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veganthranduil · 15 days ago

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(This is a slightly re-worked version of my 2021 Terror Camp talk on the subject. You can request access to past recordings via the TC email.)

In a show full of unapologetic imperialists, Harry Goodsir, beautiful cinnamon roll (too good for this world, too pure), is often exempted from the scrutiny that other characters are subjected to, based on his ‘innocent’ nature and his good intentions. I argue that precisely these characteristics that are most formative for his imperialism, but that his imperialism is not legible to us because it is the same form of imperialism we* still practise today. As the character who seems most modern to us because he is, in many ways, quite liberal, he serves as a prime audience surrogate to excuse, and to question our excuses of this imperialism.

We may think of empire as an unapologetic entity, too large to deny its own existence. The fact of its violence is all-encompassing. In the eyes of those who suffer from under it, the empire cannot be ignored—but there are also those who depend on its invisibility for the functioning of their world. This is a story about how the empire hides itself from itself, through the story it tells about itself.

The origins of empires fall together with the historical emergence of liberalism in the 18th century. Mehta (1999, p. 194) writes on this co-emergence:

“It is tempting to see the triumph of liberalism and the concurrent extension of the empire as either discontinuous facts that do not relate to each other or as plainly contradicting each other, and therefore casting doubt on the authenticity of the former. The thesis of discontinuity misunderstands the role of liberalism generally, and especially in this period. From its very inception in the seventeenth century, liberalism had been much more than a mere political doctrine with a local reach. By the early nineteenth century and with added vigor through the course of it, it was a robust mindset with a confidence in its global vision. This liberalism did not mysteriously get transformed into some demonic urge to rule the world the instant the British ventured beyond their shores. [...] liberalism and empire were tightly braided threads such that their separation would have resulted in the fraying of a well-woven mental and political tapestry.”

At the same time, liberalism, in its elaborations as a theory, is at odds with many aspects of empire. Liberalism, on the one hand, relies on the resources and globalisation provided through colonisation. On the other hand, the liberal tradition purports that its values—individual self-determination, basic rights, democracy, or tolerance—hold the world over. These liberal values extend rights that the empire violates and denies. This is not to say that liberalism has not also served as the argument in struggles of liberation and for rights. The language of liberalism can be used to challenge liberalism and demand inclusion, just as the language of liberalism can be used to dismantle it. Suffragists successfully did the former. The globally resurgent radical right is succeeding in a strategy of normalisation that is achieving the latter. What I am saying is that within liberalism, which is caught between needing the empire for its political survival and being at odds with the fact of empire in its moral system, there is a particular rhetorical trick that hides the empire from liberal eyes. Even today, we western liberal subjects deflect when it comes to the existence of this connection.

I use Jeanne Morefield’s concept of “imperial deflections” (Morefield, 2014). She defines an imperial deflection as “drawing critical attention away from the liberal empire’s illiberalism by insisting upon its fundamental character.” It’s a bit like a magic trick: showing you the card by acknowledging the empire’s illiberal acts, and then drawing the attention away from it. Morefield examines British liberal thinkers around WWI and US liberal thinkers post 9/11 to show how the liberal justifications of empire are surprisingly similar in both instances. In both pre-WWI Britain and post 9/11 America, liberals insist it is impossible for them to act illiberally—because they have always been liberal, because they are at heart liberal, or because the long arc of history bends towards a liberal society in both cases. It is these deflections we can see Goodsir employ in the show, at different times, and with different degrees of success.

Goodsir as an Audience Surrogate

At numerous junctures in the show, we are encouraged to view the world we are presented with through Goodsir’s eyes. He, like the viewer, has never been to the Arctic, and approaches it with a sense of wonder. The audience is encouraged to empathise with him through small moments that endear him to us (such as when he insists that he, too, can haul the boat-sledge in 1x02 and promptly falls over, inexperienced at hauling as he is.) In episode 1x02 Goodsir as a viewpoint character also becomes explicit when we hear his testimony after what happened to Lieutenant Gore. Although all members of the sledge party are interviewed offscreen, it is his point of view that we hear and believe, and that helps us makes sense of what we just saw happen. The fact that the captains interviewing him are sceptical of his account just solidifies putting the audience in his corner.

What most solidifies Goodsir as an audience surrogate, however, is his ideology and therefore his position in the show as a “modern” character. My argument is that it’s precisely Goodsir’s liberalism that allows us to identify with him.

Goodsir as a Liberal Subject

Goodsir’s role as a scientist (an anatomist first, and then also a doctor) position him closest to Post-Enlightenment liberal ideas about scientific progress, rationality, and also a new form of masculinity. Goodsir is a decidedly “modern” character, especially when contrasted with other characters: Goodsir is less set in his ways than most of them. While describing the bear prints, for example, the captains are dismissive of his description while Goodsir is sceptical but not dismissive of the idea that the bear could have tracked them to the ship. (He is, of course, very set in other ways, for example in his total embrace of class hierarchies.) He is also positioned in contrast to Stanley’s overt racism when Stanley refuses to perform surgery on Silna’s father.**

Goodsir’s approach to life is informed by his belief in science. We are given little hints throughout the show that approaching things from a detached, scientific angle gives him comfort. When David Young dies, Goodsir is distressed, but the first thing he does is check Young’s pulse. Similarly, he can perform Young’s autopsy only after covering his face, reducing him from “person” to “body.” His account of Gore’s killing, likewise, is focussed on the observable details and reads more like a scientific report than a report from a man who witnessed a traumatic event.

This rationality and distance from emotion is also indicative of an alternative masculinity. The show contrasts Goodsir’s liberal masculinity with the more familiar “male warrior” masculinity of the sailors that surround him. In episode 1x03, Goodsir’s demand of an escort back to the ships is played for a laugh, though immediately undercut when the Tuunbaq does attack the hunting blind, leaving him the character with the more realistic risk assessment. Goodsir embodies an alternative hegemonic masculinity: a liberal masculinity that expresses itself not in outbursts of aggression but in a distancing from emotion. When Goodsir seeks to test his lead poisoning theory, for example, he entices Jacko with gentle words to eat from the food he suspects to be poisonous. He is aware that—should his theory be correct—he is killing the monkey. We are reminded of his gentle words to David Young and realise, perhaps, that his gentleness is not backed up with a deep concern for the person/animal he speaks to. In both cases, the knowledge that can be extracted from dead bodies supersedes sentimentality. Neither masculinity, one might extrapolate from that, offers a way out of the predicament these men find themselves in. Neither can serve as the basis of a new kind of living with each other.

Goodsir’s Liberal Deflections of Empire

Goodsir’s character is an interesting case of nominative determinism. There obviously was a historical Harry Goodsir, but this is not the man we are looking at. We are looking at the fictional “good sir” who was, at first glance, written as the only good man among imperialists. At second glance, however, his name itself becomes an imperial deflection. While other characters make their investment in empire clear from the beginning, Goodsir’s is perhaps harder to spot. Sir John has already failed at one imperial endeavour and is adamant to prove himself. Fitzjames’s stories illustrate that he has no qualms with the mission of empire. But at various points in the show, Goodsir is seen to express discomfort with the logic of action that imperialism dictates. He wants to save Silna’s father (even though he ends up making things worse for him and the crew in the long run.) He expresses discomfort at the treatment of the body of Silna’s father, while he himself tries to be respectful of Inuit customs (though, once again, making things worse by burying his charms with him.) When Francis wants to ask Silna how to kill the Tuunbaq, Goodsir does not translate the question, perhaps out of a sense that “these matters are quite private in her culture.” It is because of this discomfort that Goodsir becomes the prime apologist of empire. The other characters do not feel like they have anything to be sorry for, and therefore do not need to invent justifications. Goodsir employs these justifications at various moments in the show, but two instances stand out for their similarity in phrasing and context, and the differing extent to which Goodsir believes them.

The first instance of an imperial deflection is when Goodsir brings supper to Silna. She has just been kidnapped by Hickey, Hartnell and Manson. When Goodsir introduces himself to Silna, he has a first moment of realization of the meaning and scope of empire and his place in it. He explains their purpose (“For our economy. For trade.”) and seems to have a moment of self-awareness that those are neither good reasons for dying nor for killing. A moment later he points at himself, hoping to introduce himself. “Goodsir,” he says, which is both his name and also an insistence that while the policies that brought him here may be flawed, the men sent to die were good men, not deserving of the scorn we direct at them for the imperial policy they carry out. “This is not how Englishmen act,” he says, despite evidence to the contrary that Englishmen have, in fact, just acted this way. This is the first instance of a textbook liberal deflection: insisting on the character over the actions of empire. What does it matter for Silna that he means well? The helplessness is emphasised by the abrupt ending of the episode after Goodsir’s desperate introduction.

The second time Goodsir insists on the character of Empire over its actions is in quite a different context. A hunting party has just massacred an Inuit family, people that Silna knew, and now Silna is being exiled from Terror Camp. Goodsir knows that it’s safer for her to go, but selfishly wants her to stay. He feels for her, and perhaps feels he must offer some sort of apology for the behaviour of his co-nationals. Then he tells her: “I wish you could come to England and see for yourself. It’s not like we are here. People there are good.” Once again, he insists on the fundamental character—the “English” character—of the empire that exculpates them from the crimes they commit abroad. But even in the speaking, he appears to realise the futility of this deflection. This second deflection is followed by a word spoken in Inuktitut for which no translation is provided.*** Silna reacts with a small smile and a nod of her head. The choice not to subtitle or translate Goodsir’s last word to Silna can be read in various ways, but it remains first and foremost a place to which we—the liberal audience at home—cannot follow Goodsir, who has been our surrogate up to this point, implying perhaps that he has taken a step that we have yet to take in confronting our own imperialism.

Both of Goodsir’s deflections follow violence done to Silna (or threatened against her.) In the first instance, it’s her kidnapping by Hickey and his associates for which Goodsir first apologises, then makes excuses; in the second instance it’s the violence that will be done to her should she return to Terror Camp, as well as the violence done to other Inuit. In both cases, it’s Goodsir’s job to draw attention away from the liberal empire’s illiberal actions by insisting on its liberal character. The extent to which he succeeds—or fails—opens up these liberal deflections of empire for us. Goodsir is not an uncritical liberal audience surrogate. I watched The Terror for the first time during the March 2020 lockdown, and hearing “For our economy. For trade.” hit hard for me as a person living under a capitalist system where economic necessity is continuously valued over human life. Goodsir realises, in justifying, the hollowness of some of his justifications, even as he fervently holds on to others.

Goodsir stays alive long enough to witness all the ways that Englishmen may act, and is made to participate in them. His disillusionment with his co-nationals at the end is nearly complete. But his commitment to liberalism, I would argue, remains.

In the end, Goodsir returns to science. His final vision is that of the beauty that no doubt inspired his career, the wonder that he told Crozier he still feels. But it’s also a vision that remains within the ordered boundaries of the liberal empire: the specimens are foreground on a white background, they are separated from nature, standing contextless and only for themselves. Goodsir’s final vision is that of the liberal imperial project, realised.

* When I write “we,” I am, of course, aware that not everyone reading this falls under the umbrella of Western liberal subjects that this “we” assumes. Like Goodsir as an audience surrogate, this “we” hopes to function as a mirror of reflection for our own deflections of empire. I do not understand myself as a “liberal,” certainly not in the sense that most US-Americans use the term. I see liberalism as the bedrock of how we do politics in the 21st century. In that sense, we are all “liberals.” From the position of someone who is a “liberal,” as a subject of a liberal democracy, I do not exempt myself from the category of people that has, at various points in their lives, made excuses for empire, knowingly or unknowingly. These rhetorical strategies, so ingrained in how we talk about who we are, make it all-too-easy to fall into the trap of convincing ourselves that there is something redeemable at the heart of our empires. We must make these strategies explicit to recognise their falsity.

** Stanley’s refusal did not come out of an assessment of the futility of the procedure, which might have spared Silna’s father further suffering. In that sense, both Goodsir (in his belief that his knowledge can save the man) and Stanley (in his racist refusal of medical aid) fail Silna and her father, because neither of them centre the well-being of the man.

*** I am aware that you can find this translation in many metas written about it. Do not come into my comments to tell me what it means. I looked it up.

Bibliography

Bell, D., 2014. What is Liberalism. Political Theory 42, 682–715.

Hooper, C., 2001. Masculinities in International Relations, in: Manly States: Masculinities, International Relations, and Gender Politics. Columbia University Press, New York, pp. 79–116.

Mehta, U.S., 1999. Liberalism and Empire. A Study in Nineteenth-Century British Liberal Thought. University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.

Morefield, J., 2014. Empires Without Imperialism: Anglo-American Decline and the Politics of Deflection. Oxford University Press, Oxford.

#the terror #harry goodsir #terror meta #johis writes #terror camp #i needed to have this talk accessible in meta form somewhere #because it's so integral to how i think about goodsir #and i can't keep directing people to a video lmaooo

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pikahlua · 1 year ago

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Uh oh, it's sleepy grumpy Pika. Y'all know what that means, right?

It means I have no filter for my opinions.

If you're dissatisfied with the way Katsuki's bullying of Izuku is handled in MHA because you expected him to be confronted by someone else about it in some way, it's probably because you are unaware of the difference between bullying and attitudes towards it in Japan versus in your country of origin. I believe everyone would benefit from researching bullying in Japan. They do NOT view it the same way the west does, y'all.

And I guarantee when you learn about it, you're gonna find some stuff that makes you uncomfortable and horrified, because it's gonna take a while for you to get enough information to give context to a lot of the history and attitudes you'll find. AND EVEN THEN, EVEN WHEN YOU HAVE THAT CONTEXT, you're still definitely not going to like it.

However, with any luck, you'll see how MHA's portrayal of Katsuki's bullying is shockingly sympathetic and heartwarming to many people. It's because, from the perspective of a Japanese audience, Izuku was not targeted and bullied by Katsuki in the way we're used to seeing such situations portrayed in the west. Izuku was bullied by everyone. His classmates, his teachers, the pro heroes he encountered, and society in general ALL participated in the bullying of Izuku, because societal pressures to conform in Japan are MASSIVE, and that can often manifest as one form of bullying or another.

Katsuki's bullying is just the one that the story chooses to flesh out. It's the one that Horikoshi develops. Katsuki is the bully that changes his own perspective first and drastically, the one who realizes the greatness in Izuku and accepts that and comes to his side long before the rest of society can catch up. It is largely understood by the Japanese audience that Katsuki in middle school didn't seek Izuku out and follow him home every day to beat him up; Katsuki mostly ignored Izuku until Izuku would do something to remind Katsuki of his insecurities, and so he would lash out. And no one else at let's say Izuku's middle school would understand the true reason why Katsuki would lash out because what he does resembles what all of Izuku's bullies do to him: pressure him to conform. Pre-One For All Izuku stands out as different and constantly tries to rise above his position to become something society decrees he cannot be. Therefore, a significant part of Japanese society will generally approve of attempts to make him conform, even when some of those attempts are harsh and cruel and unreasonable and reactionary. MHA presents a caricature of that in the form of Izuku's middle school.

The fact that Katsuki identifies this toxic behavior in himself later in the story and decides to actively do something to change it IS the radical part. It's the piece that fits into the themes of MHA. It highlights a generally-accepted behavior in society that maybe society should rethink. It's asking for society to reconsider how it pressures people to conform, that sometimes nonconformity is good or at least should be tolerated to some degree. That's why Katsuki's story focuses so much on how his old behavior stems from fear. From the perspective of a "properly-functioning" collectivist society, pressure to conform should be done for the good of everyone in the society, not out of fear and misunderstanding. Katsuki's character arc provides one potential map for others in society to see the light and get to where he does.

And that's to say nothing of how Japan's versions of confrontation or retribution often look different from how they do in the west, that many of the forms of confrontation some people in the western fandom cry out for with regards to Katsuki sound absurd to an audience in the know. The karmic punishments Katsuki endures throughout the story are often overlooked by western readers, and is it any surprise? That readers from some societies--societies that laud nonconformity, tolerate counterculture, openly criticize the systems that be, preach about individual freedom and responsibility and justice and fairness, and watch and make movies and TV shows and other media about how victims of bullies achieve their righteous revenge--often miss how MHA doles out subtle, divine, poetic, karmic consequences for Katsuki's actions? That such readers often don't feel satisfied by MHA's dramatic ironies which serve more to guide Katsuki in a harmonious, productive direction rather than vindictively punish him and rest on its laurels as it laughs at his deserved misfortune? I don't blame anyone for feeling unsatisfied when their own societies have built up their expectations in such ways, but I do hope to draw your attention to it.

Now, does that mean you have to like and accept the Japanese attitudes about bullying? That you have to agree with the framing of pressure to conform as beneficial and productive? That, if you're triggered by the lack of overt condemnation of bullying in the story, you still have to like MHA? That, if you have personal traumatic experiences with Japan's bullying situation, you should shut up about it and accept that it's a good thing? No! In fact, I personally would hope that you don't! I think everyone should always have their perspectives on ANYTHING challenged so they can rethink and improve them, and Japan's attitude towards bullying is no exception! (And MHA actually does that in its own way!)

(And even saying that, I will always acknowledge that my perspective and opinions on this issue are heavily colored by my own experiences in life and the society in which I grew up and the ideas to which I've been exposed. This is and always will be my bias.)

But the question of what's the correct take on bullying is an entirely different beast. The question at hand here is about understanding the story and its characters as presented in MHA. If you don't come at this with a basic acknowledgement of how Katsuki's story reads to a Japanese audience in-context, you're going to be upset about what you see (which is a reasonable reaction). But I think if you're going to read a story, it's only due courtesy to understand the context surrounding its creation before you try to hold it to far-removed, foreign standards. There's a reason literature classes go over the history and context surrounding the older works they study. MHA is a Japanese story written for a Japanese audience. To focus on how it does not adhere to the typical western narrative of a bully's character arc is to miss the point entirely. If you are reading the story outside of Japan in a language other than Japanese, it is being translated so that you can read a Japanese story, not a story from your own culture. It's rude and self-defeating to expect stories from other cultures to suddenly cater to your own.

TL;DR Understanding the social context that informs bullying in MHA just might actually make the story more comprehensible and enjoyable for anyone who dares to learn about it, what do you have to lose?

#wow i thought this post would be a one-liner #meta #pika rants #anime only friendly #katsuki bakugou #linguistics fun #?#more like sociology fun

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canmom · 9 days ago

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a polemic

every so often you see a conversation on this website that goes like this:

based story game enjoyer: D&D is a limiting game because of xyz design assumptions. cringe D&D fan: actually I changed these assumptions by editing the game to fit my group's needs. it works pretty good. story game chad, closing in for the kill: have you considered playing the perfectly designed game for your scenario that surely exists out there in the indie game milieu? you wouldn't have to homebrew. you'd be having better fun. foolish and wrong D&D incel: but I am already having fun with "modified D&D" and I don't particularly see a need to do that thing you said. wise story game sage, a single tear rolling down their perfectly sculpted face: do you not see that defending D&D, the product printed by Hasbro Inc., by pointing out that you can modify it, is self-defeating? tragic. there is no hope for these people. 42069 notes

along such lines, i saw someone today refer to homebrew in TTRPGs pejoratively as 'unpaid game design' and like. my fucking god guys. i don't love D&D-as-printed either but you've lost the plot.

not only is it good to modify the games you play and make them your own, it is inevitable. nobody ever plays TTRPGs exactly 'by the book', it's always filtered through the dynamic of the group. yes, even in those games that literally tell you exactly what to say like the quiet year or whatever.

you will ignore rules and guidelines. you will put your own interpretation on the wording of this or that rule. you will develop your own rhythms and at some point, yes, you can, will, and should change the rules to better fit whatever you're doing with the game.

the designer may throw up their hands and say "you are no longer playing Sorcerer By Ron Edwards, you are playing some other game! you're messing up my perfectly tuned mechanism!"

let them. it's an understandable frustration, perhaps, but once the game is in the hands of the players, the designer has had their say.

play the game you want to play, even - especially - if you have to invent it. use whatever tools you find useful to help you get there - whether that's a printed RPG book, a blog post, a memory of another game, a story that inspires you. maybe you want to take some existing and familiar system, such as PbtA, and adapt it - awesome (I reckon 95% of indie game designers pretty much do this). maybe you want to start from scratch and make a bespoke system for that one story - also awesome.

'this book requires a lot of work to adapt into something decent' is a fair criticism. 'nobody even plays this game by the book, so it's a bad game' is dogmatism. what game do they play? how do they learn to play it? what function is the book providing in that game? if you want to criticise a game, you need to talk about actual practice. there can be plenty to criticise there, for sure. but that's where you gotta start.

and sure, if someone wants to design a game, particularly to print, I would definitely recommend they look beyond D&D for inspiration. there are some really fucking cool and creative indie games that come up with wild ways to approach 'making up a story through a game' that I'd never have imagined. very often it's fun to follow a designer's frame and discover something new.

but don't make a fucking religion of it lmao.

#roleplaying games #remember when the story games milieu used to celebrate hacking games...

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caligvlasaqvarivm · 2 months ago

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I've been reading your Erikar posts and I think that they work really well with the idea that moirallegiance really doesn't work the way it's "supposed" to. It's framed in-universe as a very one-sided "stable person pacifies dangerous person" deal, but both Erifef and Gamkar, which are basically platonic ideals of that concept, failed independently because of how unstable that dynamic is -- one person is worn out doing all the emotional labor and the other is not interested in being pacified. Whereas the meowrails, despite also being framed as a "classical" moirallegiance, are much more clearly two-sided, as both parties consistently help, listen to, and advise each other, and the relationship is consequently much stabler and more enduring. I love the way you frame Erikar because it works really well with this by showing both parties taking and giving "pacification" and support in turn, instead of one shouldering all the work.

Yeah! I think this is a good way to talk about something Hussie likes to do that I'm a huge fan of, which is: unreliable narration. This unreliable narration has garnered Hussie the reputation of being a "troll" or even flat-out "wrong" about HS, and I find both of these to be very unfair because the use of unreliable narrator is both deliberate AND thematically fitting.

As part of Homestuck's post-modern stylings (and I mean post-modern in the literature sense, not vis. art, though it has shades of that too), it plays heavily on the ideas of narrator-as-character, author-as-character, metafiction, and we-all-know-it's-a-story-itis. Hussie himself, even in his external commentaries (Formspring, Tumblr, Books, etc.), is fully aware that his additions add to the metatextual texture of the work and change how it's interpreted - that, although his additions technically lie external to the "story" Homestuck is telling, they are also paradoxically part and parcel of that very story.

As a result, they deliberately play a character WRT Homestuck, both in- and out-of-universe, and this character is, by their own admission, buffoonish and oafish. It's really apparent in their book commentary, where they'll sometimes even drop the act, or "realize" they've dropped the act and hurry to put it back on (a standout moment is when he provides a very genuine, honest analysis of Vriska, before going "oh, wait, I forgot, she's literally my wife and has never done anything wrong ever in her life ever"). They also mention how their narrative voice sometimes works antagonistically to the characters, such as when it assures Vriska that she has no choice but to kill Aradia, subtly pushing Vriska towards that option.

Functionally, neither the narrator nor the author (and by that, I mean the caricaturized character of "the author" that Hussie plays) of Homestuck are entities that you can take fully at face value; they need to be challenged and interrogated as much as any other character, have their motives dissected, have their blind spots pointed out.

And why would this need to be the case? Because that's literally one of the main thrusts of Homestuck: malicious entities (in HS's case, LE, Doc Scratch, and Caliborn, who at various times struggle with Hussie for control of the story, before killing him and wresting it away entirely) will attempt to write the narrative. They'll push their version of events, their politics, their biases, their philosophies. They'll try to change the story to suit them and perpetuate their own power and ability to enforce that power. And you can't let them win.

Hussie-as-a-character/narrator himself is not particularly malicious, and, as the narrative prompt serving as Caliborn's guide, is even ultimately sympathetic, expressing that kids need to grow up and mature, achieve self-actualization, emotional catharsis, etc.

However, as a result of his oafishness, he has a tendency to play to the characters' worst instincts, to pick favorites among the cast. The most blatant example of this is his "love" of Vriska, which - contrary to popular opinion - isn't "real". Hussie is not actually in love with Vriska; the whole thing started because - due to misogyny - people accused Hussie of only giving Vriska so much plot relevance because he was literally in love with her. Why else would a female character with an unpleasant personality be allowed to be important, amirite? And Hussie clearly thought that this whole thing was so ridiculous that he 100% leaned into it as a joke. I'm not here to litigate whether or not it was appropriate to do so, just to point out that Hussie's "love" of Vriska was always an artifice - an aspect of Hussie-as-character that he played up to highlight the fact that Hussie-as-character is an unreliable buffoon, and, by extension, that Vriska is not blameless and perfect.

Since this is the Eridan blog, I'd be remiss not to talk about him. Hussie's commentary towards Eridan is especially fascinating to me, because Eridan is one of he characters Hussie-as-character is biased against, in a similar way as he's biased in Vriska's favor. Thus, his attitude towards Eridan is very dismissive, both in the book commentary AND in the comic itself. "Gamzee: Indulge emotional theatrics" and "Jade: Answer this douche bag" come to mind. He also spends the vast majority of the Act 5 Act 2 book mocking Eridan for being sad and alone, with nobody to care about him and nobody who listens to his problems.

Now, the reason I call this fascinating is twofold: the first is that his commentary in the Act 5 Act 1 book has a WILDLY different tone: while he's still biased in Eridan's disfavor, he outright calls Eridan a "good character" alongside Nepeta, and offers genuine insight into his characterization and the powers of Hope - comparing him at one point to Dave if Dave took a much darker path.

So when his attitude changes from "he's a shithead, but fairly complex, I guess" to "he's a loser idiot that nobody likes LMAOOOO", you're supposed to notice that! You're supposed to question that, to wonder why he has a change of heart, why he's suddenly so dismissive of a character he was genuinely writing whole paragraphs about before.

And the answer is multifaceted:

He's playing up his buffoonish character, to let you know that he's about to be wrong as hell. Every time Hussie starts really amping up the Hussie-as-character persona, you're about to be in for an opinion that SHOULD NOT be taken at face value.

He's reflecting a common fandom opinion, because one of his favorite things to do as an unreliable narrator is to speak on behalf of another character or entity, highlighting the biases and blind spots in play - in this case, the audience's. Again, he's about to be wrong as hell, so he's doing this specifically to indicate that the audience members who believe this are also wrong as hell.

Act 5 Act 2 is when we get the one conversation in all of Homestuck where somebody (Karkat) cares about Eridan and takes his problems seriously. During this part of the story, Hussie goes COMPLETELY silent. This is incredibly out of character, as he usually can't shut up, and the commentary is usually dense, packed with words, without pause. Compare:

In those blocks of silence are contained the conversation Eridan has with Karkat where Karkat literally tells him "I know it's hard being you" and that Nepeta's rejection of him wasn't a negative reflection of him. In other words, Karkat cares about Eridan and takes him seriously, COMPLETELY contradicting Hussie-as-character's assertions that nobody does, so utterly that Hussie-as-character has to completely shut up during that entire sequence because he has no way of reconciling his stance with the evidence presented.

Now, Hussie-as-an-actual-person is completely aware of what they're doing, or else they couldn't do stuff like this so consistently and so precisely. So I want to be very, very clear that this is not Hussie "not understanding his own story" or whatever BS the fandom likes to say in order to cast Hussie as the villain. This is masterful usage of unreliable narrator, like, I'm genuinely impressed.

By acting a clown and insisting that nobody likes or cares about Eridan, the audience is MEANT to glean from the text:

That Karkat is clearly an exception, and he quite likes and cares about Eridan,

That those who are dismissive towards Eridan and treat him purely as an object of ridicule are Wrong as Hell,

That maybe it's not a good thing for us - both audience, author, and characters - to be so quick to judge and dismiss others just because they're annoying and nasty - that doing so can have dire consequences, as we see with how Eridan's story plays out.

And I'm not kidding when I say that we have to be constantly fucking vigilant, that there's very, very little that can be purely taken at face value. Not long after this is one of Karkat's memos, where he attempts to warn his past friends about all the murders, only to dismiss past!Gamzee by saying that current!Gamzee going crazy murderclown "barely even concerns [him]." Hussie then notes in the commentary - and not for the first time - that Karkat has a Problem(TM) with not seeing past/future versions of people as contiguous with their current selves, which he does as a defense mechanism so as not to confront his own feelings of shame and self-loathing. Hussie then proceeds not to comment on the following:

CCG: YOU ARE DEAD TO ME CCG: PAST YOU, PRESENT YOU, FUTURE YOU CCG: AND ABOVE ALL, UGLY SCARFNECKED DOUCHEBAG HIPSTER YOU CCG: WAIT I FORGOT, ALL OF THE YOUS ARE THAT YOU

Hmmm... interesting. I wonder why Hussie points out one of Karkat's running character traits, just to "forget" to notice when an exception happens directly after? I'll let this one be an exercise for the class.

So to tie it all back to your ask: why is the exposition on troll romance done the way it is? What are the narrator's motives? Hussie even outright states in the commentary that Kanaya/Tavros/Vriska, which is used as an example of an auspicetism, isn't even a real auspicetism, as Kanaya feels no need to commit to it, and at most is putting out mixed signals - it's just used as an example because it's the closest thing we've seen.

Well, the answer I've arrived at, personally, is that the troll romance explanation is as flawed as it is because the narrator is taking on Karkat's point of view. A movie poster on Karkat's wall, the troll version of Serendipity, is used and namedropped as the ultimate expression of meeting your soul mate in every quadrant - as well as the assertion that "every" troll believes that there ARE destined soul mates for every quadrant, which Karkat definitely believes, but isn't a sentiment necessarily shared by everybody else. Moreover, the explanation ends with a tirade about how Karkat tried to explain quadrants to John, who didn't get it because "he's an idiot".

I'm not saying that Karkat is literally narrating here, just to be clear - I'm saying that the narrator (Hussie-as-character) is relaying factual information as processed through the lens of Karkat's biases, and, as a result, we can't take the explanation at 100% face value (though we can't discount it as entirely untrue, either). It's not so much that "real" moirail pairs work because they're doing moirallegiance "wrong," but that Karkat's view of moirallegiance is simplistic, idealized, and flawed, and we see this play out when he's bitter about his breakup with Gamzee because Gamzee stops "needing" him to keep him calm, even after Karkat has failed to be kept calm by Gamzee in return.

The more I look into Homestuck, the more that I'm genuinely impressed by the way it handles its writing. I hope this was interesting to everyone, too. I feel a little like I'm peeling back a curtain, or opening up a clock to reveal all the little cogs and wheels.

No, you can't trust Hussie as the narrator, but that's on purpose, and it's on purpose because why do we trust narrators? Why do we assume people telling a story are unbiased, benevolent, and have no ulterior motives? Why do we let idiots, assholes, predators, and monsters get away with their version of the truth, when a little scrutiny will have the whole ruse fall apart? Why do we let people tell us not to care about other people, why do we let them tell us that it's okay to be cruel to acceptible targets, why do we let them go unexamined?

And how about the stories we tell ourselves?

#homestuck #eridan ampora #karkat vantas #gamzee makara #vriska serket #writing #unreliable narrator #postmodernism #post-modernism #homestuck is good actually and hussie is an incredible writer

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kingdoms-and-empires · 1 month ago

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The King's Hound Review

I recently had to go travel and read a few works that I never got around to reading but was interested in.

PLEASE REMEMBER THIS REVIEW IS DONE BY ME AS A READER AND IS MY OWN OPINION.

This means I will review in accordance to my own tastes, how the game caters to me, and what I feel. Do not take my word as gospel, what I may not be interested in or dislike, may be what YOU are interested and love!!!

@the-kingshound

Synopsis:

You are the King’s spouse, his right and left hand, the unstoppable executor of his will. Your name is whispered by enemies and allies with fear and respect alike, some says it’s your arm that bears the weight of the entire kingdom.

They call you the King’s hound. It started as a way to taunt you but it’s not that far away from the truth. Your loyalty is blind, your devotion absolute. The King’s vision is your vision.

Your name will forever mark history alongside theirs.

But for now, you are being shipped to your betrothed, alone and powerless on your way to Camelot.

As the seventh child of the Venegard House, you’ve always had little to look forward to other than an arranged marriage to achieve a political alliance.

That’s exactly why, after your parents lost the rebellion against King Arthur, you were the one sent to him as a sign of newfound peace.

You don’t know what awaits you now, but after you Camelot will never be the same.

Review:

The Good: The project is 18+, and the writing is very well done. It just feels quality. Plus the UI and and dark background are classy. The game is Twine, so you get the save functions of Twine and all that jazz. Anyways, descriptions are well done, the worldbuilding is grounded and helps form the politics in-game. It's thought-out and noticeable. The player customization goes hard and you even get the option to play mute! In The King's Hound, you also find a game that provides the LGBTQ+ demographic and FemMC playing community a welcoming and acknowledging home. The descriptions of the fight scenes and battles (like action set pieces) are good and don't leave you scratching your head. The transitions between paragraphs and pages happen naturally and without breaking pace, which shows the talent of a writer that considers their audience. Also, in regards to the King Arthur mythos and worldbuilding done by the author, i just really appreciate the fact that Camelot is Welsh.

It just gives me an idea of how much the author researched or cares about the mythos to give that respect of origin for the story. I had problems with how King Arthur was being super nice at first, but the author recently stated in a post that Arthur was acting in such a manner because he is deliberately trying to be the opposite of King Uther!

And that in the future, the work will offer more text to reveal that to us, the player.

The Bad: I wouldve liked being able to marry a cousin, niece, sister, or even daughter of King Arthur (or genderbender him) but that is literally my only complaint as a straight dude tryna self insert. The author tells you explicitly that you are marrying the king. If the author decides not to, as is their right and vision, I have no problem whatsoever. I still think the work is well written, and has many elements that i personally fuck with (low fantasy, grounded narrative, adult themes) The fact that i wish the author could change this, is only because i like the work so much. Instead, in this playthrough King Arthur will find that the MC practices

The Ugly: The MAP. But that's only because my history buff mind thinks of the British Isle when hearing these names and when i saw the map it physically gave me whiplash. But youre making your own version of the story, so bully!

The Aftermath: I know this game isnt catered towards me as a straight dude. It is a proud queer game with quality writing, that'd also do really well for the FemMC readers. I would recommend this game to anyone who wants a low fantasy medieval setting, with good writing, and grounded narratives that isn't a straight dude's traditional power fantasy.

Next playthrough, ima be a mute straight girl thatll hoe around King Arthur's court out of sheer spite

^Marci from Dota: Dragon Blood

#interactive fiction #twine wip #thekingshound #if review

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auriidae · 11 months ago

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LIFESTUCK ?!?! (pt 2 here!) (pt 3)

i was sick a couple days ago and spent like 12 hours straight doing nothing but classpecting life series characters and then was like Yeah i have to draw this now. so here's some sillies 👍 (super long classpect ramble under cut because i spent far too long on it not to share hfshjf)

quick note: i really really love @/classpect-navelgazing's theories and used them for a lot of the ideas here. go check their blog out it rules :]

ok you guys flower ranchers (scott tango jimmy) are making me so insane for this au specifically because of this idea i had about doom/life players. doom in true canon is related to inevitability, fate, and knowledge of the specific rules that keep the characters trapped within their story, right. and life is sort of related to healing, physically and mentally, within the confines of the game. so within this au, the aspect of life refers to the rules within the game that the players can see and are aware of (last life’s trading lives system + boogeyman, third life’s soulmate mechanic, secret life’s tasks, etc.). life players have some amount of dominion over these elements (depending on their class, of course). doom on the other hand refers to everything surrounding the games (stuff like admin powers, the world barrier, and whatever happens to the players after they die).

as a mage of doom, scot (his name is so funny to me. like yeah he sure is) has a bunch of intrinsic knowledge about the way the games function on a logistical level. he’s like a guy who read the script a while ago and forgot all the characters’ names but knows the basic plot and how it’s going to end. or who knows all the ins and outs of tech crew and for whom the apparent magic of the show for the audience is lost on, since he knows how it’s being done. the thing is, scot isn't especially able to act on this knowledge during the game. what director wants someone in the audience — or one of the actors — taking all the magic out of the show, spoiling how it works and how it ends? no, it’s best if they keep that knowledge to themselves — and so scot’s narratively unable to affect the stories of those around him, even his close friends who he’d want to help. he’s aware of this, of course, which makes him more than a little depressed, as he can see the futility of it all and can’t even explain to anyone what’s going on and how the game works. (the only story he’s able to affect, of course, is his own. which. depressed doom player + mage martyr complex + guy who Really cares about his friends is not necessarily a good combination.)

the amount of stock i put in the idea of gendered classes is close to zero so tangoe gets to be a maid of life because ohh my goodness. i like the theory (thanks classpect-navelgazing) of life as “the aspect of affluence,” where life players usually enter the game with some kind of material wealth or status that helps their position in some way. i also like the idea that maid players start the game with a surplus of their aspect but often end up feeling as if they’re only seen as a provider of that specific thing as a result of this, and so end up longing for something else instead. this primarily applies to last life tango because that’s the season i’m most familiar with lol, but i thought the way he started out with so many lives there and quickly dwindled as a result of everyone taking from him and only him was Really interesting. mans has all the luck of the game he could need, but only wants friends to actually be able to live with. being a life player also ties into his little gambling games and things (again, dominion over stuff within the overarching game/story, but nothing beyond that).

then we get to jimi (again fantastic name). the basic premise of an heir is that they’re played by their aspect, right and Oh Boy is jimmy played by life in the life series. i don’t personally know much about anything he’s done other than heehoo canary guy but along with the previously stated points it’s So fun to see him as a life player because it allows for some really clearly contrast between the way he interacts with tangoe and scot based on their aspects. i really like the idea of scot being like “you’re a life player jimi. it's in your name. the game is not going to let you die” and jimi like “you really think so? aw thanks man” neither of them knowing that dying as a life player in this game is literally like in the job description. (ok. i kind of feel like i’m letting jimi down by basing his story so far around other people.. but this is just for fun and i can always change it later)

(also i could easily have put tangoe and jimi as doom players too but for the fact that i don’t think they necessarily see through the game as much as scot does (or at all). and so life it is.)

feel free to ask me questions abt them!!! i have so many thoughts about this bro

#looks at you with my big ol eyes... please read about them i spent So Long thinking about them pfff #scott smajor #jimmy solidarity #tangotek #trafficblr #secret life #life series #hs #also disclaimer i haven't read homestuck in over a year and do not have the time currently so sorry-#-if smth is blatantly wrong but this is just for the funsies :P #lifestuck au #aurie's art

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sixleggedboar · 3 months ago

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Hello everyone, since it's been very quiet on here I wanted to share an update for those who are wondering and the friends and mutuals I've been severly neglecting.

You'll find me oversharing under the cut but tldr, I am still in the middle of recovering from burnout, but it forced me to completely restructure my life to the degree that I am emotionally more stable and therefore feeling better than ever. So for anyone worrying, don't. I still have a long way to go, but I have the privilege of a good and reliable support net that caught me and offers me the resources I need to be able to build the life I need. I want to come back here, share more art in the future, but I will not force it.

And right now it's just not the time.

Thank you to everyone who's still here, thank you for your support!

CW: mental health, depression, suicidal ideation, internalised ableism

I had been suicidal my whole life. Had never known a time where I wasn't. Couldn't understand how people wanted to live, how this wasn't normal. I couldn't see myself in the future no matter how hard I tried. But I kept going because this was my normal, I didn't know anything else, didn't know I needed help and a change that was a lot more fundamental than just talking to a person every week. I had no frame of reference to communicate my struggle that came with every day life because for all I knew this is just how everyone else feels.

This is just life.

And I am just not made for it.

Didn't help that whenever I tried to communicate that to a mental health professional I just got brushed off as dramatic, being told I am fine.

Because in the end it just works. I function.

I was one of the lucky ones who got diagnosed with ADHD as a kid, mum went to a specialist cause she has it herself and wanted to make sure I get tested so I don't have to go through the same struggles that come with staying undiagnosed as she did. Thing is, that diagnosis didn't really change much, I was still too academically gifted and non-obtrusive to be considered for medical treatment (and honestly seeing and hearing about stories were kids have been on the wrong dosage for years because no one knew better makes me think that maybe it was for the better) and my mum tried to teach me the skills to succeed in life despite that diagnosis, but she herself was alone and too deep in her own trauma to be able to provide the support I needed.

This lead to me cracking and dropping out of high school, trying other things, landing back in school, this time college, and cracking again, this time not managing to immediately get up again to keep going with something else.

Nothing seemed to work, so all I could do was to take a break.

A break that showed me for the first time, that no, chronically wanting to die is not normal, that I am capable of enjoying life, that I am capable of wanting to live and my first goal should be to figure out what I can do to crawl my way back into everyday life without losing that feeling, that knowledge. I learned the difference between just a really bad, but perfectly healthy, day and the excrutiating pain day to day living had caused me until that point.

And that break's been going on for over a year now, with me periodically trying to get back into school, trying to figure out what accommodations I need and how I can build a future for myself that is worth living.

I don't know if I'll finish my bachelor's, probably not, but if I drop out I'll need to find a viable alternative first. I don't think I'll ever be able to work full time, doubt I'll ever be able to fully support myself, but I know there is a future out there for me somewhere, one that is worth living to me and that is a hope I never had until recently. That is what I mean when I say I am doing better than ever, despite the fact that my functionality has effectively crumbled to dust and diagnostics say I am still depressed.

I am still struggling with the guilt that comes with relying on others for support, that comes with not being the perfect productive member of society I am expected to be, that comes with not being the perfect friend I want to be. I learned that I actually do want to work, something that if you had asked me a year ago, and if I felt save enough to be honest, I would have said no to. I just need to figure out what that looks like. I learned I can only focus on a handful of things, and that includes basic survival and individual people. I learned what I need to not feel lonely without being overwhelmed by social interactions and have incredible people in my life who make that possible.

I also met my amazing partner who is showing me how stable and unwavering love can be. Who gives me the security I need to say that whatever comes, we'll figure it out.

Oh and yeah, starting medical transition sure as hell helped a lot too.

I am currently trying to find my passions again, learn how to actually love creating art again, to learn how to learn and find enjoyment in just the act of it.

I'm in therapy and am trying out medications in the hopes to find some that work and don't make things worse.

All in all I'm going somewhere. I don't know where it will lead but I know that it will be worth it.

#personal #mental health #adhd #depression

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bengiyo · 10 months ago

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An Apology to Ossan's Love and The Novelist

I'm writing this post today as a formal apology to both Ossan's Love and The Novelist for avoiding them in 2018-2019 due to general negative fandom takes about them. Both shows are great, and I should have watched them six years ago.

I recently watched the Pornographer series thanks to @lurkingshan burning some of her coupons to make me properly engage with the series. In that series I found one of the most compelling expressions of internalized homophobia I’ve ever seen. Rio was not only cut off from being sexual with other people, but he felt like he couldn’t even be a proper man.

Later, in Mood Indigo, we got to see the messed-up way Rio became an erotic novelist but also finally seemed to connect with an important part of himself. He also found a mentor who, despite his proclivities, became an important paternal figure to Rio.

Finally, in Playback, Rio finally faced his own insecurities and accepted that Haruhiko loves him and reciprocated it. At every stage of this story, they are able to communicate so much of their story through the sex that’s happening. We’re applauding depictions of sex happening in the genre now that this series was doing half a decade ago.

I decided to give Ossan’s Love a second try when I saw @isaksbestpillow getting so excited about the second season and providing context for the original show. With Ossan’s Love, I understand why people might have bounced off this series right away. A lot of folks don’t enjoy the way the Japanese do comedy, Haruta is intentionally unlikeable at the beginning, and I’ve seen concerns about the boss either being a predator or that his feelings would be treated as a joke.

Thankfully, I tend to enjoy Japanese comedy and found the show hilarious! I was laughing out loud almost every single episode because of multiple characters, but most especially Yoshida Kotaro as the boss. This show generated so much of its comedy from the core characterization of each character, so every joke landed so smoothly for me.

Something I really liked about this show was that it never said we were wrong for disliking Haruta for being a mess and a slob. He cannot take care of himself, and he barely gets better at it before the end of the show. I like that Maki breaking up with him didn’t make him suddenly straighten up his ways about this and become a fully-functioning housekeeper, but he did get better about doing some chores even as the chief started taking care of him. Haruta isn’t the easiest character to like on the domestic front, but he is good at his job and he is a kind character. I like that you have to figure out why these guys like the mess that is Haruta, because I like the audience has to think about what in men that gay people find attractive. Is that a rosy-eyed read? Yes. I don’t are.

As for the boss, he never uses his position over Haruta, and they’re also in sales. It’s not as egregious to me as it would feel in other positions. I also like that his attraction to Haruta isn’t a joke, but the fact that he’s older and maybe isn’t speaking the language of the youth is very funny. He’s an extremely endearing character and I love Kurosawa Musashi.

So, this is my apology to both of these shows for letting negative fan opinions stop me from facing these shows properly. Both of them were great. I’m currently working through the Ossan’s Love: In the Sky season to get to the movie and new show.

#Ben writes #ossan's love #the novelist #pornographer #mood indigo #japanese bl #bl series

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skylermadness · 1 year ago

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Whatever. (Lucas Lee TF/MC)

(Original Date of Upload: December 6, 2023)

I continue to be too lazy to fill my queue.

Original Description:

Make this Lucas Lee TF #3, now in the written medium! My boyfriend got me to watch through both the Scott Pilgrim movie and anime and it was pretty obvious that I was going to fall in love with Lucas. A bit of a jerkish man with a large physique and attractive face, pretty much the perfect bait for someone like me. This also meant that inevitably I was going to have to write a TF story on this guy! I wanted to go for something a bit simplistic here in terms of tone and plot, mainly because I wanted to jump straight into the transformation segment, but I think in general I'm rather proud of how this story turned out! I really wanted to give this man justice, especially since in the end he'll probably be memorialized in the hall of underrated TF figures. Also going to give some credit to my friend moltingscales on FurAffinity for a few description additions that I would not have been able to come with on my own! Rated Mature for vague bulge growth description.

Truth be told, self-confidence was not something that Mike had an ample amount of. Especially in regards to how he viewed his physicality. That was always something he thought when he stared at himself in the bathroom mirror. And for this evening that sense of low self-esteem was at an all-time high. The reason? Date night.

He had always attempted to tell himself that these dates were just meant to be casual. There was nothing to really worry about since it wasn't like he and his boyfriend were going to some bougie five star restaurant or something. Unfortunately however, Mike’s mind never truly functioned that way and he had a tendency to spiral down a mental staircase of overcomplications. That coupled with the past two weeks he's had in regards to his job had sort of left his mind in a state of disarray. It wasn't fragile persé, but neither was it solid.

That mental state is why he was in the bathroom mirror at 7PM in the evening staring at a sheet of temporary tattoos in his hand. Said sheet was just some three dollar cheapo set that he bought online a few days ago. Mainly because he was too much of a coward to get a real tattoo- that's beside the point!

Although the cheapness of the purchase was definitely pungent as he stared down at the sheet. He didn't go for the more expensive and extravagant purchase, mainly because he didn't really want to draw too much attention to himself. In general he had just wanted something simple that also looked aesthetically appealing. However the more he stared down at the sheet he began to realize that he really went too far on the simple notion. Although that was primarily because the only selections on this fake tattoo sheet were simplistically stylized letters and numbers.

Mike sighed. “What do they expect me to do? Spell out my name or something?” It hasn't even been five minutes and he was already regretting this purchase. It was fine though, it was fine, he might be able to settle on something at least.

He had already crossed out putting in his own name, and he felt it would be weird to put in the name of his boyfriend. Would it be weirder to put in the names of everyone in his polycule? If anything that'd just look like a hit-list. Also he was pretty sure he didn't have enough letters for all of that anyway. For a second he also considered putting the name of a game or something he liked, but that option fell flat since the letters provided to him would look weird when tattoos of game logos legitimately exist.

These mental gymnastics lasted for a good twenty or so seconds before Mike’s gaze wandered down to the number section of the sheet. There weren't a lot of numbers he'd say represented literally anything about him. Except…

“...two?”

Just two. He was the second person in his polycule with his boyfriend after all, and in general he had been the second to do a lot of things like finish college and move out. Although considering he was just doing this to boost his self confidence for a date with his boyfriend the former thought process was a much healthier one.

Seeming to have come to a decision, the next couple minutes were a fairly standard order of events. Making sure his skin was dry, removing the film and isolating the singular number from the sheet. Mike did spend a good minute trying to choose a spot to place this temporary tattoo, but eventually settled on the side of neck solely so he could hide the thing if need be. He removed the choker that he typically wore, put it onto the sink’s counter, and placed the numerical icon onto the skin of the left side of his neck, then promptly wet up a sponge with some warm water before holding it onto where he was placing the tattoo.

The moment the water met the backing paper that region of Mike’s neck had suddenly been given a slight burning sensation. It was only miniscule, but it was noticeable. “Eesh, I hope I'm not allergic to whatever is in these things…”

He tried to hold out for the recommended thirty seconds, but that feeling of burning forced him to remove the sponge from his neck after twenty. He swiftly removed the backing paper from his neck, but found that there wasn't any kind of redness of the skin that would be the cause of any kind of burning. If anything the strange sensation had subsided, and now Mike had been granted a simplistic tattoo of the number two with a line going through it.

He stared at his neck in the mirror for a few seconds and scrutinized the newly inked object on his neck. “...somewhat larger than I was expecting. Whatever I guess, it doesn't… look shoddy.”

It did already look a little faded though. Mike had hoped once it had some time to dry it would actually look dark enough to imitate the appearance of a tattoo even though he didn't fully care about it looking convincing. With a sigh he moved his hand to the edge of the sink to pick up his choker and slip it back around his neck again. Although this time he loosened it a bit so it wouldn't rub up against the temporary tattoo too much. He apparently wasn't patient enough to let it dry before putting the accessory back on-

With that whole routine dealt with, Mike made his way out of the bathroom. He was probably going to spend the next half hour sitting on the couch waiting for his boyfriend to arrive…

However as he walked down the hallway he already started to massage the area the tattoo’s ink had been placed on. The burning was returning already and it felt a bit more intense now. “What are in those things?”

He continued to gently massage the area of his neck with his hand, letting his palm gently squeeze the skin in an attempt to alleviate the sensation. Although it would seem as he continued in this act, a strange set of changes began to settle into his hand…

There was a certain level of thickness that had begun to generate in both of Mike’s hands. His usually thin fingers steadily got larger, thicker, chunkier. As their size was getting altered their length was extending as well in order to fit their new proportions. The ends of his fingers also seemed to blunt a bit with initial the roundness of his fingertips dulling to a more straight look. At the exact same time the body of his hands was getting changed as well, both of them growing with each squeeze his left one did to his neck. They stretched out larger and wider, palms thickening as the entirety of his hands gained a significant level of meatiness to them that was already causing them to exude a level of strength that they had not possessed just moments prior.

From there it was a quick transition for the changes to jump past his wrists and onto his forearms. A small amount of heat began to arise in the lower area of his arms. With that heat came another swath of growths, the thinner physique of them steadily being lost under a swelling, bulking size. This was mostly because of the sudden increase in muscle mass he was getting. At an anatomical level, each usage of his extensor muscles by his hands was causing a practically impossible rate of growth. Like years of working out was being piled in the area in just seconds and giving his forearms a sizable muscularity. So much so that ridges were already forming, dividing muscle groups and accentuating the new size even further. A budding pressure had also started forming in his bones. Newly grown muscles practically massaging them, extending and hardening them further to better handle this larger size. It also wouldn't take very long for the exact same thing to begin to occur in his upper arms as well.

It started with a squeezing sensation in his elbows, something that quickly intensified to yet another immense bout of pressure in the bones of the upper half of his arms. This was also accompanied by the same light amount of heat, which was then followed by even more muscle growth. The short sleeves of his button-up were quick to fill as the mass in his arms increased more and more. Biceps got bulkier and triceps matured tremendously, and it wasn't long until the diameter of his arms was practically doubled thanks to all of these changes. His shoulders ached as his deltoid muscles developed more, a certain roundness forming out from his once angular bodily shape. This roundness had also rapidly made itself visible from beneath the fabric of his shirt, his newly developed muscles firmly pressing up against the sleeves as they already began to look rather undersized.

By the time this portion of the transformation had ended, Mike found himself at the threshold of the hallway and his living room. A few beads of sweat already began to form on his forehead as the heat was spreading from his arms to the rest of his body. “Uurgh, am I… having an allergic reaction to that thing…?”

For a moment he stands in the doorway and unhands his neck, deciding to hold onto the threshold with a hand in order to stabilize himself a bit. He could still feel the tattoo burn against his neck, although he couldn't see it was significantly darker than it was before. What he did see, however, was his hand.

“W-WHAT THE HELL-”

For just a moment his mind was taken off the feeling of intense heat entering his body, Mike’s focus instead being directed to his larger hands and beefier arms. Flipping a hand around in a panic his first statement was, “O-oh God, this can't be an allergic reaction-”

His eyes could only just trail down from his hands to his arms, the man only being able to behold the sight that was his recently obtained muscle mass. It felt so warm, and something about it was exuding pure strength, but despite that it all still felt uncanny. Bizarre felt like an understatement of a term, it was impossible!

“What is going on?? Why is this- a-ahh-”

His panicked statements were interrupted by what could only be described as the sudden feeling of a furnace igniting at the very core of his body. In just seconds his physical changes were transitioning from his arms to his torso, and Mike could instantly feel his chest push outwards and into his shirt with each breath the young man took.

The best way to usually describe Mike’s chest was undeveloped. Flat with only minimal amounts of flab and fairly unimpressive from a physical standpoint. However, as his core was heated a fire entered his torso that caused a cascade of changes that practically tempered and sculpted his form. His chest pushed forward, his pectorals steadily swelling in size with each second that passed. It was small at first however, seemingly starting off as a slight growth that looked more like that of a novice who just started working out. But that appearance was temporary, one that lasted only a few seconds before they got larger and larger. With each ragged breath the man took his pectoral muscles only grew more, that novice feeling being lost into the size of someone more adept in gym-going. And that didn't last long as they grew even more into two thick and meaty slabs belonging to someone dedicated to refining their physicality.

All the while his chest was pushing up against the front of his shirt. The size of his swelling pecs constantly indenting into the button-up more and more, their appearance getting more prominent beneath the fabric. But the only thing that held the halves of the shirt were buttons, and as the size of his chest increased it pushed his shirt’s placket to limits it just couldn't hold. Already buttons began to scatter, unleashing his chest more and unveiling the deep chasm that became his cleavage. A few more buttons were lost as his frame was prompted to extend as well. His collarbone and ribs pushed sideways, broadening and widening his form even more. Something that was causing even his back muscles to ache, a mighty need starting to form in them as well.

“Urgh-” Mike grunted at the sensations, everything just feeling overwhelming. “M-my shirt- my chest it's so… it's so…”

His cheeks flushed as all of a sudden Mike lost control of an arm. The free one that wasn't supporting him on the door got lifted up and, in just one quick moment, squeezed his right pectoral. He was given the sensation of just how soft yet firm they felt underneath his grip. Something that gave him just a single thought.

Heh, you've got the best chest in the business~

That very thought felt so foreign to Mike, already setting off mental alarm bells in the young man’s man. Yet despite that he couldn't swat it away, he couldn't stop his hand from giving his chest another squeeze and filling his brain with an almost erotic level of self-confidence (and perhaps self-absorption) that he didn't have prior. It was like his brain chemistry was beginning to get altered as well.

The changes didn't stop at his chest though. His abdomen already began to ripple, skin and muscle bubbling and churning as yet more muscles were ready to sculpt themselves into existence. The fat around his stomach melted off, and rising from that were a set of abdominal muscles. They slotted forwards like drawers, just rows of abs sequentially unveiling themselves and hardening into yet more firm muscles to displace his once twinkish demeanor. Two, then four, then a six-pack set of abs, all finely built in a way that showed years of dedication. Although those were years that Mike had not toiled through. But as his sides burned, his abdominal muscles firmed up, and the front of his shirt continued to tear open even more, the sight of his more muscled form was causing more conflicting thoughts to form in his brain.

His back continued to ache as the muscles in that region grew out. Yet again his shirt was filling up, and beneath that was a substantial formulation of mass that was forming in his trapezius muscles. Evidently that wasn't the only portion of his back that changed however as his spine was another major group of bones that got hit with the transformative pressure. A sensation that caused the discs in his spine to decompress and grow, elongating itself and granting Mike inches of height that would better work for his new proportions. This has caused the hem of his shirt to rise a bit and untuck itself from his jeans in the process.

This sudden growth of height further disoriented the man, Mike having already been immensely discombobulated thanks to the intensifying fog that was forming in his brain. At this point he was already getting lost in the inspection of his body, his arm moving from squeezing his chest to tracing a finger down his cleavage. It further moved down to his abs, all fingers splaying outwards to touch and feel the strong six-pack that he had gained just moments ago.

With all those years spent working out, it would be a waste not to feel those muscles you spent so long crafting~

“Wuh… huh…?” Mike vocalized, eyes blinking in a daze. “I've never… worked… out…”

For a second his brain registered his voice sounding different, sounding deeper, but his focus could only be on the statement said. How much of a contradiction it seemed to be. A fraction of him knew it was true, knew these muscles weren't here minutes ago or that he's never had the time or desire to gain such a form. Yet another growing part of him was telling him the opposite, that this is his body, his muscles, his everything.

Why deny such a form you've worked so hard on?

“Mmmph…” Mike hummed, voice continuing to deepen and making it sound like a low rumble. His eye twitched a bit as he felt a bead of sweat roll near it and down his face. His hand trailed back upwards, not sure if it's himself controlling it or the unknown force, but it slowly moved up his abs and back to his pecs. And while he entered what could only be classified as a hypnotized state, the transformation continued the move its way downwards. His jeans tightened around his form as the diameter of his waist got larger, the first sign that it wasn't very long until the lower half of his body was consumed by the changes.

The second sign was a stirring in his groin.

Mike’s cheeks flushed as he felt the front of his underwear begin to fill out. A sizable bulge was steadily forming, his endowment increasing in size much like the rest of his body had. Such an occurrence was also forcing the zipper of his jeans to start to split open against this new bulge. At the exact same time, the seat of his pants was filling out as well. Gluteus muscles getting larger, some fat accumulating in the area more, all of which was making his butt a bit more prominent and round beneath his jeans. It strained the back of his pants a bit more which put more pressure on his jeans. A good few seconds passed before finally the button holding them couldn't last any longer and ripped itself out the eyelet, the fly of his jeans now fully open.

That didn't end the torrent of pressure being put on his pants however. The transformation continued to cascade its way downwards, the man’s thighs being the next to thicken as heat surged in his leg muscles and forced his quads and hamstrings to grow in bulk and musculature. His calves practically burned as well as they practically ballooned out the back of the crus of his once skinny legs. Although at this point Mike’s lanky frame is now long gone, the last portion of it subsumed by muscle. The leg muscles of a man who knew how to train them, and who knew how to use them. This had also prompted another few inches to be added to Mike’s height as yet again the bones were shifted, strengthened, and extended beneath the muscle. The bottoms of the legs of his jeans steadily rode up his legs as a result, meanwhile the seams holding the sides together began ripping apart against his large muscularity.

The last portion of his lower body that was left to change were his feet, that region already beginning to shift as the space in his shoes quickly got filled out. In mere seconds his feet grew in size to fit the proportions of the rest of his body, lengthening and widening at a rapid pace. It wouldn't be long until the toe caps of his shoes bulged as all his toes pushed forward into them and continued to do so more. The back of his feet dug into the heels of his footwear, meanwhile the sides rubbed up against the shoe’s sides. This had predictably caused a major discomfort in the area, Mike disorientatedly stepping forward a bit in some weird attempt to shake off the pressure. But it didn't end and his footwear continued to bulge, the leathery cloth of it creaking and splitting as his feet continued to grow inside them. The front was already beginning to split off from the sole at this point thanks to his feet’s longer length. However, in one fell swoop, the front of his shoes burst open with a loud rip piercing the air. His toes were now out in the open, their chunkier and almost blockier appearance now visible. But at this point the changes in his feet had come to an end, the rest of his shoes just barely holding on against the width of his feet.

“Gghrrgh…” he groaned, his clothing feeling so uncomfortable against his larger body. “S-so small… unfitting… grragh…”

He swallowed a lump forming in his throat. The burning at the side of his neck had almost faded at this point, the tattoo he had given himself having inked itself into his skin to the point of it being a real tattoo. Furthermore his neck was wider, diameter larger and the size thicker. It made his vocal cords tingle, his breaths continuing to get deeper and deeper before settling on a tone that was more masculine than it used to be. Rougher, tougher, and rugged sounding. Although it seemed due to the size of his neck the choker he wore snapped off and slipped off him.

Show those strong muscles of yours, show that weak clothing of yours who's boss!

Mike’s groping came to a halt at this point. The man lifted up his arm, a dumb smile forming on his face as he gave it a good fleeeeex and watched as the sleeve of his shirt tore against his bicep. “Awesome!”

By this point the line of what was considered Mike and what was considered the strange force within him was blurring. The once foreign thoughts were becoming more proper, fitting for the person he was just about feeling he is. The new personality and mentality, one that felt more confident and stronger than he used to be. Although the concept of ‘used to be’ felt impossible. The more he stared at this strong form of his the more those earlier thoughts about this being his felt correct.

“Heheh, this feels good!” he stated, no longer supporting himself on the doorway and giving his other arm a good flex to watch the sleeve on it shatter over his muscles.

At this point the last set of physical changes were moving onto his face. As he smiled a pressure was wracking his skull, squeezing and sculpting his facial features into those of a completely different man. His skull structure got larger and wider, and with it his jawline reshaped and chiseled itself from the broadness. It almost protruded to the sides at this point. The way his jawline looked aided in shifting the way his skull physically appeared, the overall shape of his head looking boxy and rectangular.

With his jawline shifting, his once clean-shaven appearance got lost as black hairs poked out the skin of his chin. It started as a small amount rising from the tip of his chin, but that quickly spreaded across his lower jaw as a whole bunch more stubble dotted itself across the man’s jawline. Alongside that came more and more of his facial features getting shifted. The once rounded tip of his nose was getting pointier while the overall wideness of it narrowed a little bit. The brownish hairs of his eyebrows deepened to a dark black as they got thicker, bushier, and their appearance slanted until they gained an arched appearance. All of this had caused the previous appearance of Mike, the one that looked so worried and self-conscious, to be done away and morphed into the cocky visage of a new man that exuded raw confidence and self-assuredness!

His hair was the very last part that turned. The browns of the follicles deepened to a perfect black. The length of it shortened and caused the overall messy and fluffy appearance to disappear at a rapid pace. In its stead came a more well kept, spiky style as clumps of his hair slicked back and jutted backwards. However, the hair at the back of his head jutted upwards, and all this spiking met at a focal point at a specific point at the apex of his skull. It gave his hair an organized look that somehow still appeared laid-back. All of this ended off with his sideburns thickening and trailing down the sides of his face before ending an inch or two above where his jawline would start.

The same goofy yet confident smile on his face remained as he ran a hand through his hair and continued to admire a bicep. The man properly walked through the doorway and finally stepping into the living room. By now he didn't care about the discomfort in his clothing, and the questions of his identity were faded and buried beneath the knowledge that this is his identity. And for him he's always felt this way. So strong and assured of himself! He is talented skateboarder and actor, Lucas Lee!

With that mental declaration in his head there came one last, albeit minor, change: his clothing. The cottony feel of his shirt hardened as a deep black oozed across the once pristine white. Everywhere the darkness spread on his shirt a leather feel was formed, and that continued to occur for the next few moments. The shirt itself grew in size as this happened, and the very appearance of it was shifted. Metal lined the ends of the button-up’s split as the remaining buttons slipped off and dematerialized. As the metal continued to form a bit of the shirt folded into a lapel that the metal continued to line the end of before teaching the peak of the lapel’s tip.

The shirt’s collar flattened and extended to better meet the lapel, and by this point the leather appearance had spread across the entire torso section of what was once a shirt. Although as the leather extended itself onto the torn sleeves and repaired them, extending them over his arms and snaking the sleeves so long until they were an inch beneath his wrists, it was proven that this was no longer a shirt. Instead it was a leather jacket now. The rest of his clothing had a much less impressive change however. His pants repaired themselves and grew to better fit him, the denim shifting from its rich blue to a deep gray. His shoes did exactly the same as well by extending over his feet, covering his toes and growing airier, before properly sealing themselves shut and recoloring from black to blue.

With all of that finished the transformation had been solidified. All that was Mike was done away. His worries and concerns were cast, replaced with the confident persona of Lucas Lee. Although it was evident he got a lot more than just the persona.

“Eh?” Lucas raised a brow, stopping his self-admiration as he realized where he was. “The heck am I? Whose house is this?”

That question stayed important for about… two seconds before he decided he didn't care. “Whatever. Nobody’ll mind if I make myself comfortable for a bit!”

He takes a seat on the living room couch, completely ignores the fact his pants were unzipped, and perches his feet on the small table in front of it. He was about ready to fold his arms behind his head and lounge here for a bit, but was stopped when he felt his phone vibrate in a back pocket. With a grunt he shoved a hand into it and pulled it out, although he noticed that the thing looked a lot different than he remembered it being.

“Don't remember this having a gold case,” Lucas remarked as he pressed the power button to take it out of sleep mode. He would've realized the wallpaper was different from his usual as well, but his focus was on the singular message displayed on the screen.

Arti 💙 heading to your apartment now did you ever come up with someplace to actually go for our date??

Lucas tilted his head. Date? Who the heck was this guy?? Come to think of it, whose phone even is this?! There were a lot of questions crossing the man’s mind, but in the end he decided to do the most logical thing and answer the text as if it were his own phone.

You nope

With that Lucas put the phone back into sleep mode. He wasn't really sure who this Arti was or whose phone he was currently in possession of but truthfully he didn't really care all that much. He just felt like chilling out here for a bit before heading back out, probably for another late night skate session. Although after another few seconds a single thought crossed his mind.

…who's to say that Arti fellow wouldn't be a good time?

Lucas smiled. Perhaps he was going to be staying here for just a bit longer…

#character tf #tf #transformation #human tf #muscle growth tf #bara tf #male transformation

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lasabarcassims · 5 months ago

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LasAbarcas Limited Packs Save 2.0!

Linked here:

The next version of my Limited Packs Save is here! The save now includes:

Willow Creek - built with base game only

Oasis Springs - built with base game only

Newcrest - built with base game only

Copperdale - built with base game plus High School Years and Parenthood

StrangerVille - built with base game and the StrangerVille pack

Brindleton Bay - built with base game plus Cats and Dogs

Del Sol Valley - built with base game plus Get Famous

All the Sims that reside in each world were used with CAS items that correspond with the packs used in building the worlds.

The game will still function even if you don't have the packs that go with all those worlds! You might find some half-naked Sims in the tray, but you can just delete them as they belong to a different world and won't affect the stories in the worlds you do have.

Brindleton Bay was built with small-town Connecticut in mind and Del Sol Valley was (of course!) based on Los Angeles. So Brindleton Bay has a lot of colonial/coastal architecture and features a blend of rustic seaside-type venues and places that exude wealth. Del Sol Valley has things that just scream LA to me like a music venue, karaoke bar (set as a bar and is nonfunctional as a karaoke bar, but if you have City Living, you can make the switch with a few changes), taco joint, some mid century vibes, some maybe-ugly-but-kind-of-cool architecture, and a reference to the Chateau Marmont. Each world has a handful of new families and I also left some extra lots empty because, one, the save is already quite full of Sims, two, Get Famous requires a ton of NPCs that took a lot of time and effort getting makeovers, and, three, I wanted to give you all more varied places to move your own Sims into, which I did not do much of in the other worlds! I will probably leave a lot of vacant lots in future saves too to provide this option to you.

*Quick disclaimer that I did my best to play test all the lots, but I am just one person and probably missed some things, so please let me know if you find anything that isn't working or seems wrong so I can update the save!*

Hope you all enjoy! :)

Here's a little preview of each world:

Brindleton Bay

Brindleton Bay is a cozy coastal town that is paradise to pet lovers, nature lovers, and anyone who enjoys the salty smell of the ocean, crunchy autumn leaves, and a good brisk breeze! The town has been well-kept and neatly refurbished over the centuries since its founding. Today, it boasts a beautiful blend between the charming traditional Brindleton Bay architecture and modern comforts that greatly appeals to its devoted citizens.

Del Sol Valley

Is anyone actually from Del Sol Valley, or is everyone here a transplant? It certainly seems that way sometimes, as so many of the residents moved to DSV with dreams of making it big in the entertainment industry. Yet, no matter how long they have lived here, each citizen has a strong sense of DSV pride. Residents love the city for its bustling creativity, boldness, and vivacity. The city is alive at all times of day and the citizens' hope of achieving their dreams never dies.

#sims 4 #ts4 #simblr #sims 4 simblr #the sims community #ts4 simblr #sims 4 build #sims 4 screenshots #sims save file #del sol valley #brindleton bay #lasabarcas save file

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ninadove · 3 months ago

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A word on Benedetto’s father figures

Because I’ve been thinking about it all week. Have some parallels and contrasts, my friends:

Villefort:

Starts off Benedetto’s story extremely strongly by literally burying him alive within minutes of his birth. No one has ever failed their son harder.

Might have been onto something when he said crime spread around him and from him like a disease. Seriously, look at this family! It’s so dysfunctional in so many ways!!! If you’re a nature-over-nurture person, it’s not that far-fetched to suppose Benedetto got the Criminal Gene™ from him.

Literally changed his name to hide his compromising origins (as much as humanly possible in the spheres he frequents).

Burnt Edmond’s denunciation letter. Guess who else likes to burn things?

Is brought down by the literal unearthing of his biggest secret, which in turn concludes Benedetto’s arc.

Bertuccio:

Is, literally, the one who gave Benedetto life, and the emissary of Providence™ who shows up to bestow blessings upon him at semi-regular intervals.

Unfortunately, those gifts are always cursed. Surprise salvation from the grave in the garden? Only happens because Bertuccio tried to murder the kid’s father first, and results in what is functionally a kidnapping. Surprise adoption? Results in Benedetto being raised by a literal criminal, who is #shocked when his protege starts hanging out with ill-intentioned older boys and disciplines him with what we can reasonably assume from the unreliable narration is the good old belt. Surprise life-changing information about his origins that Bertuccio held onto all these years? Only revealed to cement Benedetto’s status as Monte-Cristo’s puppet.

Crumbled the second Benedetto questioned his ascendance, therefore drawing a clear link between authority and paternity and reinforcing the kid’s desire to defy both.

“Major Cavalcanti”:

Is just Some Guy™.

And yet, they have so much in common: both are impostors trapped in Monte-Cristo’s web, both are passionate about scamming rich people. There’s a quasi-instantaneous recognition between the two and, because they share the same goal, they develop a strangely wholesome understanding…? It’s forced coexistence as much as it is respect, but it’s not deprived of a weird sort of warmth, and Monte-Cristo himself comments on how much it looks like actual familial love. The contrast with Caderousse could not be harsher.

In virtue of his fake wealth and fake fatherhood, the Major becomes the Ultimate Authority™ ‘Andrea’ name-drops every time he wants to advance in society.

Caderousse:

Outwardly, he adopts all the attributes of a good father. He taught Benedetto most of his tricks! He feeds him! He talks of all the hardships they’ve been through together, like a family would!

But, of course, what he’s really doing is blackmailing Benedetto. Caderousse wants money, and it’s taken him a while to actually get his hands dirty, but he’s finally graduating to murder! And his silly young friend should help him if he doesn’t want his blood spilled on Place de Grève.

Anyway Benedetto stabs that guy real bad. I thought it was hilarious of him.

Danglars:

As Andrea’s future father-in-law, Danglars is his ticket towards the life of luxury without effort he has always wanted.

Of course, Danglars is using Andrea for the same reason Caderousse uses Benedetto: for money. Both of them lie about what they own, ergo about who they are, to get their hands on what they think the other has. This is especially interesting when put in perspective with the brutal honesty Danglars employs when talking to Eugénie, who he treats like a son and almost business partner rather than like a daughter (Transmasc Eugénie Truthers, rise up!).

… But of course, he still wants people to think of he and Andrea as family to strengthen his own nobility: if his son (in-law) is a prince, a title Danglars repeats ad nauseam, doesn’t that make him a king?

All things considered, despite losing their freedom (temporarily in Danglars’ case), money and status, both of them get a relatively happy ending compared to most of the cast.

Monte-Cristo:

BUCKLE UP THIS IS THE MOST INTERESTING.

Twice Benedetto raises the possibility of Monte-Cristo being his biological father, a perfectly logical conclusion in light of what he has done for him; in turn, Monte-Cristo recognises Benedetto as one of God’s punishers, a title he otherwise only attributes to himself.

Both of them went through a symbolic rebirth after being buried alive.

Both of them were wrongly accused of being evil incarnate, but eventually graduated to Full-On Criminals. Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies.

Escape Artists™

Both had to completely reinvent themselves, down to their names and origins, to achieve their ambitions.

Ruined engagement ceremony!!! This also draws parallels to Villefort and, interestingly, to Valentine and Franz.

THIS:

🇫🇷 « Ce calme, cette parfaite aisance firent comprendre à Andrea qu’il était pour le moment étreint par une main plus musculeuse que la sienne, et que l’étreinte n’en pouvait être facilement brisée. »

🇬🇧 « This calm, this perfect poise told Andrea that he was presently held by a hand far stronger than his, whose grip could not be escaped easily. »

Both Edmond and Benedetto know they are prisoners of people more powerful than they are, of the narrative, of a superior power that wields them like knives; both Monte-Cristo and Andrea accept their role as knives in the hope of eventually slicing through their ties. Whether or not they succeeded in the end is up to the reader’s interpretation.

#literature #french literature #alexandre dumas #le comte de monte cristo #benedetto #benedetto tcomc #andrea cavalcanti #gérard de villefort #bertuccio #major cavalcanti #gaspard caderousse #danglars #edmond dantès #random ramblings

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allwormdiet · 2 months ago

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Arc 6: Tangle, Concluding Thoughts

Lotta emotional highs and lows to get through here, so let's not dawdle

Okay, from the top now

Brian Laborn is actively evading all of my attempts to understand him. I will discover what makes him tick no matter how long it takes, and I will know whether the furniture building was meant to be a date or not

Speaking of which, my God 6.3 was fucking awkward. Some of that I'm certain was intentional, and good job at that, but holy shit I was actually uncomfortable with the way Aisha is described on her first appearance. Like I guess that can be chalked up to Taylor being awkward and mean but I'm gonna be real, I'm eyeing Wildbow on this one, if there's ever a fucking Worm Revised Edition that had better be on the rewrite block

Uhhhhh, lessee, what n-ahh. The gallery job.

I'm torn on this one, honestly. The build-up was solid, the entrance was delightful, and in the moment-to-moment stuff the fights were fun, but... the Undersiders went in with like half the Protectorate's numbers, and then proceeded to fight a wholeass PRT squad and then every hero there, and beat almost all of them. The Wards didn't do jack shit before being taken out, Assault and Battery got one cool team move and then were dusted, Triumph got downed by a dog, Velocity... Velocity found out a critical flaw in what gets sacrificed in the name of full power efficiency.

Someone on Discord pointed out that Miss Militia using the machete against Regent was actually a good way to discourage him from making her arms move, which is honestly smarter than I initially gave her credit for, but she still wound up puking inside her own costume so it's not like she's coming away from this smelling like roses.

Armsmaster and Dauntless are the only heroes who come out of 6.5 to 6.7 not looking like complete chumps, and Dauntless doesn't have a whole lot of personality on display so he barely counts as a character.

Overall it feels like the Protectorate heroes lost a lot of their bite with this entire sequence. The Undersiders are getaway specialists, thieves who don't pick fights unless they're sure they can win, and they just challenged like one of the highest-rated heroes in the Protectorate and his entire squad and came out of it in one piece. I'll grant that between the ambush conditions and the functionally unmatched battlefield control provided by Grue and Skitter that they tilted multiple factors in their favor, but that still doesn't feel all the way sufficient.

It should've been a lot closer, I think, and in some places it was already pretty close.

I hate Coil's entire vibe so much, I hate hate hate this dude. Smug motherfucker with his choreographed limo rides and coin tricks and shit. I'm gonna have to put up with this for a while, I can fucking feel it, goddamn him.

Somewhat relatedly, Tattletale... I don't like her less but I'm keeping a closer eye on what she says and does. If she's actually vibing with Coil and not just working with him as a matter of opportunism then that. Doesn't reflect great on her.

Hebert family continuing to break my fucking heart. I swear to god these two are gonna take fucking forever to mend the rift between them, and it's gonna involve at least a half-dozen more near-death experiences, goddammit

Edit: fuck me forgot the interlude

Birdcage scares the shit out of me, I think what makes Dragon’s role as architect and warden even worse is that she clearly takes no joy from the act.

Bakuda died as she lived, with bombast and sudden, violent cruelty.

Ahh, fuck, what even is supposed to be next in the story. Leviathan is close, right? I don't know if he's showing up the very next thing but I've been wrong before. God I hope there's, like, a second to breathe before an Endbringer rolls up.

#wormblr #parahumans #worm liveblogging #worm tangle #concluding thoughts

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girlfriendsofthegalaxy · 4 months ago

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tuesday again 7/30/2023

this post half brought to you by viewers like you! thank you!

listening

all my brain wants is charli xcx's apple on repeat. i understand there's a very popular dance with it but it's not H-O-T T-O G-O so i don't know anything about that. extremely effective song to have on loop while writing. peppy but very even and easy to just sort of bop along to in the background. looking forward to this being my #1 most listened song on spotify this year after the (DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT) number of hours last night working on yeehawgust.

thank you to my real-life sister for 1) teaching me about brat summer after i sent her a pic of the neon green pool outside and 2) telling me i would like this album. i do!

reading

i saw a photo on here several weeks ago of Balfour Tower, a brutalist residential building in London where all the mechanics are in the little tower on the right and said to myself "what the FUCK is that. how does it WORK."

someone else who said "what the FUCK is that. how does it WORK." was JG Ballard, previous tuesdaypost feature. there are only two books i reread most years, Jane Eyre in the fall and Ballard's The Drowned World in the summer (one of the nicest vintage hardcovers i own, from @morrak ).

let's yoink the description off wikipedia bc it's the most succinct:

The story describes the disintegration of a luxury high-rise building as its affluent residents gradually descend into violent chaos. As with Ballard's previous novels Crash (1973) and Concrete Island (1974), High-Rise inquires into the ways in which modern social and technological landscapes could alter the human psyche in provocative and hitherto unexplored ways.

it's less "the building is evil" and more "by incentivizing residents to not leave the building by providing everything they need, including a liquor store, the building is a petri dish for fucked up british social interaction".

Ballard is extremely good, on a very technical sentence level, of creating an immersive cocoon of dreamlike unreality in the middle of an otherwise functioning world. this is Not good for my brain when i am having a particularly prolonged bout of The Morbs. High-Rise was extremely effective in creating its particular pocket of fucked-up happenings in the middle of the "real world" but was EXTREMELY not the book i needed at this particular moment.

watching

The Burglars (1971, dir. Verneuil). this is a french heist film but i'm just going to drop my letterboxd review here.

do you want to see an all-in-one safecracking kit in a beautiful imitation leather suitcase straight from the catalog? with a computer to make a punchcard for the key cutting device also in the suitcase? do you feel strongly about emeralds? do you want to see a fuckin lupin iii style real life car chase where they run a little red fiat ragged? a man dumped out the back of a dump truck to fall down a slope half a mile long? do you want to see tits? do you want to see omar sharif get grain entrapped? this movie may be for you!

youtube

i would do anything for omar sharif and his big brown eyes.

the title sequence and a remarkably spare morricone soundtrack go SO hard. graphic design IS my passion!!!

youtube

how'd i find this: needed to use up some credits on kanopy. the gadgetry in the actual heist part of this film... mwah. a very poorly paced movie, but by god does it Look.

playing

thank you VERY much @sybilius for gifting me Pentiment! i would describe this as a point-and-click/visual novel murder mystery rpg?

youtube

it's endlessly charming. it is dense with medieval sociopolitical factions. i would expect nothing less from je sawyer. i loooove the different fonts: the printer in town has a custom font for his dialogue, other characters' dialogue changes fonts as you learn more about them (a noble's font changes from scrabbly handwriting to fine lettering after we learn he's got some education under his belt).

much like High-Rise, but for visual novel pace reasons and not content/atmosphere, this is not quite the right game for my brain at this time, but i am very excited to loop back around to it when better brain weather rolls in!

making

yeehawgust prep! i manage to do one prompt every other year but we'll see how this one goes

#tuesday again #tuesday again no problem

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cr4zyoosh · 4 months ago

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New & Improved Design of my CRP Oc/Sona! (Sort of)

So here’s some thoughts & details more about her I also provided color scheme for anyone who may want to draw her?? I know I’m not that popular but it would be so greatly honored to have that! 🫶😭

First I want to start off with the AGE OF HER!

So, in her backstory over the course of months part taking her backstory she is 18-19 years old, by the time she meets Slendy/Operator(?) it is in fact close to her birthday month. (Now I have no ideas for names or a different birthdate for her other than my own name & birthday)

Around the time she is finally in the mansion & has been there for at least a couple weeks it’s her birthday then that’s when she will endure the “proxy” sickness or whatever it is called just the sickness where she gets her powers, by the time her powers are finally overtaking her & finished she is at least around 19 or 20 years old. Then on the course of years she been there canonically she is around 20-22 years old! FULL GROWN YOUNG ADULT!

Secondly, her power!

Now I want to mention that yes at first I wanted her to be a very powerful “being” (will explain the ‘being’ part later) but in actuality, her power is actually not the strongest. Her power like mention in my story/ideas post that she has these powers where she can morph into this “demon type thing”; like sleep paralysis, but it takes up a lot of her energy. So she does not use it a lot, only for the “stunning” part where she makes the victim “paralyzed” like how sleep paralysis is. Then either she attacks the victim with the switchblade/pocket knife or the other proxy along with her on the missions gets their kill in. Of course when she uses her full power she is powerful absolutely yes, but it takes up so much of her energy that she needs to chill out & tag along with the other proxies & kill them how the others do.(such as how Jeff & Toby are both very much human with good amount of strength, that is what she would have to do instead of using her power.) Now she does still have that power where she’s in her demon form & she can use the red mist / shadow stuff to have it travel into the victims eye sockets & mouth, infecting them, along with this is when she infects them you can see red veins (glowing) travel up to the victims minds/brain, she then can see & hear their thoughts & dreams; marking her name as The Dream Reaper. She also then has them fade away into her “realm” of the souls she has “reaped”, so she can gain more energy. This also if the other proxies knock out the victims & she’s near, she can be able to send them directly to her “realm” to reap their soul, then even share the soul to feed for herself & the proxy that helped her. (Sharing is caring ya know?)

Now her weakness.

Previously mentioned she doesn’t use her full power all the time, due to draining her so badly. If she completely is drained she will grow sickly again like when she was getting her powers & end up having those dreams again that come to life. If she is that desperate & cannot use her power for gathering energy, she may end up in a cannibalisic state where another proxy needs to bring her a victim knocked out & have to be kept in a room for her to actually feed on the victim. THIS IS A IDEA NOT FULLY SURE TO GO THROUGH WITH IT!

I will explain in my story as I retype it all out & finally finish it instead of just the two chapters spread out what she endured during the so called “sickness”.

A bit of spoilers!

She… she isn’t really human. If you could not tell before about her power. Let’s just say she is more of a proxy absolutely, but is undead. Sort of like a zombie but less rotting flesh, etc. more of a zombie but still fully intact brain function & organs. I will explain in my story of how she became of that.

Notes about why I am posting this!

So I wanted to not per se “recreate” her but wanted to make her story & design more… original? I guess? I felt like her design for her “form” is definitely like Zalgos or Lazari’s which by the way IS NOT THE CASE! I was heavily inspired by a dream I once had with red & black images flashing & it was hella scary. Also the inspiration for this was I have such weird ass dreams & I am very spiritually connected to beings that no one can see from the naked eye, I also happen to love creepypasta & slenderverse stuff so win win! I want to also mention that, I’ve made fan art of her & Tim/Masky yes (the posted ones) in my story I won’t make it a “canon” thing because Tim/Masky isn’t MINE to own & do that to, but I may have her have a bit of a crush on him & have a few interactions with one another because why not? They have similar personalities sort of & similar trauma’s a bit so win win as well but also… daddy issues YAYYYYY (not). But if anyone would like to make fan art of him & her I would absolutely love to see it! (I know this won’t be too popular but it’s greatly appreciated to see fan art with the other Proxies or Marble Hornets characters or even your own CRP Ocs!!!)

I want to also add her personality!

Her personality is… anxiety ridden. She’s absolutely jumpy & paranoid half of the time, but once she finally settles down in the mansion, she’s a bit calmer but still slightly kept to herself, she’s also a bit mischievous as well. She barely sleeps & if she does, it’s for a short time. If she is weak she may sleep longer. She’s also alternative! She’s scene emo, hint to her hair. But she also likes the grunge clothing as well, obviously the music too, she enjoys PTV, SWS, MCR, Digital Daggers, aesthetically pleasing music (like the silent hill soundtracks, along with Alex g, Tv Girl, Julie, Wisp, etc!), along with this is of course some scene music like some Brokencyde, 30H!3, Millionares, some underground scene bands, now in for some more metal such as Korn, Evanescence, SOAD, Deftones, some Staind, Three Days Grace, Get Scared (of course). Also likes some gothic music such as some HIM, some Lebanon Hanover, & a bit of twin tribes! Other honorable mentions of music is The Front Bottoms, Current Joys, Cigarettes After Sex, some Nirvana, Blink-182, & Lana Del Rey. Some of the calm music help her calm herself down.

She also likes to draw & take notes on everyone in the mansion. She will draw them out & make notes on their personality, the way they talk, quite literally everything. (Will be explained more in story of why.) When she is around people she is comfortable with you would think she’s an absolute stoner (aka she sort of is). Now when she is out on missions, absolutely secluded to herself, absolutely INSANE due to lack of sleep, aggressive as fuck, quite literally the one to tell the victim what she will do to them kind of thing, does not hesitate towards anyone, maybe only children though & animals of course she isn’t fully insane. Duh of course she slightly knows how to play guitar & can sing a good ass mean rock/metal songs even ones sang by men! Absolutely loves guitar hero too. (I can see her, Jeff, & probably Ben playing that all the time for shitz & giggles). She also dresses scene close to Nina almost, but mostly Jean shorts with ripped tights or skinny ripped jeans along with a band tee or anything 2000s, along with some scene arm warmers sometimes or even ripped arm things like tights but for her arms along with thick bracelets or Candi (I totally see Nina & her making some for one another even having sally join in!) now her outfit to go on missions is in fact grunge looking but it keeps her hidden, able to carry more stuff in her pockets, & the outfit she wandered out & found Slenderman/The Operator (not sure which yet). Her grunge look is mostly casual wear but she mostly does wear Scene looks more, even if they are very simple. Absolutely her hair is dyed bright red & black obviously but she is a natural red head (like myself that’s why she’s more of a sona than oc but I call her both!) & yes she has a eyebrow piercing!

THIS IS HEAVILY BASED ON THE SLENDER MANSION BUT ALSO IN THE SLENDERVERSE IT IS MY OWN TAKE OF THOSE!!!

I think that’s all I have for now! Fill free to ask questions or like I previously said, draw anything with her with your own creepypasta oc or some of the characters themselves! 🫶🫶🫶

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