#posting it here in case I dont finish because I cannot color for my life

[misterdeplume]

Drawing some POTA fanart because Maurice and Nova stole my heart 🥹

[macklives]

alright, im actually kind of in the mood to unpack some stuff regarding karkat's character and the way alternia works actually, so i dont mind giving this a go. and while act 5 isnt completely finished yet (so this is an analysis post for act 5 up until page 2305), there is still more to explore, and im pretty sure i have a lot more to read regarding both karkat AND alternia. until then, i will give a general layout as to what i know so far and how i can expand this in a psychological way (especially considering i did my psych exam so my mind is FRESH from studying)

alright, starting with what seems to be the deal with the hemospectrum, theres a total of 12 blood colors. HOWEVER, one of those blood colors is a "mutant" blood which is unwanted in troll culture as it is, well, "mutant", meaning whoever has this blood will get brutally slaughtered. hurrayyy. im guessing it is even lower than aradia's rust blood, as she is allowed to live but is the lowest on the hierarchy triangle. meaning karkats blood is not even ON the hierarchy triangle and simply buried underground where they hope he stays. so its not exactly pleasant to be living in a society where everyone is trying to KILL you or at least keep you away from everything.

from what i remember, troll reproduction is a vital aspect in their culture, that everyone is forced to mate and drones will come by each house to collect the genetic material. this is mandatory apparently, and if someone were to object, they will be “culled" as quickly as they could say no. alternia seems to be really keen on the whole "blood and carnage" thing, which means their probable solution to anybody breaking the law, is to kill them on sight and just leave them there to rot - regardless of who they are and what families they comes from or have. trolls are free to kill whenever or whoever they please without any governmental repercussions. which means revenge upon revenge happens without any policy.

however this is very important when looking at karkat, because karkat may not be able to do the whole reproduction process (not that we necessarily want him to, im saying this in terms of how its mandatory for every troll and there will be a time when the drones WILL come for karkat). but as he is already a mutant and if they were to "collect" from him, they would find out his blood regardless of how he hides it. they will either cull him for saying no, or cull him for his blood. karkat, in this sense, is doomed regardless. which makes his character much more interesting.

and keep in mind alternia kind of sucks, because from the looks of it, trolls are constantly tested throughout their lives to prove themselves to society that they are allowed to live and survive. but ONLY if they are the strongest among them. alternia wants to become this fearful planet where the weak die off and only those proven worthy can stay to grow up and slaughter more of their kind until the world is nothing but blood thirsty strong murderers. im not too sure who is governing alternia but they can suck a dick if they think this is how good morals work. alternia only really has one way to solve things which is to kill those who question/fight back, OR to kill those who CANNOT fight back essentially. which puts all the trolls through a double edged sword where they cannot do anything but follow the guidelines given to them by troll's society and government, and try to survive as much as they can until then.

if i remember correctly, when it comes to the law side of things. if you look at it from terezi's introduction where she explains prosecutions with her plushies (lemonsnout ect ect i forgot the term for them lol), she said "you are guilty until proven innocent" which is the polar opposite of "innocent until proven guilty” used in OUR own society today (tho i guess we are by far the "good guys" in this situation, but we are far different than how trolls live their lives). anyways, what this means is that everyone dies regardless unless theres literal proof that they have not done the crime. even so i wouldnt put it past them to do nothing about their case even WITH proof. terezi even goes to say that technically there is no way to deal with the law on alternia, and most of crimes get solved through death. she even demonstrates this by how easily she hung the "suspect" and flipped a coin to determine his fate. however, even with the coin landing on the side of safety, where the suspect were to be released, she said "im blind remember i cannot see this coin" and essentially "killed" him. while terezi may have just been playing with her plushies, theres something we can take from this which dictates how their actual court cases are actually solved.

NOW, vriska (yes ik pls bare with me here, i will not make it about vriska but i do have a point here), from the last few pages i saw, can basically kill her friends in an instant, without any remorse. i can tell she sees this as the most "necessary" solution for her problems. i wouldnt say its for survival, but she does do it as a way to provide some sort of safety on alternia. she is a higher blood, and apparently the high bloods are known to kill whoever they please as long as its convenient. and since trolls have this whole fad of "killing the ones who cause you trouble so the problem is out of the way", she is wired to think its the only solution when threatened or when you dislike a person. 

god, she killed aradia because she wanted "revenge", because she wanted to get back at aradia for tormenting her with ghosts EVEN IF aradia did so because she threw tavros off a cliff in the first place. this may have worsened their friendship, KEEP IN MIND THEY WERE FRIENDS, but NEITHER, and i mean neither terezi/vriska/aradia, had any remorse if the other dies as long as there was a reason. in the story, vriska didnt care what happened to tavros because she disliked him, therefore becoming pretty bias over his fate. because of this attempt at killing, aradia didnt care what happened to vriska either, and neither did terezi. terezi sold her out to one of the most powerful beings on their planet, solely because of their revenge cycle. as long as the troll in question did something "malicious”, then that plays a factor in their morals. vriska gave no second thought to killing both of her friends (or at least attempt to with tavros), terezi also tormented john in act 4 which led to his “doomed timeline death” and sold vriska out after she realized vriska wouldnt change. so no fucking WONDER karkat tries to hide who he is, he's overly cautious to not let it slip out because even the people he calls friends could backstab him at any given time considering theres LITERAL EXAMPLES OF THESE TROLLS HAVING DONE SO.

to karkat, he sees this as dangerous, which is why he even CALLS vriska dangerous to begin with. she might not even hesitate to kill him herself or maybe sell him out to the drones, because 1. she may not want to be a witness to something society actively seeks to destroy and 2. she cares more for her survival than karkats. EVEN if they were friends (re: aradia and vriska and terezi). so it just shows. 

on that note, i find it funny how karkat indirectly distracted vriska after she baited him with the question of his blood in a past conversation, which prompted karkat to monologue about troll romance. he was, yes, VERY interested in this topic to start with, but it was a nice little bonus for karkat as to not be found out by the one person who would most likely kill him even if it wasnt on purpose. however, we do not know how this will play out IF she does find out, we just know karkat is in the right to be scared of the theory.

and, alright i do have to mention this, while karkat may have been an angry fucker to START with, who spites the world and throws out insults every chance he gets, i feel he does this as more of a survival instinct as well. he doesnt care what he says to people no matter what they rank on the hemospectrum. they dont know his blood color so he feels he has some sort of immunity, but he just needs to keep it hidden. it also may just be his personality, as he IS a character who was given specific traits and andrew went along with it without so much thinking about plot. yet if you look at this from more of the metaphorical route, think about it with uhhhh lets say the perspective of how dogs work. for example, when you put a chihuahua next to a doberman, a doberman is more of an excited, energetic dog whereas a chihuahua will rain hell down on anybody who so goes near them. sometimes this is to make up for their size, to seem as menacing as the larger doberman, as they have nothing else to fend themselves with. another way to look at it is, if you see a bear (i forget if its black/brown or grizzly) you make yourself seem like the bigger person by scaring it off with sounds and eventually it will leave you alone. these sort of tactics work in the sense of survival. this is sort of what karkat could be doing, he uses insults and a defensive shouting to not really "hide" himself, but to have some sort of way as to not be found out if people start to question. someone asks him "hey karkat whats your blood" he goes "FUCK YOU, FUCK OFF, END OF STORY" which could make a person go "yo sorry dude forget i ever asked". so this could be a factor as to why he is so crabby, however on the other hand, he is crabby because that is also his character. andrew probably thought yo cancer = crab = crabby. however i do like how he is perceived and the whole "mutant blood" really made me do a double take on how he views life himself. he has to always hide who he is or he will get physically killed. alternia would take joy in finding out he does not belong there because lets face it, alternia is a bitch of a planet.

this also brought me to ask the question, why does karkat want to be a leader if hes so scared of what would happen to him if he were to be found out? which then, at first i said lol this is just karkat, he wants to a leader because he just wants to be the leader, he likes when things go to plan and that he the most say in their sburb plans considering he thinks everyone else is a "dumbass". to which, i then thought about it more and went ouch what if hes a leader because he knows hes not valued enough in society, that he somehow wants to feel some sort of importance in the world, so he wants to become a leader. i imagine younger karkat, not knowing why his blood is so undermined, finding out he is not wanted and suddenly on the most wanted list without having even DONE anything. even TAVROS said he was on that list, but only because he was weak and had no back-bone, here karkat may have been strong but no matter what, he was to be culled BECAUSE of his blood. something he cannot change no matter what. imagine a little kid knowing he will die at any point because of who he is (rlly sounds familiar if you think about it). so of course, he hides himself from the world, but do you think for an instant, little angry karkat wants to simply be FORGOTTEN about? i doubt that, he wants to be heard, he doesnt necessarily want to be rejected as he knows he will be, so while he does hide his blood, he wants to have a voice no matter what. when being a leader, people dont reject you, they LISTEN. they all may not want to because karkat is just a fucking ticking time bomb, who can lash out at any second, but i feel theres now a reason why he has this superiority complex. he wants to sort of become the person he knows he never will become (if you put it into that perspective). so thats kind of why im giving him the benefit of the doubt here.

i would also like to point out a sort of.... comparison?? not with the dogs but with unwanted children in a family household. this doesnt necessarily apply to karkat, but sub in family household with society and it might as well. (on that note, a warning/viewer discretion, if you have any problem with this kind of discussion, i wouldnt read further into this paragraph and skip to the next one) alright, the unwanted child psychology basically deals with the process of a child which is neglected by their parents, and/or know that they were never wanted in the family. i read an article a while back when we were discussing this in a lecture, we were browsing multiple people's perspective on the matter, and one said "An affective relationship may be suffocating to [the unwanted/neglected child]: it’s a defense against intimacy of which they know nothing. Normally they fluctuate between egotism and deep feelings of inferiority. They don’t understand what a balanced and healthy self-esteem looks like." it explains how the child who grows up in an unwanted home admits great emotion deprivation, because the child's bonds of affection are extremely fragile, and this can lead to both egotism and feeling like they are inadequate. and it really strongly shows karkats personality. we havent gotten that much from him in general, but considering how he uses this egotism to cover up the fact that he may be doomed, really shows the similarity. i liked this short article so i want to give some points to take into consideration, specifically this part: "It will be very difficult for unwanted children to build healthy relationships of affection in their adult life. Love is a foreign language to them. They don’t know how to decipher the codes and much less how to build them. It’s very hard for them to need and to be needed. That’s why, more often than not, they completely shirk their conflicts with peers and superiors, or do nothing but generate them. They speak incessantly about the broken relationship that marked their arrival in the world. A person with such a background will need help to get through those abysses of love that live in their heart. The most important step is that they recognize that their discomfort doesn’t depend on who they are, but the circumstances that led to their being." it may not be 100% tru for karkat but theres a small portion of it that can link back to karkats view on life and how being this mutant can really change who he is as a person. and i hope you can see the similarity between karkats character and this form of psychology. yet i also do not fully know the depth of karkat vantas. however i do hope it continues to build up in this way, as it would be both interesting and make us feel more for him as a person.

alright, i think if i write any more i will never stop aghjsk, which is a bit too much for a sunday afternoon, basically to sum up this post, trolls are violent and karkat will be killed if hes found out, even by his friends if it comes down to it. so karkat cannot really trust anybody, hes alone and imagine the thrill he had when he saw jack cut his hand to show the bright red blood? that he finally has someone LIKE HIM. imagine when he finds out about the kids. so i believe in his growth, while he needs to get a better vocabulary, i do get why hes so defensive all the time. because hes both scared and unwanted. and he wants to make up for it.

and i guess with all that being said, you can tell i now have a slight soft spot for the kid lmao

[growup-gloup]

Hii~~~ I want to try make up on, but I dont really know how or where to begin(?) Like, I know theres a hell lot of products, but thats it! Dont really know how to make it work.

Hello darling!

Be prepared to read a long post. Makeup can be intimidating because there is 50 different types of things for the same thing.

You can put the bare necessities into two categories:

Skin care - It’s really important to make your skin look good even after you remover makeup

Actual Makeup - This is what we generally think of when thinking about makeup, but this should be removed before you go to sleep

In skincare, you could have the following:

Cleanser: This is to clean the makeup off your face as well as dirt and oil and other stuff that builds up throughout the day. You use this morning and night, before you apply your makeup, so that you have a fresh clean canvas to work with, and after you remove it, so that everything comes off. There’s different types based on your needs and likes. Some people have really oily skin whereas other people have really dry skin, and then there’s people like me that have combination skin where some parts are oily and some parts are dry. If you have acne, there may be some that are geared just for that, like ones with tea tree oil in them. 

Exfoliator: You should only do this once or twice a week, otherwise you can irritate your skin and make it more prone to breaking out. There are some things that a cleanser cannot remove, like the upper layer of dead skin cells, or oil and dirt that have gone deep into your pores. There are physical and chemical exfoliators. I personally do not recommend using physical ones on your face because they can cause micro-abrasions into your skin. But once again, you may be able to find one that suits your skin type. You should use physical exfoliators on your body once a week, though, because just like a cleanser, soap and loofahs don’t get everything out. 

Toner: This is certainly not a necessary thing, but it does help improve the overall look and glow of your skin, even when it’s bare faced. It’s usually the consistency of water, and witch hazel is a pretty popular toner, but you may be able to find one that, once again, suits your skin type. Take a shot for every time I say suit your skin type in this post... 

Serum: If you have a certain dermal issue, like acne, or eczema, or even wrinkles, you may find a serum that helps with that. If you use a toner, then you put this on after the toner, but before the moisturizer. There’s also day and night serums, but that is based on whatever you are getting. If this step is overwhelming, then you can totally skip it.

Moisturizer: This is one step you should not skip, even if you have oily skin. This locks the moisture in and hydrates your skin all day so that it doesn’t flake or start producing excess oil to make up for the lack of hydration. If you have oily skin, then you can find a moisturizer that fits that skin type.You can even get a moisturizer with SPF.

Sunscreen: If your moisturizer and foundation does not have sunscreen then get separate sunscreen to apply, which you should even on a cloudy day, since the UV rays are still coming through.

Now that your skin has been taken care of, you can put on makeup.

Primer: If you’re planning on wearing your makeup for an entire day, or a night out when you know you’ll be sweaty, or you feel like your makeup will be smudged for whatever reason, you can put on a primer, which basically covers your skin like a paint primer so that that the makeup can have a smoother and a longer lasting finish. But, it’s not necessary. I only wear primers if I have a huge event to go to, like a wedding or something. I don’t bother with it on the daily.

Foundation vs BB Cream: Unlike foundations, BB, CC, and EE, creams focus on particular details, like color correcting, and other details. Foundations are heavier, even the lighter coverage ones, but they work better for heavier makeup. Make sure to have your foundation matched to your skin tone. I don’t want to hear any of this fair-and-lovely, or ethnically-ambiguous BS. It never looks good, and it’s just plain disrespectful. I also don’t recommend foundations with SPF, since those are the ones that tend to create flashback (is that what it’s called?) if you take a picture with the flash on. 

Concealer: This is a couple shades lighter than your skin tone, and goes over the under-eye bags to brighten it up. You can also use concealer as a eye-shadow primer, to make sure that the powder doesn’t smudge throughout the day. Be sure to set it with a setting powder, which I’ll explain later.

Contour: If you don’t want to do this, then you’re more than welcome to skip it. But basically, applying darker shades in some places and light shades in others creates the illusion of a different facial structure, but can also make you look like a clown if done wrong. Once you get the hang of overall makeup, you can definitely try it out, but make sure you get some practice before you wear it out. If not, you can just apply a bit of bronzer under the cheek bones and be good to go.

Powders: Remember when you’d dig through your mom’s purse and find a compact mirror with a lil round sponge and a pressed powder? Those were the days. These days, you’re better off with a setting powder under the eye area, which is often too white, but you let it sit for a few minutes to “bake” into your foundation. Then you can apply translucent powder all over your face to finish the skin stuff.

Eyes: Eye-shadows are pretty straight forward, but I suggest looking at the color wheel to see what works best with your eye and hair color for the ultimate wow effect. Mascara and eyeliner get easier to put on with practice. You don’t have to curl your lashes. I think I’ve only ever done that once in my life and that was only to test it out. You can also shape and darken your eyebrows with Anastasia Beverly Hills Dipbrow. Though you may need some practice to make it look natural.

Lips: You should try our liquid vs cream and gloss vs matte to figure out what you like best. Just keep in mind that matte liquid tends to stay on much longer than cream or gloss, and is also harder to budge, in case you plan on eating a messy meal or doing... messy activities.

Highlighter: If there is one trend that I wish would go out of style, it’s highlighters. Everyone seems to love it, which I respect, but I can’t help but think of disco balls every time I see a makeup guru on instagram. If you want to try it, apply a little but on the tip of your nose and cheekbones, and maybe a lil bit on your cupid’s bow and chin for an extra razzle dazzle. 

Setting Spray: This is another one of those extra steps that you can take if you really want your makeup to last through a night out, or a trip to the beach in July. Once you’ve applied everything, hold the spray at an arms length and spritz your face like you’re disciplining a puppy. But, like, don’t discipline a puppy. That’s mean.

Here’s some general overall tips to remember:

These are a bunch of infographs about types of brushes and makeup applications that I could not explain here. 

There are a ton of YouTubers that can teach you all sorts of makeup. I recommend Kaushal Beauty, Alexandra’s Girly Talk, and Brianna Fox, where I learnt all my makeup and other beauty stuff from, back when I knew absolutely nothing. For more bolder and artistic looks, you can check out Nikkie Tutorials. 

Experiment with as many looks as you want, but if you’re trying something new, be sure to try it at home and when you’re not in a rush.

Keep practicing drawing on eyeliner, because that’s the only way you’ll get better at it. 

If you want to go for the “natural” look, you can just apply some toner, sunscreen, and tinted moisturizer on your skin. You can also put on some mascara and lip gloss, and maybe do your brows if you have extra time. That way you look completely put together without it looking like you even bothered, because who even bothers to look good, right? We all just wake up like this.

I realize that I started slipping in more of my snark as time went on, but it was a long post, and I’m tired. Have fun playing with makeup, though! It’s actually pretty fun once you start doing it for yourself rather than to look good, because then the possibilities are endless and everyone’s Michelangelo.

💋

[theropoda]

3, 4, 6-8, 11, 13-17, 19-22, 26-30 uwu

WOO LAD THAT’S A LOT THANK U!!! this got long and i wrote an essay or two LOL so im putting it under a readmore!

3: Best game you’ve ever played? WEEEELLLL.......let me preface this with two things: one, i am a FAKE GAMER as in my laptop is not at all made for gaming, it’s piss poor, so a big chunk of games i’m interested in is because i watched a playthrough of them lol. i have a 3ds but only 3 games on it (animal crossing new leaf, tomodachi life, nintedogs & cats). second, i’m very bad at choosing favorites of things.....BUUUUT .....i choooooose, in no particular order, OFF, pigeonetics, elder scrolls oblivion, pathologic classic HD!! i’m more than likely forgetting a few though, so sorry about that

4: Worst game you’ve ever played? as i said above, cannot choose favorites, neither can i choose whatever the opposite of favorites is but...uhh, does lif even count as a game? like lif, the stupid little furry flash game i remember playing on some shady website. it was surprisingly very active with a BUNCH of people there but i kept dying like every 5 seconds....AWFUL

6: A game that’s changed you the most? WELL define Changed.....ummm aha first thing that comes to mind is OFF. it’s one of those things where you never knew you wanted something so fucking bad until you saw it--and it’s like that for me. i NEVER knew i loved that odd, surreal, colorful, “looks playful and simple in some parts but incredibly violent and unnerving in other parts” aesthetic til i played it. like aesthetically i love that game to BITS and something about it just stuck with me til the end of time.

later in life (meaning, past year or so) it changed me because it taught me a lesson about storytelling and creative endeavors. a very useful lesson. which is: things don’t really need to have a meaning. stories, art, music, writing, whatnot, while it CAN be deep and meaningful, while you CAN use it as a way to communicate with the world about all kinds of heartfelt things, it can also be...nothing, really.

once i, as usual, got ridiculously overwhelmingly sad about small things. specifically seeing other people around me come up with all kinds of deep and meaningful characters and stories, sometimes putting them into webcomics or writings of theirs, and they were all so well-thought out and detailed and what i envied most was people put a lot of themselves and their experiences into them, venting and coping through them, whilst also making these larger-than-life grandiose complex stories and worlds and so on and so forth.

it made me look at my own ideas and get mad/frustrated at how shallow they were. but then i remembered OFF and i felt better because Fun Fact, mortis ghost has a now-abandoned dA account and if you go through the comment section on his profile, he answers a lot of fan questions and he mentions several times that the game didn’t really have a “meaning”, it didn’t really have a “deeper story” or moral or anything, really. i’m paraphrasing this but i vividly remember him saying “i wanted to make a game, so i did”.

that made me feel a lot better because it made me realise that sometimes art--especially stories, in my case-- doesn’t NEED to be DEEP or have MEANING...sometimes it can just BE!!!! sometimes it really can just be all about AESTHETICS like who GIVES a shit if there’s a hidden meaning if you take the first letter of all of your characters’ names and put them backwards, sometimes all that matters is if they just VIBE with you y’know....

yume nikki is similar in this regard bc that game doesn’t have any story other than “collect egg” and yet it’s so impactful. that game doesn’t have a story or meaning it just IS........ :) GOD THATS SO LONG IM SORRY ABOUT THAT but yeah. funny violent ghostbusting baseball man is a game that changed me :)

7: A game you’ll never forget? OFF AGAIN LOL,,, it’s just so memorable because of how unique it is. visuals, soundtrack, story, everything is so memorable. unforgettable. oh god you can tell how much i love this damn game can’t you

8: Best soundtrack? yakuza 0, OFF, there is a picture (another game by mortis ghost, again composed by alias conrad coldwood who also composed OFF), pigeonetics (the entire soundtrack of which is here), jojo’s bizarre adventure all star battle and eyes of heaven, silent hill 2 & 3, undertale....probably forgetting more but all of these...earcandy

11: Hardest game you’ve played? i am a shitty gamer so this is Most games i’ve played lol!! but uhh..well you see. hardest game i remember playing as of recent is pathologic classic hd in which it’s...not only hard to understand what any character is saying at any given time lol but also, i don’t think it’s HARD it’s just...you need to focus. you REALLY need to fucking focus and pay attention in this game. so i wouldn’t say its HARD, but i’m only putting this here bc it’s in recent memory.

i say recent memory because the true answer is susceptible to “yeah, but now you’re older, it must not be so hard.” as in if i played it now i think i’d have a way easier time. but when i was around....10-12 years old i had several ps3 video game adaptations of animated movies and i had SUCH a fucking hard time with them. g-force, bolt and up in particular were fucking HARD. like genuinely, the hardest time i had EVER had in my live playing video games is tied to these three fucking games. g-force and bolt ESPECIALLY. one particular level in bolt took both me AND my sister around a year to fucking finish.

again, i was baby, so i bet i’d have a much easier time with them now that i’m 17. but for now, in my experience, bolt and g-force for the ps3 were harder than pathologic classic. i think icepick lodge should take a few notes for them for pathologic 2.

13: A game you were the most excited for when it wasn’t released yet? STREETS OF KAMUROCHO...i spent the entire day of its release anticipating its launch lol

14: A game you think would be cool if it had voice acting? hmm..most games i like and know about do have voice acting so i dunno....i guess it would’ve been kind of cool if morrowind had like, full proper voice acting. but i can understand why it only voice acted things like greetings and battle insults because GOD that game is SO...complicated...and as a result, the conversations are so lengthy and text-full. playing morrowind is really like a goddamn book! if it was voice acted i’m sure all that information would have to be shortened bc i know no one is going to fucking voice act two whole paragraphs

15: Which two games do you think would make an awesome crossover? pigeonetics and yakuza in which instead of being about the criminal underworld it’s about shady and unethical pigeon clubs, breeding, racing, etc etc...a lot of illegal shit does happen in the world of pigeons especially when it comes to racing; prized racers have been kidnapped and held for ransom before. and then there’s Avian Cucking: The Sport, where people breed the sexiest pigeons (horseman thief pouters), release them outside to seduce other people’s sexy pigeons, and bring them back and keep ‘em, drama ensues. will kiryu ever escape his past as a professional pigeon-napper, and find solace in his new life as a pigeon hobbyist? find out now by playing YACOOZA......

JOKES ASIDES i don’t know i really don’t....umm, pigeonetics and animal crossing somehow?? :O... like, instead of managing your own town it’s managing your own loft!...orrrr, the jojo games (all star battle & eyes of heaven) with yakuza, because i think they’re somewhat similar because they’re both haha Wacky Silly AND serious over the top fighty-fighting.....or maybe a crossover with OFF and discover my body, which, despite being an incredibly short and obscure indie game i still love to bits for what it’s worth. WAIT ANIMAL CROSSING AND MINECRAFT THAT WOULD FUCK SO HARD OH MY GOD

16: Character you’ve hated most? From what game? i can’t think of any character i like, HATE...with a burning passion.. there are a few i dislike or have a complicated relationship with though.. i’m not interested in the series anymore but ouma from drv3...i’ll admit that he is a bit fun sometimes, especially in the very early beginning he’s a likeable brat but as the game progresses he becomes more irritating than anything and i have an issue with him in regards to writing, despite the fact that i have never been awake in any english class ever lol. it’s too long to put in this already long post but i’ll keep it at that. if you like him, well, good for you for finding joy in something i couldn’t! but he just doesn’t do it for me.

AH I JUST REMEMBERED....MINE......FROM YAKUZA 3....maybe i’d change my mind if i watched a playthrough of y3 again, because i think you always absorb something better on your second watch (tho i honestly Dont have the energy to do that all over again, the yakuza games are too fucking long), but i really hate his writing. spoilers for y3 but, i think mine’s writing, alongside other things in the game, were super messy...and a big part of why i hate him is that not only is he one of those “could’ve had great potential but fell flat” sorta guys but also his love for daigo is seen as some fans as good gay rep and i?????/.............um....WELL let’s just say that, i think people nowadays will see any gay character ever in any circumstance and say it’s good gay rep just based off the fact that A Gay Character exists....he was Not, good gay rep imo....he was not, let alone, Good. .........

17: What game do you never tell people you play? can’t think of any games i wouldn’t tell people i play.. idk exactly what this question’s asking. does it mean what game you don’t tell ppl you play bc you’re embarrassed about it...? i’m not very embarrassed by any of them. the only thing that comes close, i guess, is uhh lioden and wolvden. i’ve only interacted with those communities a LITTLE TINY WEE BIT, yet of what i’ve seen it’s a goddamn dumpster fire and i’d never want to be associated with them lol

19: Which game do you think deserves a revival? i’m well aware it’ll never happen and that it’s more a wet dream than anything but...PT/silent hills..... on a more realistic/”could happen” note, PIGEONETICS!!!! SERIOUSLY, it’s an amazing game about amazing animals and it teaches genetics in a very simplified and efficient way!! genetics is SO hard for me to understand, i fucking hated studying it but this game really helped me understand how it works AND its super engaging and interesting!! HOWEVER, of all the pigeon genes we know of, only a handful were seen in pigeonetics and i’d LOVE a sequel that employs new game mechanics AND new genes!! i wanna learn about bronze and stencil genes! i wanna learn about phenotypes like grizzled and pied!!! genes like sooty and dirty!!! @ UNIVERSITY OF UTAH GENETICS DEPARTMENT PLEASE IM BEGIGNG YOU

20: What was the first video game you ever played? earliest memories of Gaming involves me at my aunt’s house playing two games: super mario brothers and some kind of trapeze game. i don’t remember anything else though

21: How old were you when you first played a video game? i can’t remember but i must’ve been REAL tiny.... 6-9 years, maybe??

22: If you could immerse yourself in any game for one day, which game would it be? What would you do? immerse myself meaning go into their world...? huh....on one hand i’d like to go in the world of yakuza 0 to play in the arcades and do whore related activities but i’d also love to go into the world of animal crossing (and i’m pretty sure i’d be some sort of generic dromaeosaurid in that game!!) and shop, chat with villagers, do chores for them, go fishing, bug hunting, eat delicious fucking food like the apples mangos peaches cherries etc etc.....OH AND FOSSIL HUNTING THAT’S THE BEST PART!! though it would definetly be a little weird, to be a little dinosaur and finding a fossil of a...little dinosaur....i guess the non-sentient species went extinct and the dinosaur i am is some kind of, descendant of a sapient non-avian dinosaur that survived the k-pg extinction event...oh but who cares all i want is a cool little ambulocetus fossil or something. and some cherry pie :)

26: Handheld or console? my old ps3 just went kaput one day years ago so i haven’t used it in years so i can’t compare well... but i’d say handheld, because it lets me like DO stuff more...would love to get a console one day, a ps4 maybe but i’m kinda worried it’ll make me stay in one room all day wasting away my time when there’s other stuff i can do, y’know? but something handheld like my 3ds, on the other hand...i can do stuff with it. i can take it to my room and play it between breaks i take as i clean the room and fold my clothes, i can watch something on the tv and play the game during ad breaks, i can take it outside too if it has charge to last me a while! so....handheld i guess

27: Has there ever been a moment that has made you cry? yakuza 0 and undertale in particular have ALMOST made me fucking bawl with many of its moments....yakuza 0 especially, after that Fucking Ending i had trouble sleeping because oh my fucking god. video game people SAD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

28: Which character’s clothes do you wish you owned the most?

29:  Which is more important, gameplay or story? HMMM....well, if i were to play a game with a shitty story but really good and fun gameplay i’d probably continue playing it for the gameplay. but if i played a game with shitty gameplay but an interesting story, there is a chance i’d play it more for the sake of the story but also i might just quite and see the rest of the story on youtube or something. i’m more likely to go through a boring story for fun gameplay than go through boring gameplay for an interesting story, so i guess gameplay is more important to me....that is, WHEN i actually own and play a game as opposed to when i just watch someone play a game because i don’t own the game but wanna know abt the story lol

30: A game that hasn’t been localized in your country that you think should be localized? i have no idea how video game localization really works....but i assume localizing a game in india would mean something like, removing content according to cultural norm and also somehow translating it into the 22 official languages..? or just two or three language if it’s tied to a particular state, which seems way more doable. i honestly have no idea? i’ve never interacted w the indian gaming community that much to be honest, all i know of it is of the video games i’ve seen sold in some game stores and a few whispers about like solid snake or whoever from my school’s cafeteria....the most popular games here, to my knowledge, are those very streamable games like fortnite and PUBG and your call of duties and whatnot. those generic shooters. and even then, that honestly isn’t the “indian” gaming community bc this country is so FUCKHUGE, it’s just tamil nadu. one state.

soooo, according to what little i know of gaming interests in where i live, i don’t think any of the games i like should be localized here bc i don’t really think there’s an audience for it as far as i can tell :( maybe animal crossing? it’s a fun little games for all ages and i think it has a chance of becoming popular here, so maybe that is worth a shot! but i can’t think of any other game that i like that really has an audience here (other than Me lol)

[thegeminisage]

hey liz i've been thinking a lot about story structure lately and i wanted your take on how you decide what structure your stories will have? i know there's that "you have to do what your story needs and tells you to do" thing but these bitches dont ever tell me anything they just multiply so. thoughts? - bma

(as an aside, i don't know whether involving medium would change many things but it may be worth considering. mainly i think medium is just a matter of arrangement and that the story would be for most intents and purposes the same no matter how you choose to tell it. i guess you could argue that structure is arrangement in itself and intrinsically tied to medium but i sort of feel like it is secondary arrangement, if at all? like if you consider time as an element to outline -- the time IN the story (how things happen to your characters) is not necessarily the time you’re telling the story IN (how you are telling your reader that things are happening) aka internal chronology doesnt equal your work’s pacing? or should it??? does this make sense? i dont think so. i am sorry.) - bma :|

NOOO dont be sorry ur making total sense

i think there’s 3 thots to unpack here (medium, structure, & chronology) & i’m gonna start with medium bc it’s easier. im also putting it behind a cut bc it’s gonna get just stupidly long and rambly. i’m sorry in advance if it’s not helpful to you, i have a lot to say for someone who has never taken even one single class on writing and as a result doesn’t know jack shit (there’s a tl;dr at the end dont worry)

about MEDIUM: 

so like ok i’m just some goof-off with a HS degree who writes fanfiction but In My Very Super Qualified Personal Opinion, i don’t think that most of the time medium is intrinsically tied to STRUCTURE of the main storytelling arc...i think the art of storytelling itself is distinct from the medium you choose to tell the story IN. this post puts it better than i ever could but basically for me, i feel like the story itself is sort of the raw, malleable concept, and the medium you choose to tell it in is how you convey the information??

like in a book, you can say “she forgot her keys” and in a film you have to show her smacking her forehead, heading back into the house, and swiping her keeps off the counter. you can’t TELL in film, you have to show. similarly i regret every day i cannot perfectly describe a facial expression with words when i see it so clearly in my head. for audio-only podcasts that are dialogue heavy out of necessity you have different limitations than you would for, say, animated music videos with no dialogue at all. games allow for more interactivity and exploration while sacrificing accessibility, tv shows allow for more length while sacrificing, uh, a big hollywood budget...medium affects the kind of story you can reasonably tell which is why some stories are better suited to one medium than another. i think trying things in other mediums is a good way to stretch your storytelling muscles but with enough skill nearly any story could be told in any medium. i think when trying to decide on a medium you just gotta weigh the pros & cons and what you feel comfortable with/what you think would be most effective/what would evoke the strongest reaction

re: structure:

firstly “do what the story tells u to do” is a little silly like...the story isn’t sentient. come on. that’s like “i can only write when the writing gods inspire me” there are no writing gods! inspire yourself! it’s all in our weird messed up brains! ok anyway.

this is, again, just how i do things, and i am 700% self-taught so take it with a grain of salt, but when i sit down and start blocking out a story from scratch i don’t...actually consider the big structure at all! sorry if that’s not helpful to you. i like to make a list of everything i want to happen, and then put it together in a few different orders to see what looks best. and when i’m finished, whatever i have just like...IS the structure i go with, with perhaps minor tinkering to make it flow more smoothly. (i think this might be in the same spirit as “do what the story tells you” with less bullshit and more Agency Of The Writer.)

for long and more complex projects, i actually usually have several lists - one list of stuff that is, for example, the Action Plot (the kingdom has been cursed, i’m tracking down my serial killer sister to bring her to justice, i’m running from djinn who wanna kill my dad, i’m trying to bring my dead not-boyfriend back to life). then i have another list for Character A & Character B’s romance or whatever. and maybe a even another one for solo character development (magicphobic prince learns to love magic, former werewolf hunter figures out his family is a cult, half-demon learns to embrace his own nature). and as many lists as we need for however many Main Characters and or Plots/Sideplots

how i order the lists: individually first. don’t mix them together to start with. when deciding the order of an individual list i like to, for example in a romance arc, use escalating intimacy. “A and B have dinner together” is naturally gonna go way sooner than “A and B kiss” or “A and B talk about A’s angsty backstory” because that’s more satisfying. draw it out, good/important stuff last, dangle that carrot so we have a reason to keep reading! for singular character development, it’s basically a straightforward point A to point B...if i want my guy to start hating magic with everything he is and end up being very comfortable with it, i have to put “reluctantly uses magic to save his own life” WAYYY before “casually using magic to light torches and reheat his cold stew.” 

the tricky part for me is when i’m done with these lists and then i need to mix them together To Pace My Whole Story. (this is usually why i wind up with a rainbow colored spreadsheet.) i don’t like to put too many things too close together because then the pace feels uneven. even if my Action Plot is only a thinly veiled excuse for romance and character development, i still don’t want to focus on a romance for 30,000 words and then go “and oh yeah in case you forgot Serial Killing Sister is still coming for your asses.” the more sideplots and major character arcs you’re juggling the harder it is to get an even distribution, which is my main concern always

and like, generally, whatever i have when i’m finished...is my structure. (sorry.) 

i don’t know much about the classic 3-act or anything like that, but i usually can divide them up into 3-5 big arcs based on story turning points. sometimes i take a scene out of one arc and put it in another because it fits better and i like for my shit to be organized, but usually by the time i’m finished with all that, that’s what the final story is mostly gonna look like. (there have been a few exceptions when i realized i needed extra scenes/changes while i was MID-DRAFT and let me tell you that murders me EVERY time. it happened on the merlin fic i’m currently posting and that was like my own personal hell.)

this is also where thots about chronology come in:

i think time CAN be an element of this if you WANT it to be, but it doesn’t HAVE to be. if you want it to be, i would consider it just another “list” like character development or the romance arc. 

i usually plot without considering Time very much...to me, it’s all down to the events you want to show, and however much time it takes is the byproduct. if you want to show something from a character’s chilhood but then tell the bulk of it when they’re adults, that’s one thing. if you want to show a scene from their childhood, teenhood, young adulthood, etc, that’s a different kind of pacing?? i usually do it this way so i can regard time like wordcount: it takes as long as it takes. 3 days or 3 years, a 1.5k drabble or a 100k epic...overall, my LARGEST CONCERN is that even distribution. in the same way that i don’t want one chapter to be 30,000 words when the rest are 10,000 words, i personally am not a fan of huge timeskips offscreen

(because this where i think someone’s own internal chronology DOES matter...this is just a personal preference, as a reader i have a hard time really comprehending, say, a year timeskip or a 10yr timeskip when all i did was turn one page. like, a year is such a long time. i can’t even begin to describe how different i am now to how i was a year ago. it’s the same for character development. time IS development and as a writer i’m not really comfortable having that take place offscreen - for main characters, at least. it’s just too jarring. a little prologue with something happening 10 or 20 years ago is usually fine, but for the most part, i’m not a fan. ...i can do one chapter per year a lot easier than i can do two chapters in childhood and the other 8 in adulthood. of course you can play with this a LOT with nonlinear storytelling, which is a whole other very cool thing, and someone skilled in their work can keep me sucked in no matter what, but imo if you don’t want to risk throwing your reader out of your work it’s better to keep things steady)

HOWEVER sometimes time IS an element u wanna consider outside of just making sure your shit is evenly distributed...if your heart is moved to tell a story in a specific timeframe, over a year, or from solstice to solstice (this was almost the timeline for my merlin fic and then i changed it), for the first six months of a friendship, or even a huge journey in the span of a single day (toby fox had a lot of success with this one lol).

i think it can help to choose a start and end point for your chronology the same way you do for character development (prince goes from hating magic to being ok with it, story takes place from ages 8 to 25, or from new year’s eve 2038 to 2039, whatever) - that way you can keep your distribution even, if that’s a thing you want to do...even if you have a lot of skips you can still note what happens offscreen to make it work better in your head? like, if you just make it another List, another column on your spreadsheet, when you’re in the early stages of organizing you can be conscious of it and make sure it’s playing into the story the way you want it to

anyway these r my thots im SOOOO SORRY this is so long lmao. brain machine broke today which is why i had to ramble more to explain myself. the tl;dr in case ur brain is melting out of ur ears & u didn’t sign up for an essay:

imo medium is totally distinct from storytelling tho ofc some stories are better suited to some mediums

structure? i don’t know her. i plot w/o regard to structure and then if it looks funny i mush it into a more structurally sound shape

my main concern when structuring anything, including time, is an even distribution of Events and a steady rate of escalation

structure to me is just what i have when i’m finished plotting. i’m sorry one day i’m gonna take a writing class

internal chronology matters to me personally because i have a little bit of time blindness but maybe not to everyone, i know many very successful stories where they disregarded that entirely to no ill effect

writer’s block isn’t real! everyone just needs more rainbow spreadsheets

thank u for asking I HOPE i didn’t make you regret it too badly lmao and that at least a little of it was helpful!! 

[hyetale-blog]

I wanted to rant on dyslexia, sorry this is shitty, I can’t put my thoughts into words but.

I just wanted to say stuff, so what better way to do so than post it to my 3 followers. I wanted to talk about dyslexia, this is just something i wanted to rant about. If you don’t like it, just go away. I have dyslexia, it’s a learning disability if you didn’t know, or have been living under a damn rock. The average person when they hear this, think, “oh isn't that when you switch your letters around”? or “so your stupid”? I’ve gotten the first one said to me every time. This rant will be all over the place too btw. Anyway, that’s not the case really. Dyslexia isn't  just me sitting here switching my damn letters around, sure that’s a small part of it, maybe not even a part of it for some, or more than a small part of it for others. Dyslexia is different for everyone, but I’m just gonna talk about my type of it because otherwise this would be too long. My dyslexia affects the way I read, write, spell, understand, etc. These seem like small things, so what if you can't  do them, am i right?! No, Really that’s not true, heres a conversation I’ve had 1 million times:

Person: So what if you can’t do those things?! I can’t dance, and you can!

me: Ok but do you NEED to dance in everyday life???? Answer: No you don’t, I’m sitting here in the middle of my classes listening as hard as I can, but not understanding one bit. Teachers get tired of me saying I don’t get it, they have even told me “just fake it”. WHAT IF IT EVER OCCURRED TO YOU, THAT I ACTUALLY WANT TO LEARN WHAT OTHERS DO TOO? I LOVE learning, but I can never get the education I NEED. People with more accomidations needed for thier disablity, will get a para, or more attention I’d say. Which is so wonderful and makes me happy that they can learn, at their own pace. I’m stuck in the middle of learning disabilities with my form of dyslexia. So people will offer to help, over the fact that they HAVE to help me, because of my 504. But they will not help in a useful way for me. Sure, maybe Emily will understand ur help, but I won’t get it till you explain this 1000 more times, in a simple and understandable way. I want to learn, but I’m here getting told by teachers “we can’t help you with that” and then dropping out of school because I can’t learn in a place where u don’t even try to help me at the leasT! Now, I'm at a school that will try to offer me help, by telling me “hey, heres a 50 page book, go study that and u will get an A!”. HUNNY. NO. STOP TELLING ME TO STUDY LIKE OTHERS. ITS NOT THAT I DONT THINK I CAN. I. CANT. WHEN I take a look at a book, I don’t see these simple understanding sentences like the rest of this class. I see jumbles of lines with no meaning, It is a fact that reading will give me a headache, focusing so hard on something I can’t understand like a book? Is like telling a person to try to think of a new color. The most annoying thing I will always hear till the day I die is:

“You know how to do it”

or “you are acting lazy”

No. I don’t know how to do this, why the hell do you think I’m asking? Sure it may be me asking for the 50th time, but I never understood it those 50 times, so please explain again. If you find it annoying or perhaps MAYBE IM JUST LAZY??? Than THERES THE dOOR biTCH. BECAUSE IM Working harder than anyone in this class, I can PROMISee you that. Every class is like a battle, sometimes I cannot even look up, because everywhere I look is letters, and because of that I will always get headaches. 

     I had wanting to be in a spelling be since I was in first grade, I always thought I’d be the smart one in class about all that stuff. Instead I’m sitting here getting called out on spelling the word “cat” wrong. But apparently me spelling things like that wrong was not bad enough. I was not given ANY help for my dyslexia when I was younger, because I was told “my grades are not bad enough” Are all dyslexics stupid now?? LOL we are dyslexic with As or Fs anyway it goes, we still have dyslexia! Don’t tell me my grades are not low enough. But now that I’ve gone into harder subject and learning, my grades are more than low enough. I am so happy and proud of myself for trying my best everyday, I don’t need a letter to tell me weather I did well or not. so what if all my grades are below D? I am doing my best and that’s what matters. 

  I’m working so damn hard, I do everyday, even if you refuse to give me the education I need, I keep going and always try. I want this to change and I want help more than anything. I wish my form of dyslexia had a magic way of learning that would work for me. But it’s not gonna happen right now, so I will just keep on talking about it. 

     I did not wake up some day and ask to be born with so many things that make it hard for me to go through daily life, It could be worse? Sure. But that’s not what I’m focusing on. I’m focused on the fact that Dyslexia should never be seen as something easy, relatable, funny, because it’s not. I will cry for hours on end asking why? Why can I not learn all these things while others in my class scream out loud “OH THIS IS EASY”. I cup my hands over my ears to block out your stupidity tbh. 

     No, I’m not just some person who reads words backwards and mixes my letters every so often. This is so much more than that for me, it controls my life, because yes, I am in school for 9 hours a day + homework. All of these hours require understanding, reading, and writing at the least. I could wish and wish to be smarter and more understood everyday, that won't help anything tho. My dyslexia is not something you can “specialize in” sure, maybe you can try to understand it a bit more. But unless you are me? You will never know or understand how it is. 

     I only learned how to use punctuation decently, a year ago. Because I never was taught in a way I could understand. I went to tutoring everyday for 2 hours, but everything she said still made no sense. I don’t even know how to say my feelings on my dyslexia, It’s hard. No I can’t remember what we learned yesterday or 2 hours ago. I don’t get what we are learning I really do not.  Stop assuming, after the 60 times i tell you, that I know it, and understand it. I’ve said it so often, what makes you think I’m kidding, can you not absorb that information? I learn different and I want to be able to be taught in that different way, because I want the education that 99% of the kids in this school get. how do you think “fake it till you make it” is gonna look on my job application? Who's fault was it, because its sure not my fault for being told that 1000 times. 

     Please stop telling me my As look like 9s and that its funny that I can't tell right from left. God what good are you doing?

     I will spend my whole entire day on school work I never get finished, While we have 20 assignments the class has already done? I’m stuck with only 3 of them done and turned in on time. 

     May I just add, I don’t like when people call dyslexia a “mental illness”. It’s a learning disability, AND LEARNING DISABILITY isn't a bad word! It’s real and something that I’m apart of. I might make no sense typing all this, maybe I only understand what I’m trying to say. But we people we not asked to be this way, we don’t ask for this, its not something thats trendy.  

     My dyslexia is a part of me, no matter how much I hate it, I would never change it, (maybe a little ehemm) but still. I didn’t get all I wanted to say out, only about half of it. 

     This is the end and ya, my Dyslexia is not simple, it never will be. I am gonna keep doing my best and working my ass off for the well worth Fs I get in class, because I just want to spread awareness that people like us, are out there. It may not be something you think of, or think about learning about or supporting tons. But I will keep on talking about it, because its real, so thanks.

(im not sorry for any incorrect grammar I might have used, or incorrect spelling.)

[viralhottopics]

Donald Trump Isn’t Stopping This Pakistani Muslim Immigrant From Having Hope

As Inauguration Day looms, a million thoughts are running through my head. How could the America I had come to love, to feel accepted in, be about to swear in a leader who resented me for my residency status, my religion and even my gender? And what would it mean for me, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant whose visa is up for renewal in the summer of 2017, to be living in Trumps America, side by side with people who seemingly dont want me here and who now have a leader in power who appears to share that opinion?

Your guess is as good as mine.

Like many other immigrants from high risk, terror prone areas, those of us here that have to apply for new visas after years on F1 student visas, are in limbo, left in suspense about where our immigration status will stand under the soon-to-be President Donald Trump. We are at the mercy of his unpredictability, wondering if he will follow through on his promises and weed out those of us who dont belong here.

We are at the mercy of [Donald Trump’s] unpredictability, wondering if he will follow through on his promises and weed out those of us who dont ‘belong’ here.

Over the course of his campaign, Trump made several different statements saying that people like me people who come from Muslim-majority nations will no longer be allowed to immigrate into the country. During the presidential cycle, we were forced to laugh it off and hope that maybe this man would not end up having control over the system that determined the direction of the rest of our lives. But now that the day to hand over power is nearly here, we cant help but worry what decision he will actually make once he gets into office.

Will we merely be harassed as we apply to stay in this country, or will we be completely denied residency status and lose the careers and lives we have worked so hard to build?

What makes the eve of inauguration harder still is coming to terms with how we, I, got here, because the very election of Donald Trump has shattered my perception of America and my place in it.

Courtesy of Mahira Tiwana

Mahira and her siblings stand on the Karakoram Highway in northern Pakistan while on their way to the Pakistan-China border during a family trip in 2005.

As a child living in Lahore, Pakistan, the reality of U.S tensions with the Middle East seemed distant. But as an adult, the realization that I sit in the U.S., the idea that my fate is now being influenced by a conflict I never knew I was involved in, in a nation that crippled my own in many ways and gave my religion the bad name it never deserved, seems to be one of the greatest ironies of my life.

Pakistani children are raised to view moving to the United States as the end goal. And as a result, many of us end up here for our college educations. We come to the U.S. as young college students, expecting only the best of everything. The best facilities, resources, universities, people and students.

The realization that my fate is now being influenced by a conflict I never knew I was involved in, in a nation that crippled my own in many ways and gave my religion the bad name it never deserved, seems to be one of the greatest ironies of my life.

I came to America in the fall of 2012. Back then, all those promises seemed real. On the eve of Obamas re-election, I had been in the country for three months, and it was a magical time to be at a liberal arts college. It gave a newcomer the impression of a progressive, transformed America on its way to great things; it gave me the hope of the upward mobility I had always been told would come of leaving my family and friends behind in Pakistan for this education.

The 2016 election season was the first year I lived in the U.S. post-college. I had spent the months leading up to graduation convincing my family that staying in the U.S. was the best option for me, that there was no reason for me to return to Pakistan and live at home. Here, I had told them, I would be in a better position to attain the future I desired.

But the closer we got to Trumps inauguration, the more I realized that those feelings were the assumptions of a sheltered experience, even as an immigrant. After seeing the promise Obama represented, Trumps political ascension was a rude awakener.

Courtesy of Mahira Tiwana

Mahira and her family gather outside their home in Lahore, Pakistan, during Mahira’s winter break from university in 2014.

The election results reiterated in bold letters, that in case I had ever considered adopting such an identity, I am not and cannot be American, despite being a product of its education and social system. As an immigrant in purgatory, neither here nor there, I found myself suddenly unable to move forward.

And so, I began to look back. The reality of my present had me navigating an all-too-familiar battle between sentiment and logic I had put on mute long ago. To return to Pakistan? Or stay?

If I stay, how do I live in a country that has effectively voted for me to leave?

Their message is irrevocably clear: Your Islam is not welcome. Your skin color is not welcome. Your dark features and your dark green passport will taint you here as long as you have them.

But maybe I should ignore it and stay. For my future. I reasoned with myself.

But where was I really?

The election results reiterated in bold letters, that in case I had ever considered adopting such an identity, I am not and cannot be American.

In many ways, it felt like I had regressed. I was in a culture that stood in complete dismissal of the religious and racial parts of my ethnic background while actively fetishizing the food I ate and the clothes I wore.

It was a culture that removed Islam from all Muslim contributions to the world to make them more palatable from mystic Rumi poetry to the world wonder that is the Mughal Taj Mahal.

During the Obama years that defined my college experience, there had been times when people exhibited backwards perceptions of my country and my culture, when people had exoticized it. But it had never gotten to a point where it felt like my identity was a negative presence or something that should be rejected by those who were more American or more easily able to fit into the lifestyle here. But now, I couldnt help but question the value of my desire to chase the American dream. Was it worth it when that dream seemed more and more like it was becoming a nightmare?

Aamir Qureshi/ Getty Images

Pakistani day laborers rest by the side of the road as they wait for work in Islamabad on June 24, 2012. Rising unemployment and inflation together have increased hunger and poverty among the most vulnerable in Pakistan.

Pakistans declining political and economic situation leaves many young and capable people unable to find sustainable work. Instead of staying and contributing, they leave for greener pastures, in search of better opportunities. I had done the same.

Today, Im not ready to give up on the American dream and go home just yet. And so, I find myself in a place where I can do nothing but wait.

In the wake of increased Islamophobia and threats to the place of Muslims and immigrants in the country, many of us are too afraid to leave for fear of being denied re-entry Hasan Minhaj even broke his typical jokey banter on the Daily Show to voice his concerns about his mother being allowed back into America post-Trump inauguration. And my immigration officer contacted me and other foreign employees, advising us to immediately apply for more secure visas and refrain from international travel.

Im not ready to give up on the ‘American dream’ and go home just yet.

But its not been easy staying here, especially in the backdrop of a society that at least in part seems to reject what I stand for and challenge the America I have lived in and loved these past few years.

Staying meant that the year that I had not been home to Lahore was extended. Staying meant that, for me and other Pakistanis, Trump was our personal Grinch for the holiday season.

We missed the barrage of weddings that define this time of year, missed family reunions and the one time in the year we are able to return to our childhood comforts.

A close friend still feels betrayed that I will not be attending her graduation. Another is upset I did not dance at her wedding, the wedding we had planned together since we were little girls. And even missing my siblings school functions, functions that I would usually consider ridiculous (my 8-year-old sister is extremely proud at having finished fifth in the 100 meter race at school), feel like I am missing out on watching my family grow up.

Carlo Allegri / Reuters

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on the night of his election in Manhattan, New York.

I have already missed so much, and it seems with the threat of decreased mobility in a Trump administration, I am destined to miss much more. I fear the distance I already feel will solidify and lengthen on Inauguration Day, and its making me anxious. It is then that I will learn what fate awaits me in the summer when my student visa expires and when I want to go home for a family visit.

In terms of politics, the difference between the old and new POTUS will not be immediately felt. But with the kind of extreme, unstable remarks Donald Trump regularly issues, I am not positive the impact will be delayed for much longer.

For Pakistanis, seeing the great impenetrable nation in such visible distress induces mild amusement and perhaps a stirring of pity. We are not in the business of interfering, and so we will watch as Trump attempts to fill Obamas well-worn shoes on Jan. 20 and every day thereafter with profound sadness for the loss of one of the best men to ever occupy the Oval Office. We will sit with a sense of foreboding for what is in store for America and its subjects, particularly those that bear our skin color and our religion.

While my American friends will joke and hope that they come out of the next four years with as few bruises as possible, I simply hope to survive.

And for me, the country will never be quite the same. I will walk around with a pit in my stomach as I try to make a life in a nation that has changed from a sanctuary to a place where I am constantly a suspect. And while my American friends will joke and hope that they come out of the next four years with as few bruises as possible, I simply hope to survive in the country that I hope to call home for as long as I can.

Trump may never see the dangers involved in making a scapegoat of a religious people or of minorities who have come here for a better life, and so we Muslims and immigrants must implore the average American to see past the blind hatred and the political propaganda. So on the eve of Inauguration Day, to those of you who are not in my situation, who may not be forcefully removed or under threat in Trumps America, I want to reiterate that our presence in this nation relies on your humanity. This land of immigrants will soon have the very symbol of anti-immigrant rhetoric as its greatest representative, and we look to our American counterparts to rise to the occasion. I hope our faith is not misplaced.

The Huffington Post is documenting the rising wave of anti-Muslim bigotry and violence in America. Take a stand against hate.

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from Donald Trump Isn’t Stopping This Pakistani Muslim Immigrant From Having Hope