie I could only remember as short glimpses of scenes in a subjective perspective. I was still alive. I was so ready to give everything up and it just didn't happen. Why? Why was I disappointed to have opened my eyes again when I didn't even allowed myself to think about ending my life before? Would I actually try to do it again? I was scared of my own thoughts, as if I didn't recognize them, as if I never knew they had been there all the time. In the meantime, Mizuki revealed his human form and hugged me, crawling one of his arm under my head and using the other to make my forehead rest on his chest. His smell reassured me and I felt so comfortable in his arms that I started crying, releasing a tension I didn’t even know I had built up in that moment.

“You really made me worry, Nanami-chan. But you’re okay now, Hange attended you. Don’t worry about your voice, I have prepared a solution you can drink after you get up that will help, and we’ll use make up for the marks that devil left on you. I’m sorry you had to bear it, it’s all my fault. If only-"

As I wasn’t able to speak, I hugged him more, grasping the excess of his clothes’s fabric on his back in my fist and he understood my silent request for not speaking anymore. We stayed like that until I stopped crying, then I got up, took his solution, and as soon as my voice came back, I asked all of my questions.

“What about Mey-Rin and Finnian?”

“Back at their posts. They’re completely fine.”

“Good. Don’t say a word about this to Sebastian now. Let him finish his mission first.”

“But-"

“No buts. I don’t think Akura-Ou will come back soon since you were able to resist partially to his drug and interrupted him.”

“Interrupted him?”

“Well, he didn’t succeed in killing me, so he has been interrupted. The last thing I remember is a silver light, I think it was your hair…but judging from your current expression…”

“Nanami-chan, I wasn’t the one who saved you.”

I stared at him in confusion. I really assumed his platinum hair would be the silver light I remembered, even if the more I thought about it, the more distant that option get. Even in the moonlight or with the reflection of the lamppost, his hair would shine with a different colour. But then…

“…who did it?”

“Captain Ackerman.”

My mind went blank. Why? How? I was about to assault Mizuki with questions when a knock to the main door made my head turn in direction of that sound. Mizuki got up from his seat while I stayed put in my chair, where I was still having breakfast, and opened the door for me. Along with the morning sun, a smiling Commander entered and spoke to Mizuki.

“Have you finished crying? I told you she’ll be- oh, Nanami, I didn’t noticed you there. How do you feel? Can you talk?”

“I’m fine, thanks Commander. Mizuki told me you attended me so let me thank you for that.”

“Not a thing, you were fine from the beginning thanks to Levi’s sharp instinct. He couldn’t come with me because…well…he’s resting, but I’m sure he would be glad to know you’re good.”

He wasn’t going to visit then, but I wasn’t expecting him to do so. I smiled at the Commander.

“Then please, refer to him my deepest gratitude. I’m indebted to him, and all of you to be fair. The way you acted to protect me wasn’t taken for granted, but I would refrain you to do it again in the future. Mizuki wasn’t in the position to ask for your help and put you in danger for my personal issues.”

“As our ally…”

“Still, I insist. I will be forever grateful for your help, but I won’t allow you to be so generous again. You have higher goals to achieve than help an ally. You should take care of yourselves more.”

“Sweet words with an hard tone. That’s familiar. Then I’ll go back to the villa.”

As she grabbed the knob of the door, I felt the urgency to stop her.

“Commander! Hange…I…really am grateful.”

“I know, Nanami. But believe me when I say this: if you have allies you can trust, let them help. No one can do it alone, it’s all in the team-working. We’ve all learned it the hard way. I know you wanted to protect us in some way, but without you here, we’ll also have problems since now we’re in business with you.”

We both smiled at each other, and then she left. I looked back at Mizuki.

“Still, don’t involve them anymore.”

“That’s right, you shouldn’t rely on others, unless you’re incompetent.”

Sebastian’s voice send a shiver down my spine, as it always did whenever I wasn’t expecting him to be beside me.

“When did you come back?”

“Just now. So, who made those marks around your neck?”

“Shouldn’t you check first if I’m all right?”

“You’re speaking to me, A-Li, that means my dinner isn’t spoiled.”

Sebastian came close to me and stared at the signs around my neck, tracing the profile of my chin to lift my face and observe better my ruined skin. I could feel his gaze burning just as much as the one Mizuki reserved to him. I blocked Sebastian hand on my face and turn to Mizuki, asking him to leave, which he did after throwing the usual tantrum for a few minutes. As soon as we were left alone, Sebastian resumed his close inspection of my marks.

“What were you thinking, A-Li?”

“What do you mean?”

“You didn’t evoke me in a clear situation of danger. Akura-Ou is just a weak human, but still it seemed he was close enough to his objective this time. You know I won’t tolerate you throwing your life away, we have a deal.”

“I...I was just surprised and I wasn’t thinking clearly. Even so, Akura-Ou said the mark you gave me is fake, maybe I did evoke you but it didn’t work.”

“Hm. He clearly said that to deceive you.”

“Yes, I know. I am your Lady and you’re my demon. I was just…overwhelmed. I wasn’t thinking of evoking you.”

I lied. Strangely, that remark Akura-Ou made about my moon mark was stuck in my head, but right now I only wanted to end that uncomfortable conversation. Sebastian shouldn’t know about my last words and how willing I was to give up my fight. I let him grab my chin to lower my face, establishing eye contact for him to freely scan through my emotions. As I lowered my gaze to his lips he scoffed.

“What, you want to be kissed and reassured?”

I nodded as he traced his thumb along my lips, slightly opening them as he moved towards the left angle of my mouth, disfiguring my expression. He used his other hand to grab my side and close the gap between us as I placed my hands behind his neck to steal a kiss from him. Neither of the following kisses were stolen though. I just hoped I found a way to distract him from wondering about my intentions of last night.

***********************************************************

I knew Akura-Ou used to be a kind of demon, a yōkai like Mizuki and Tomoe were, but I didn’t think he could still sense the presence of a different demonic power, or the lack of it. I had to be even more careful. Her kiss gave me the opportunity to end that discussion, but it also made me wonder if she wanted to avoid other questions too. She had almost been killed not even twelve hours ago, was she really in the mood for sex already? In any case, I let her do whatever she wanted, since it also favored my situation. I couldn’t let her know the truth about the mark. Since we never had a proper contract between us, I didn’t care about lying to her, but still, the promise I made to her brother still bounded me to treat her in a certain way. Unexpectedly though, it seemed like she also wanted to hide something, since rushing into sex when she had barely recovered from last night incident, without even asking about my mission, was suspicious. I needed to investigate, starting with someone who would answer to my questions honestly and was present during the incident: Akura-Ou himself. I already knew where to find him.

“So, you’re telling me she wasn’t lying? You are going to eat her soul and that the mark wasn’t fake?”

“Exactly.”

“So I was wrong and I can’t kill her.”

“Not for the time being. You can get your chance only after I consume her brother’s soul. She is desperately trying to revive him, but alas, he never will. I’ll make sure to devour his soul and then devour her too, but if you’ll be swift enough you can kill her for me when the time comes.”

“Yeah, if she doesn’t die before that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. Why? Don’t you know everything about your Lady and Mistress?”

“I do. My Lady has her mission and we share a contract, so if you won’t-"

“There’s no need to make threats, Sebastian. You know very well that I’m just a frail human being for now. All right, I’ll step back for the time being. Seems like I should prepare myself better for the future. Just know this: I know you’re lying. I’m not going to tell her that mark is fake now, only because I will reveal that to her later, after I’ll take back my body and powers and I’ll snatch her from you under your nose. I’ll torture her until she’ll beg me to make the pain stop. Only then she’ll know everything you told her was a lie.”

“That is, only if you can, Akura-Ou.”

“I guess we’ll see, demon.”

***********************************************************

May 13, Friday, 14:47 (present time)

“Why don’t you check on her directly, Levi?”

“There’s no need, Hange. She was fine when you visited her and you said she is grateful for my intervention, which means she’s well enough.”

“I think she would like to thank you in person.”

“Then she’ll come here when she sees it fit.”

“You know, you don’t have to be this much emotional constipated. I’m not telling you to go there with flowers or be worried as Mizuki was.”

“Thank heavens.”

“…I mean, you could just act nice to our ally.”

“You did the honors already.”

“You’re a terrible diplomat.”

“That’s exactly why Erwin chose you as the Commander.”

It was rare for me to speak his name out loud, something Hange knew very well. My chest always tightened until I couldn’t breathe whenever I thought of him, even after years had passed. I didn’t have any regrets about what I did, someone had to think of him as a human being instead of a monster, but those thoughts didn’t made it easier to remember him. Before Hange could say something, a knock on the door of the studio at the villa made us shift our focus.

“Yes?”

“It’s Mey-Rin.”

“Come in.”

That maid always looked funny, but one night I was able to witness her true talent as a sniper, and from that moment I found a new respect for her. That trembling girl, who tried to hidden herself behind those thick glasses was more dangerous than most of the recruits I used to know from the Survey Corps. To be fair, she was ever more dangerous than most of the thugs in the Underground. She entered the door and came close to me, something I didn’t expect, since she only spoke to Hange. She handed me a small bag.

“M-my Lady said to deliver this to you, C-captain.”

“Thank you.”

She quickly went back, closing the door behind her, and in that moment Hange moved from her seat and placed a hand over my shoulder.

“At least she’s good at diplomacy.”

I wanted to say more, but she was already gone, leaving me alone in that big bright room. I went out on the terrace and put the bag on the coffee-table in front of me as I seated on one of the chair placed outside. The warm of spring was already shifting towards the summer’s heat, but since I left the Underground, I couldn’t ignore the bliss of feeling that warmth all over my skin. A last thought of Erwin crossed my mind as I remembered the day of our first expedition when I decided I would follow him; the sky that day was as bright as the one above me today was. I passed my hand all over my face, as to shrug away those memories ad regain control before the bag. There was an envelop and a small box inside. I traced the profile of the name written on the back of the letter, addressed to “Captain Levi Ackerman”. It sounded so official that if it wasn’t for Mey-Rin telling me it was from the Miss, I would think it came directly from the Government in Paradis. Her calligraphy was clearer than I would’ve imagined, but still denoted a certain childish look. I opened the letter and read the content.

“Captain Ackerman,

forgive me for not giving this present in person, but I’m afraid I would be too embarrassed to do so. Perhaps I shouldn’t tell you this, but you’re too sharp not to notice that I don’t like being seen helpless, even if that’s the only side of me you have known. But I’m not here to write about me.

I’m writing this to thank you for saving me that night, I owe you my life. I wanted to show you my gratitude, but then I realized I don’t know anything about you, nor I wish to intrude and ask about your preferences, since it’s not my place to even know them. This is why I resorted to the two topics we have discussed about. I thought of two presents, one of them I know you’ll appreciate, and the other one is just suggestion based on my own preference which I hope you’ll like as well.

First, next Sunday, I’ll have to go to the bigger stables, near the woods. I wanted to show them to you, in case you would like to ride in a bigger and maybe more familiar place. Of course, you’re not obligated to accept to come with me, but I really think you could like that place, and if you actually will like it, I’ll give those stables and the near land to you. You can do with it whatever you prefer. Those stables were a property of my brother, but I’m not so good with horses, that is why I hope you will enjoy it more than I can. Also, I hope that if you ever need a place to go to outside of Paradis, you could think about those stables as home. At least while you're forced to stay here.

The second present is within the box. It’s my old music player. I added some new songs, but you’ll mostly found old ones I used to relate with a lot. I hope you’ll accept to listen to some of them to find a different way to express your feelings. As someone said: ‘when words fail, music speaks’ or something like that. I don’t know if you’ll like music, or if you’ll develop different tastes from mine, or if you’ll never turn that player on, but still I wanted to suggest you a way to feel some kind of relief, and music is the only method I know.

"This melody will always bring you right back home."

This song I quoted is so important to me, especially right now, but I decided to write only these words because they summarize what music does for me. Music gave a home, and it brings me back to it every time I'm lost. Maybe you don't need any of this at all but all I want to do is give you something you can enjoy while you're stuck here as a way to thank you and to apologize. I wanted to do this in person but I still haven't found the nerve to talk to you and so I'm trying to say it without speaking out loud. I think I had already promised you a playlist anyway, so think of this as the fulfillment of a promise. One last thing: if you’ll accept the gifts, just tell Mey-Rin. I’ll wait for your answer, hoping to see you next week.

With gratitude,

Nanami Miss.”

I was shocked through most of the letter. Giving me a stable was absurd, something so unusual and weird that I couldn’t help but smile, which I did again after reading how she had signed herself. I placed my hand over my eyes and reclined my head, letting it rest on the edge of the chair I was sitting on and before I could realize it, I was really giggling out loud, not only in my head. I wasn’t one to analyze my feelings, but I couldn’t help but wonder how much time had passed since I had genuinely felt like this. I re-read the letter and one word stuck inside my head for the rest of the day. “Home.” She wanted to give me a refuge, a home, in her unfamiliar and stranger world.

Why?

And why her words were warming my bones more than the sun over my head?

***********************************************************

Author's note: Hello! First of all, I hope you're well. These chapters may have a deeper and more dramatic ton, I know, but this wasn't a romantic comedy to begin with, even if sometimes it may strike more as a telenovela (but we all know that telenovelas face serious themes too). Mention of honor goes to the song in the title. It's an old song belonging to Linkin Park and I truly recommend it. i decided to include only few words, but the lyrics overall are truly precious. Anyway, I hope you like the way this story is growing and developing. I hope you've enjoyed this chapter and mostly, I hope you're all doing fine. Thank you for reading and see you soon!

(*) "Roni, I'm going. See you later, pumpkin." (the literal translation of "cucciola" is actually "puppy", but I think "pumpkin" is a better word to describe the feeling of the sentence)

#nomen #fanfic #ff #kuroshitsuji #sebastian michaelis #aot #kamisama kiss #kamisama hajimemashita #snk #levi ackerman #levi ackerman x oc #levi x oc #akura ou #mizuki

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ailurinae · 1 year ago

Note

You guys also at least seem to be making the Firefox mistake, of focusing a lot on what experts say people want, possibly backed up with user studies (I know FF does a lot of those, not sure about Tumblr)... But it leads you to changes that long time power users HATE, and so they stop recommending it to people.

Sure there are differences, a social network isn't the same as a browser, FF had other issues as well. But a few "influencers" (in the real organic way, not the built up marketing way - though of course the organic version is what they are trying to mimic) have big effects on the network. And that is often going to be the people who use it practically every day, for years even through the worst times. So maybe you will please some theoretical new users, but if you piss off the core fan base, will there be anything pulling those new users in?

So maybe at least compromise somehow?

Like on the reblog chain thing... ok, to users of other sites, yes clicking on the name and getting the user main page and not the post is more expected. But at least make the "blank header space" click give you the previous link in the reblog chain, make it a real link (<a href>) not JS, so we can see the URL in the status bar, and can middle click it and such. Maybe increase the highlight on hover a bit. Or heck, just give us a button that says "previous reblog" or something. Sure it would look goofy but at least we could use it. Probably other options could be brainstormed (but don't hide it under the meatball menu. Too many clicks for a commonly used thing)

Oh and make a link to the subdomain version of a user (when it exists) accessible at least one other place beside the timestamp in the meatball menu...

Another example, maybe let people turn off the new lightbox that everyone hates. Yeah, ads in it are not great, but ads are survival (and ad free exists, thanks!) and mostly people hate the *rest* of how it works. So add ads in the legacy one, and let people use it. Or if it is super old and crusty and you don't want to maintain it, make the new one flexible enough to emulate the old one. Plenty of options.

Just keep the core userbase who have stuck though 10+ years in many cases in mind, is what I am saying.

I see where you're coming from, and I see why Tumblr feels a need to expand, to chase that unsustainable infinite growth. My friends who don't use tumblr don't use it because they don't have an existing community there, and I'm not enough to sway them over. It's a blogging platform at it's heart. I don't think trying to ape current trends in design is going to help. All it is going to do, has done so far, and historically has done is alienate your existing userbase, and fail to draw in new people. In fact, I'd argue that you're making your biggest competitor here. Cohost, is becoming a viable competitor of the back of Tumblr constantly implementing features that make the website more difficult to use and that frustrate and alienate it's userbase. Historically speaking, let's look at other social media that tried to pivot in this way? Myspace was Myspace, and then they tried to pivot to chase the trends of the industry, and it bombed. DeviantArt has been going through this for a while. in 2017 the site refresh launched to make it more similar to other websites, and it was frustrating for old users, removed features people liked, and didn't supplant that with anything new worth sticking around for, so it bombed. And it virtually killed the site with it, it's a shell of its former self. Do you remember twitter stories? Google Stadia, Hangouts, Duo, Bulletin, etc? New Coke?

yeah i'm extremely aware of all of these things, i've been using and studying this internet thing since MSN and AOL chatrooms were the only "social" features of the web. some people i work with have been at this since Usenet was the "social" part of the web. the rise and fall of different platforms are lessons we're always referencing and learning from and trying not to repeat, and learn the best from.

that's why i keep saying that there's a balance at play here between what makes tumblr unique and wonderful and different, which are values of the product, versus what the actual mechanics of the product are. some of the examples you're citing were "bombs" because they didn't have any core value to begin with, just a useful mechanic. or the core value wasn't understood, so it was easy to lose. some of them are cases where they changed the wrong mechanic and it broke the value, and there's no recovery from that.

the balance is successful when the mechanics are working to get new people to realize those core values quickly enough to offset those who don't realize them, or don't resonate with them. because the core values of tumblr aren't for everybody, we wouldn't be different otherwise. like you say: there's no community for them, but why is that? is there a mechanical reason why not? a perceived reason?

this is really difficult stuff, and we're trying as best we can to get it balanced. it's requiring us to try and experiment with some changes that feel really weird to me, as a long-time tumblr user. i hope the benefits of this become more obvious over time. i'm also hoping that some of the very obvious quality of life issues we're trying to address offset the fear that we're just "copying" other sites while ignoring everything else. there's a lot more to come.

#tumblr #site design #UI #UX #Firefox is one of the worst examples #but not the only for sure #I dunno if they just do user studies wrong #or if they do them 'right' according to designer standards #and they are just fundamentally flawed #in one way or another

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hellboys · 2 years ago

Text

low quality video ➜ "HD" gifs tutorial! (2022 UPDATE!)

back by popular demand. warning, this is a work in progress! so far I have found this is the best way to restore low quality movie videos into somewhat clear and “hd” gifs. I will update if I discover anything different (:

this works on movies/videos in 720p and lower

you must have basic gif making knowledge

I'm using adobe photoshop cc 23.4.1 (2022) for windows

link to previous version of this tutorial

TUTORIAL UNDER THE CUT 🔽

so this tutorial is going to show you how to create the ILLUSION of high quality and film grain in your gifs just by using smart filters, coloring, and the filter gallery tab! this trick works on 720p, 480p, 360p, and 144p resolutions

1. MAKE YOUR GIF BASE

I’ll be using a scene from hello mary lou: prom night 2 in a *really* gross 480px lol

2. RESIZE YOUR GIF

ctrl + alt + “I”

These are my resizing settings (copy these).

Resampling your gif under the ‘preserve details 2.0′ option allows you to resize your gif without losing those small details - essentially making your gif sharper.

⭐ please note that gifs will look better if resized to 268px instead of 540px as its easier to hide low quality trails that remain in the end.

3. ADD ‘SMART SHARPEN’ FILTER

filter ➤ sharpen ➤ smart sharpen...

When adding your smart sharpening layer, be sure to unselect More Accurate from the drop down menu at the top. (You can access this menu by clicking the gear in the right hand corner)

Unselecting this option will add more sharpness to the highlights and shadows of your gif, which is essential for this trick to work

⭐ of course if you have preferred sharpening settings, feel free to use those instead!

3. ADD ANOTHER ‘SMART SHARPEN’ LAYER

filter ➤ sharpen ➤ smart sharpen...

Copy these settings

Keep the More Accurate option SELECTED for this layer!!!

4. CREATING FILM GRAIN

filter ➤ filter gallery... ➤ texture ➤ grain

These settings will depend on what you think looks best! For this gif, these are the settings I ended up with

Be sure that the “Soft” option is selected from the drop down menu. Its the cleanest grain filter photoshop offers and its the closest you’ll get to grain used in films

The intensity will depend on you and what your gif needs. Don’t go too crazy here. Keep the number low (no higher than 10)

Contrast will generally stay in the 50′s but if you need more black areas in your gif feel free to push that number a bit

⭐ Don’t get too attached to these right now as they may change throughout your process!

4.2. ARRANGING SMART LAYERS

MUY IMPORTANTE!!!!

In order to get that sharp grain look, you’ll need to place the “Filter Gallery” layer beneath the 2 smart sharpen layers like in the pic above

Edit your grain settings as needed!

5. COLOR COLOR COLOR

After all of that is said and done, add your coloring! Try to push the shadows and add more black in your 'selective color' adjustment layer just to give your gif more contrast. This will clean up the pixel-y blacks and make your gif look a bit nicer to look at. Again this will all depend on what you’re looking for and what you think looks best!

6. SAVE!

Once you're satisfied with how your gif looks, alt + ctrl + shift + “S” and you're done! Here are my save for web settings

MY RESULTS!

480px video, before and after:

(Still looks pretty shitty but I guess its better than the original ???)

360px video, before and after:

(I ripped this movie straight from the DVD and the glitch you see came with it unfortunately 😒)

End notes/tips!

This trick will not work on every low quality movie

Please play around with the sharpening, grain, and color settings to find the best version for you!

The higher the quality of the video (720p, 1080p dvd) the less grain you will need to add

Again, gifs look even better if they are put into 2 column posts instead of a single column (268px instead of 540px)

The grain filter will unfortunately make your gif size very large which is something I havent been able to work around

And once more for the people in the back - this is FAKE HD, it won't turn your 480p video into a crisp blu-ray 1080p quality. it just gives an illusion of higher quality 🤠

Please feel free to send me a DM or an ask if you need further help or have any questions whatsoever! Thank you!✨🖤

#i fought for my life getting these to look somewhat decent #but ig im proud considering how bad the originals are #anyways i hope this helps someone #gif resources #resources #gif tutorial

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griseldagimpel · 3 years ago

Text

Steps AO3 Can Take to Minimize Racism in the Archive (Version 2)

There is a previous version of this post that’s gone viral, so if it seems familiar, that’s why. This version has expanded content, less spelling errors (hopefully), additional links, and a Read More cut. (I’m so sorry the original didn’t have this. I wasn’t expecting it to go viral.)

Before I begin, I want to emphasis a few things. This is a post on general areas where AO3 could improve. Even in cases where I offer additional information, this isn’t a step-by-step guide accounting for every nuance. Furthermore, none of these things are censorship. They are intended as alternatives to either doing nothing or taking down fics. Finally, none of the solutions below will single-handedly fix racism on AO3. They approach the issue from different angles and are meant to supplement each other. I am also only including in this write-up solutions that I feel confident in my ability to speak to. There are other solutions out there that aren’t discussed in this post. Just because I don’t push for something here doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea.

If you feel the urge to respond, I implore you to consider the following before you do so. Are responding not to what I wrote but to the strawman you've imagined I wrote? Are you assuming the most uncharitable implementation possible? Are you saying the exact same thing several other people have already said? Are you, in general, behaving like Miette the Cat? Please, think of the children my tumblr notifications. But otherwise, constructive feedback is welcome!

Alright, let’s begin.

I wanted to summarize some of the suggestions either I’ve proposed or other people have proposed that work toward the goal of decreasing the amount of racism on AO3. I also wanted to talk about some of the challenges that are involved with this. Note that while minimizing racism is the focus of this post, a lot of these solutions could also be worked to, say, minimize ableism. That this post focuses on one thing should not be taken to mean that it precludes other things. And again, that it talks about some solutions does not mean that it is saying that other solutions are automatically bad. These are just the ones I feel most comfortable speaking to.

Let’s start with some big picture stuff.

First, AO3 was built to be a sort of dumping ground for all fan fics, to preserve them so that they wouldn’t be lost, due to the history of fan fic purges on various other sites. But AO3 is not a static archive by any means. It’s a hub for fan interactions. While not social media in the same way Twitter and Tumblr are, AO3 has the option for a comments section on every fic, challenges, a gift feature, and fic meta-data. All of these involve user interaction with each other, in the broadest sense that one user generates content that another user then sees.

And to that end it runs into the Paradox of Tolerance, also called the Nazi Bar Problem. To summarize briefly, if you run a bar and let Nazis patronize your bar, then before long, what you have is a Nazi bar, and other patrons leave. Because AO3 is a site where people read fics in addition to post fics, minimizing racism on the site has the benefit of making the site more usable.

Second, racist fan fics - not fan fics that depict racism but fan fics that are racist - have a stochastic impact. However, AO3 archives far too much content to be monitored individually. Additionally, determining if a fic is racist or not is hard to construct boundaries for and involves some degree of subjectivity.

Third, there’s the Judgement Day problem. Back during the era of the Comics Code Authority, the creators of the comic Judgement Day (a comic denouncing segregation) wanted to get the comic republished. But the racist piece of shit in charge of giving it the CCA seal of approval objected to the comic having a Black hero, claiming that it was, err, offensive to minorities? Yeah, it was a bullshit objection. So that’s the Judgement Day problem. Any anti-racist policy or practice is only going to be as good as the people tasked with enforcing it.

Taking the above into account, here are some things AO3 could do to minimize racism on the site. They have different pros and cons, but I don’t want to let perfection be the enemy of good here. And again, they also aren’t mutually exclusive with each other. We’re Swiss cheesing the solution here.

Blocking/Muting: Nothing really to say on this one. AO3 is working on this already, and it will help once it’s implemented.

Anti-Racist Writing Resources: This is honestly probably the easiest solution AO3 could implement. Have a link on the front page that says something like Guide to Not Being Racist In Your Fan Works. Have that go to a page of links to stuff like the Jim Crow Museum, which is not only informative but has been a stable link for at least a good decade now. See, a lot of resources already exist. Eventually, it would be better to have those resources in house (so as to avoid reliance on outside links) but as a starting point, just linking to existing material would help.

There are two goals here. One, there are writers who haven’t unlearned the racism they’ve learned from general society and who are coming from a place of ignorance. Having a readily available resource means that those that aren’t coming from a place of malice can improve themselves. People are more accepting of information they discover for themselves; having it be a resource they can consult gets past people’s knee-jerk rejection of anything that feels like criticism.

The other goal is that it sends a message that Not Being Racist ought to be something that writers posting to AO3 strive for. If you put a No Nazis Allowed sign at your bar, there’s nothing to actually stop Nazis from patronizing it, but they won’t come in with swastikas on, you know? It’s about generating a culture of anti-racism.

Follow up post: https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/667117169378787328/improving-ao3-whats-a-racism

More Mandatory Warnings: I want to note firstly on this one that mandatory warnings aren’t about passing judgement on how a fic handles a topic; they merely note that it is contained within a fic. Plenty of authors - myself included - write about heavy topics, but if any reader doesn’t want to engage with that content when they encounter a fic, they should be informed enough to make that decision. For the purpose of mandatory warnings, it doesn’t really matter how well or badly the author handles the content; mandatory warnings are merely about the presence or absence.

I’m not going to provide a complete list of what warnings should be added here (although I have some suggestions linked below), as I think that’s an issue that would need to be studied and analyzed before a final decision was made. Any one user of the site is only seeing a small portion of the content on the site, so generating the best list would be a group effort. You’re looking for a list that covers a lot of territory without being massive, which is a bit of a balancing act. The cons of this one is that it wouldn’t apply to existing fan works and might be tricky to code. The pros of this one is that it would better allow users to filter out fan works they don’t want to see and that it would again contribute to AO3 having a culture of anti-racism, as what the mandatory warnings are indicate what the priorities of the site are.

I have some follow up posts on this one:

https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/668374905594740736/improving-ao3-what-makes-a-good-mandatory

https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/665867199433539584/proposed-ao3-mandatory-tag-spotlight-hatefic

https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/665951985879728128/proposed-mandatory-warning-spotlight-depictions

https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/667507857486495745/improving-ao3-new-mandatory-warnings-existing

Improve Filtration Based Upon Bookmark Information: You know how some authors are never going to be able to recognize the issues with their own work? That’s where user-added tags come in. This is a feature that already exists on AO3 via the bookmark tags.

The existing information associated with bookmarks is the user who made the bookmark, the text of the bookmark, the tags of the bookmark, whether or not the fic is recommended by the bookmark, and what (if any) collections the bookmark has been added to. There are users who already uses bookmarks to warn readers about fics (as well as, alternatively, to recommend fics) but the current ability to filter on that information is limited.

For this to be workable, the search options would need to allow users to only include/exclude based upon bookmarks from specific users and/or collection for the search, include/exclude based upon all bookmarks except from specific users and/or collections for the search, and to include/exclude based upon all bookmarks.

To use examples, if you want to exclude all fics marked with the “Florida” bookmark tag, but the only bookmarks you want the exclusion to be based on are the bookmarks made by the user MimesRUs, there should be a way to do that. And if you want to exclude all fics marked with the “Dogs” bookmark tag, but the user IHateDogs207 has bookmarked all fics in the fandom with the “Dogs” tag even if it doesn’t apply, you should be able to exclude IHateDogs207′s bookmark tags from consideration for your search.

Same as filtering based upon bookmark collections. Give readers the maximum amount of flexibility feasible with the information AO3 already captures. User bookmark information is going to be highly subjective, so users need to be able to decide whose bookmark tags they want to apply.

Anyway, this creates a space for critical commentary of fics (which the authors don’t get notifications about, thus preventing harassment) and user-added tags and information (that are kept separate from the author-added tags and information), all while making use of infrastructure that AO3 already has implemented. All that would need to be added is the additional search functionality.

More Restrictions on Meta-Data: This is titles, tags, icons, and fic summaries. The reason there should be more restrictions here is that this is the stuff users see when deciding whether or not to read the fic. (Note: there are specific, existing restrictions for icons already.)

As you may recall, thanks to someone’s excessive Sexy Times tagging, AO3 recently added a restriction on the meta-data in that the number of tags one may use is now limited. But the overall lax rules here means that it’s a point of vulnerability. Specifically, a single user can render large portions of the site unusable by updating regularly a fic with hostile meta-data. There’s also occasionally been instances of authors negatively mentioning other users in the tags.

I have a follow up post on the challenges inherent in this, as even something as innocuous as “Don’t put racial slurs in the meta-data” gets complicated real quick in the implementation.

https://griseldagimpel.tumblr.com/post/668954058497949696/improving-ao3-what-should-additional-metadata

#ao3 discourse #Ao3 improvements version 2

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