#reddit voice: shes 3d

[charlesoberonn]

My bad, it was a reddit comment responding to a post about missing people you met in dreams.

The original comment was deleted but here's a repost

Transcript under the cut:

A Parallel Life / Awoken By A Lamp

throw away account cause this is really personal.

My last semester at a certain college I was assulted by a football player for walking where he was trying to drive (note he was 325lbs I was 120lbs), while unconscious on the ground I lived a different life.

I met a wonderful young lady, she made my heart skip and my face red, I pursued her for months and dispatched a few jerk boyfriends before I finally won her over, after two years we got married and almost immediately she bore me a daughter.

I had a great job and my wife didn't have to work outside of the house, when my daughter was two she [my wife] bore me a son. My son was the joy of my life, I would walk into his room every morning before I left for work and doted on him and my daughter.

One day while sitting on the couch I noticed that the perspective of the lamp was odd, like inverted. It was still in 3D but... just.. wrong. (It was a square lamp base, red with gold trim on 4 legs and a white square shade). I was transfixed, I couldn't look away from it. I stayed up all night staring at it, the next morning I didn't go to work, something was just not right about that lamp.

I stopped eating, I left the couch only to use the bathroom at first, soon I stopped that too as I wasn't eating or drinking. I stared at the fucking lamp for 3 days before my wife got really worried, she had someone come and try to talk to me, by this time my cognizance was breaking up and my wife was freaking out. She took the kids to her mother's house just before I had my epiphany.... the lamp is not real.... the house is not real, my wife, my kids... none of that is real... the last 10 years of my life are not fucking real!

The lamp started to grow wider and deeper, it was still inverted dimensions, it took up my entire perspective and all I could see was red, I heard voices, screams, all kinds of weird noises and I became aware of pain.... a fucking shit ton of pain... the first words I said were "I'm missing teeth" and opened my eyes. I was laying on my back on the sidewalk surrounded by people that I didn't know, lots were freaking out, I was completely confused.

At some point a cop scooped me up, dragged/walked me across the sidewalk and grass and threw me face down in the back of a cop car, I was still confused.

I was taken to the hospital by the cop (seems he didn't want to wait for the ambulance to arrive) and give CT scans and shit..

I went through about 3 years of horrid depression, I was grieving the loss of my wife and children and dealing with the knowledge that they never existed, I was scared that I was going insane as I would cry myself to sleep hoping I would see her in my dreams. I never have, but sometimes I see my son, usually just a glimpse out of my peripheral vision, he is perpetually 5 years old and I can never hear what he says.

EDIT (24 hours after post): never though anyone would read this, I changed a line so that it no longer seems that my 2 year old daughter bore a child.

I have never seen Inception or the Star Trek episode so many have mentioned (but I will eventually)

I will not do an AMA

I've had many PM's describing similar experiences and 3 posters stating such experiences are impossible, I'd say more research needs to be done on brain functions. Pre-med students, don't assume you know everything.

A few have asked if they can write a book/screen play/stage play/rage comic etcetera, please consider this tale open source and have fun with it

-- u/temptotosssoon

she let me hit because i’m- [i remember she didn’t actually let me hit] [i remember she never really existed] [i remember the accident] oh my god the accident…

[scary-movies-on-netflix]

THE UNBINDING (2023)

This is a “documentary” by the same folk who made “Hellier,” which I think is complete trash.

We start off with a pair of dudes hiking in the woods.  They come upon a cave, inside of which is a little wooden statuette with nails driven into its eyes and a little noose tired around its neck.  We then move on to the Newkirks, a nice couple with an interest in the paranormal, who have a “traveling museum of the paranormal and the occult.”  They receive artifacts from fans, who send them spooky items, and the Newkirks explain that most items are just that, mundane items, but every now and then something is freaky!

Moving on, we return to the hiking guys from the beginning.  Someone posts a creepypasta on Reddit about the spooky statue: the guy hears noises at night, the statue appears in different room, he sees moist footprints on his floor.  The guy eventually is spooked enough that he spends the night at his hiking-bro’s house, rather than sleep in his own domicile.  Someone points Mr. Newkirk to the creepypasta post, and he responds with some helpful advice to apologize to the statue.  Hiking bros do that, but instead of finding peace, they see a shadowy figure in the corner!  They mail the statue to the Newkirks.

The Newkirks then proceed to be spooked by the statue.  They put it in their office, and a little Jesus figure is ripped off a hanging crucifix!  They put a camera in the room, and the statue appears to move at night!  (I mean, it shifts a little to the side.)  One night, Mrs. Newkirk is lying in bed and a shadowy figure open the bedroom door and looks at her!  This is obviously not sleep paralysis and definitely something spooky.  They see some moist footprints on the sofa.  Eventually, the Newkirks have an intervention for the statue: they talk to it and tell it, essentially, “look, we live together so be chill,” but the statue refuses to be chill!  They hear rushing water from the other side of the house.  When they return to the living room, with the statue, they find it hiding under the TV stand.  Mr. Newkirk is retrieving the statue, and the TV almost falls on him!  They end up putting it in a box.

Things seem ok, I guess, until they take their traveling museum to Michigan.  Some curious dude asks to see the statue, which for some reason they brought along with them.  Mr. Newkirk releases the statue from the box, and all hell breaks loose!  A woman spills her soda, a wind moves the chandeliers about, and some poor dude has a fit.  Some time later they have a livestream and mention the statue, which they’ve taken to calling the “Crone.”  One of their buddies on the livestream makes a joke about the Crone, and he is then spooked! 

For reasons, the Newkirks decide to 3D scan the statue, so they can make a replica.  They have to do this in a hotel, and for other reasons they decide to…sigh…carry out the “Estes Method.”  Allow me to explain: these people use the “SB-7 spirit box,” which basically is receiver that leaps through radio channels.  If the person using the spirit box (i.e. the medium) happens to hear a random word as this occurs, that means something, because obviously the ghosts/spirits/whatever must be communicating via those random radio signals.  The “Estes Method” involves blindfolding the medium and covering their ears with headphones, so the only input they receive is from the spirit box.  This is done, I assume, to eliminate any bias the medium might experience from observing the scene around them, which sounds reasonable, right?  No!  It’s still bullshit!

Mrs. Newkirk dons the blindfold and headphones, and as the 3D scanning starts, she blurts out words which appear to relate to the scanning process.  (The statue doesn’t like it.)  She also reports hearing two voices: a man and a woman, with the man somehow oppressing the woman.  Bullshit!  It’s all bullshit!  Even blindfolded, Mrs. Newkirk generally knows what’s happening.  She knows about the statue of the Crone, and she knows that it is being scanned.  She’s obviously going to be predisposed to blurt out words relating to those topics!  A “true” “Estes Method” would involve preparing some third party, who knows nothing about what you’re doing, with the blindfold and headphones outside of the presence of your study subject. Then you bring the medium to that object, and then they would then no doubt blurt out random nonsense, because they’re not already predisposed toward the subject of your interest.

Anyway, they scan.  The scanning guy must be really bad at it, because they get weird artifacts in their 3D file.  Or, the file is haunted.  (Hint: they think it’s haunted.)

Eventually, they decide that they’re going to return the statue to the mountain from whence it came.  They go to the town in New York and discover that the community has a notable Ukrainian population.  This leads them to look up Ukrainian folklore, which leads them to Baba Yaga, which leads them to Etsy, which leads them to some person selling little wooden statuettes, which leads them to the Slavic pagan goddess named Mokosh.  This leads them to talk to a professor of Russian Studies, Folklore, and Linguistics, who very nicely explains that very little is actually known of early Slavic mythology.  What is supposedly known was fabricated recently by Russians in order to create a national mythology.  The professor looks at the statue and is noncommittal about it.  Mr. Newkirk asks about potential conflicts between pagans (neo-pagans, actually) and Christians, and she says, yes, there could be conflicts.  Despite the professor’s advice to take their internet research with a grain of salt, the Newkirks ignore her and instead run with the theory that this is a statuette of Mokosh.  In a roundabout way, they suggest that some Christian drove nails into its face and put a noose around its neck to oppress it, or something. 

Continuing more quickly now, they hike up a mountain.  Mrs. Newkirk performs some rituals, and they ritualistically remove the nails and noose, and they say that everything suddenly feels better once that is complete.  They bury the statue and descend the mountain.  This is basically the end, but they then spend a few minutes blabbering about the value of stories, look up some more internet sources that seem to align with their pre-conceived notions, and express the rather egotistical belief that they were somehow assisting the actual spirit of the goddess Mokosh in its quest to be free of Christian domination.  Something something about the value of stories again.  Oh, they also made a mold of the statue so now they have a replica, which they display in their “traveling museum.”

So, look, I like the Newkirks.  They seem like cool people with a cool hobby.  They’re charismatic.  Their videos have good production values and decent writing, but someone writes a creepypasta on Reddit and mails them a funny statue, and they run with it.  Their credulity knows no bounds, they draw unwarranted inferences, and the Estes Methods is a joke. I do appreciate that they didn’t stretch this out to a multi-episode series, because that would be terrible, but even 90 minutes of this is about 40 minutes too many.

[viscerasmoothievents]

Recap of 2023/12/03

Woke up very late (~2pm) because I kept going back to sleep probably because my brain decided to try and protect me from the inevitable stress from the world pretty much collapsing in on itself, and my grandma got mad at me

Revised a character I made in Koikatsu Sunshine, and tried to make Franziska von Karma

Watched some of The Click and some other shit on Youtube

Rocked back and forth to half Jubyphonic's cover of "Dream" by Circus P

Then my grandma got mad at me for not taking a shower (This was ~10:30 PM) when she had reminded me before my rocking session

Then I decided to waste more time by opening up a few quizzes wondering if she was abusive (Guess who was getting upset? /rhetorical) which made her more angry

The I went to the bathroom because she threatened to take away my electronics if I didn't get in the shower before she got me some water

Then after washing my hands I sat on the bathroom floor, almost crying for a plethora of reasons

And finally I came out of the bathroom, asking her if I could try to take a shower the next day

She did ask what was wrong with me when I came out of the bathroom, but it was because I didn't take a shower despite being in there for about 30 minutes, not because I was upset.

I absolutely left shit out but oh well. Don't expect these to be all in one post btw, I'll probably write an initial post and then reblog it throughout the day, with these being reserved for when I forget to do that or stuff that happens while I'm at school (Don't bring my phone to school, and even if I did I'm not allowed to have it anywhere other than my locker, so that would be absolutely pointless).

Anyways here's a funny gif I have on my phone to add the illusion of more content:

ID for the gif: [Image of Donkey kong being zoomed in, with him blinking twice while it's zooming in]

Bold text:

Koikatsu Sunshine is an eroge game made by Illusion (Or whatever they call themselves now) with a 3d character creator element, implied for usage in CharaStudio or Story mode.

Franziska von Karma is a prosecutor from Ace Attorney, debuting in the second game, Justice for All, specifically case #2. She has silver-blue hair, white skin, grey eyes, and wears a black vest with two large blue diamond-shaped buttons, a white shirt with puffy sleeves and cuffs with two square(?) blue buttons, a tight black skirt, fishnet(?) stockings, and cuffed boots.

The Click is a YouTuber who voices over Reddit posts, going over subreddits such as r/Insane parents, r/Main Character syndrome, r/FacePalm, and r/NotLikeOtherGirls. He also occasionally streams on his YouTube channel, with those usually being for merch launches or games.

JubyPhonic is a music artist who's famous for English covers of songs like "Miss Wanna Die". The song I was vibing to, "Dream", is a cover of a vocaloid (Presumably, I've only listened to Juby's cover of it) song made by Circus P in collaboration with JubyPhonic (Don't quote me on that though, I'm 90% sure I got that from the comment section on her video)(Vibing refers to me rocking back and forth in the same chair I broke doing the same exact thing).

Donkey Kong is a character owned by Nintendo, first debuting in an arcade game also called Donkey Kong. He's a gorilla with brown fur and beige skin, along with a red tie with his initials, DK, inscribed in yellow (Inscribed basically means written btw). I'm too lazy to Google what his eye color is but from the gif I posted it looks like it's black so yeah.

This took me like an hour to write lmfao.

[evoilvx]

If the RE8 ladies were properly introduced to modern society I think they would have a field day.

(An extensive list of things they might enjoy)

I might even make something about the things they would hate

There might be some mild inaccuracies but it’s all just some fun little hcs of mine :>

Will be updated sometimes!

Alcina:

Alcina using the speech to text and voice message feature everyday to sent angry, irritated messages to Karl whenever she wants

Lazy rivers at water parks

Aquariums and fish tanks

Bidets

Roombas

TV shows like TVD and The Originals (ironic I know).

Miniature toys, like tiny french fries, tiny sodas, tiny furniture, she would have an entire box of them

But also those ridiculously large pencils

Massage chairs

Expensive cars

Amazon. Don't ask, just know she would LOVE it

Rolling chairs

Foster care systems, you can’t tell me she wouldn’t love taking care of children until they’ve found a suitable home, her maternal instincts will never grow cobwebs as long as I have a working brain and fingers to write

Those head scratchers/massager

Detachable shower heads (take that however you want to)

Standing desks

Hot tubs with jets

Credit/debit cards, for obvious reasons (sexy, rich lady)

Bela:

Unhinged access to books and video games on the internet, she would never leave her room. She can now live in complete solitude with nothing but her little pixels and endless letters on a screen

Fostering animals

Self warming beds

Motorcycles

Wattpad and Tumblr

Hot wheels, but only because she loves finding exact/close replicas to Alcina's car collection and putting them on display

Museums

Skateboards and rollerblades

Airpods

Air conditioners and humidifiers

Invisible ink and diaries

The RGB cloud lights that you can put on your ceiling

Facetime

Digital art

Chapstick

Faceless Twitch streaming

Mini fridges

Hoodies

Reddit

Cereal

Rubiks cubes. She's collected all the variants she could find, solving them, then unsolving them, then repeating the process. She has them all lined up on a shelf

Cassandra:

Cassandra finding boxing classes and learning she can beat the shit out of people, call it a lesson AND get paid. (We’re going to obviously ignore the fact that if she seriously maimed someone she would get fired.)

Amazon, she would have a field day ordering all sorts of things

Haunted houses

She would LOOOVE the Jigsaw movies and just scary movies in general

She likes Twitter just to start discourse and argue with people (and win)

Call of Duty, she would be a beast at it

Activities that use 3D glasses

VR games

Paintball tournaments

Workout equipment

Florida (pls don't ask on this one, just take my word for it)

Convertibles

Word searches

Unofficial, definitely illegal, might get arrested boxing tournaments

Swing sets

Football

Wrestling

Gogo squeez

Extremely-really should not be doing-dangerous outdoor activities. She drags Daniela along with her while Bela watches in concern before shrugging and going back to reading

Fidget cubes (I love these things) She would have a blast going through the different fidgets. The idle clicking noise will never stop when you're around Cassandra

Super glue. She breaks something? Super glue. Mother will never have to know (she'll know)

Daniela:

Daniela and gay bars. Nuff said.

I think she would like working at endangered species centers, where she can be around and care for extremely dangerous apex predators

Onesies

Tumblr

I feel like she would be really good at those claw machine games

She would also love amusement parks and dangerous outdoor activities like sky diving, running of the bulls, volcano boarding, would probably give Alcina multiple heart attacks at once (she also thinks Cassandra is so cool for doing all these dangerous stunts and wants to join)

Tattoos

She would definitely become a tattoo artist

Trampolines

Touch screen fridges

She would go to paintball tournaments with Cassandra

Goldren Retrievers

Glitter sticky hands

Gogo squeez

Megaphones

Fire extinguishers

Whipped cream

Just Dance

Lunchables

Stress balls, preferably ones that are designed like an animal so she can watch the eyes comically pop out. She has approximately 23 stress balls, her favorite is an orange fish

Donna:

Unlimited cartoons and animations on a flatscreen TV

Modern kitchen appliances

Jobs that teach wood work, design and of course: doll-making

AMAZON and online grocery shopping. Donna, especially, would love Amazon. She can buy everything she needs without any other interaction? Just a push of a button? She’d go wild with it

LED RGB lights

Sticker books

I’m feeling my neurodivergent nerves tingling and pointing towards Donna so I’m going to say she loves those smooth hardcover books with gloss papers, especially if they’re about gardening or cartoons (I say this because I love the same type of books, makes my brain tingle nicely)

Sprinklers

Emails

Tea play sets

Humidifiers

Youtube and Netflix

Slime, she would make her own slime all the time

Golden Retrievers, just loyal, working dog breeds in general

Zip ties

All natural body products

Mother Miranda:

Mother Miranda would go insane, simply put.

New science equipment? Donors? New scientific breakthroughs?

She can now pay people off to leave her alone and get her own modern lab? She can work in peace with lots of new opportunities?

A NEWS CHANNEL? Don’t even get me started, for some reason I have a feeling Miranda would absolutely love the news channel

Aquariums and fish tanks like Alcina, she would have them everywhere in her house

Goldfish (the snack that smiles back)

Grey’s Anatomy but only to criticize the methods (she won’t admit she likes it)

Automatic pet feeders, even if she doesn’t have a pet

An iPhone, I feel like she would make her widget theme something really unique, and she can bother the other Lords whenever she wants for whatever she thinks about

Rolling chairs

Mint chocolate chip ice cream

Face masks

Romantic, drama shows (she won't admit she's cried to a few of them or that some of them ruined her day)

Skin care products

Coupons

Antibacterial wipes

The Dimitrescu daughters introduced a fidget spinner to her and since then she has not gone a single day without mindlessly spinning the toy as she works/relaxes

[tapioca-puddingg]

Drakengard 3 Headcanons that no one asked for

Hey so like. Been thinking about the Drakengard 3 ladies again lately. So here's some headcanons for if the existed IRL and what kind of nonsense they'd be up to. Enjoy?

FIVE 💛

So i feel like if she had a YT channel she would post content about hair, make-up and fashion. Make-up tutorials, clothing hauls, lookbooks, etc

If she streamed on Twitch, I can see her doing those like hot tub streams

She'd be all over Instagram, good lord

I feel like she would probably have an OnlyFans. Sorry, I don't make the rules around here

I like how this progressively got more intense lol

FOUR 💚

Four would be a hot ass mess ngl

She definitely would be a pick-me girl on tiktok

She'd be in the black pill community. RIP, we hardly knew her

So if she had a YT channel, I feel like she'd have an Abby Shapiro type of channel

If she streamed, she'd probably have a bunch of gender-related debates with other streamers

Maybe a semi-political streamer

Four is a literal Karen so she'd be all over twitter unfortunately

Wow this took a turn didn't it

THREE 💜

So Three is an interesting one

I can see her doing asmr for some weird reason

She has the voice for it I feel like

I also feel like she would be into 3D printing and stuff

Maybe she has her own shop on Etsy, selling custom made figurines and dolls and such

Other than that I can't see her having much of a presence on social media

TWO 💙

Speaking of creating things, Two would absolutely have her own cooking channel

Cent makes cameos in the videos sometimes. Or he's the cameraman

I can also see her running her own cooking blog

Might do those short cooking vids on Instagram or tiktok

For some reason I can also see her having a garden

I feel like she would definitely have pets

If she had an insta or twitter, she'd post cute pics of her and Cent regularly

Just overall wholesome content, you love to see it

ONE ❤

Definitely a political Youtuber or streamer

Prob more left leaning

I feel like she might also do debates with other YTbers or streamers

A feminist

Frequents Reddit and Twitter

RIP, hardly knew her

[isaacthedruid]

Please allow me to tell you about one of my favourite cartoons through this informal essay I did for school a couple of months back. 

Gravity Falls and How it Did The Unimaginable

**SPOILERS... KINDA**

The 2010s saw the creation of some of the most iconic animated tv shows ever made, the likes of Adventure Time (2010), Steven Universe (2013), Over the Garden Wall (2014) and The Legend of Korra (2012). To explain why this era’s shows are so admirable is honestly rather difficult. Yet, there are many factors that can be taken into consideration when looking for an answer.

The past decade was very successful in perfecting their craft and utilizing the animated format to their favour, creating some of the wackiest and fascinating cartoons ever made. With the advancements made in both 2D and 3D animation for film, this bled into the world of TV as well.

To mention that 2010s cartoons have stunning visuals would be an understatement. Everything about the animation was beautiful; the strong colour palettes, the clean and imaginative character designs, the colourful and immersive backgrounds and especially the mesmerizing worlds that can be found within episodes that are half an hour.

This era’s cartoons also led to a massive shift in storytelling, writing longer-running stories that spread out across seasons while also swapping out episodic adventures for serialization. This heavily aided in the popularization of these shows, due to the rise of internet fandoms and dropping the taboo that cartoons were only for kids. Many shows acknowledged their older viewers by leaving clues and even puzzles to be solved by the theorists who have a large appearance on social media platforms like Reddit, Twitter and Tumblr. As the shows progressed, their fandoms created many theories for what they believed might happen within their favourite series. The top three shows from this era all utilized these changes, being at the forefront of the shift and helping guide the creative vision of 2010s cartoons.

Often regarded as many people’s favourite cartoon, Gravity Falls presented one of the best mysteries of the decade with two seasons and only 40 episodes. Inspired by Twin Peaks and The X-Files, it’s considered as the kids’ version of these two iconic shows as this cartoon acts as many people’s first introduction to horror through bright colours and fun characters.

This series follows the adventures of Dipper and Mabel Pines, twins, who are sent to spend their summer with their great-uncle or Grunkle Stan in Gravity Falls, Oregon. This town is full of oddities like supernatural creatures, insane and eccentric inhabitants, and many puzzles. The Pines twins must adjust to the weirdness while uncovering the mysteries and protecting their new town.

While living in Gravity Falls, the twins are forced to work in the Mystery Shack, a tourist trap created by their Grunkle Stan that overcharges unlucky tourists, teaching about fake monsters despite there being real creatures all over town. On his first day in Oregon, Dipper accidentally came across a mysterious journal written by an unknown author that explains all the oddities to be found in this strange town. This book acts like an encyclopedic of the Weird for Dipper, an inquisitive 12-year-old kid who seeks answers.

Dipper is an extremely intelligent kid, his brain being far more developed than his body. He’s rather awkward and self-conscious as he often stumbles over his words or gets embarrassed trying to talk to girls. Despite this, the boy is an adventurer at heart who just wants to grow up and skip his upcoming teenage years.

While Mabel is quite the opposite in many ways, she is loud and has an in-your-face personality. Mabel is bouncy and fun, she is so excited to start high school. She is easily excitable and for the larger part of the series, she is in her boy-crazy phase. Mabel is a girly-girl as she likes all things; glitter, unicorns, rainbows, partying and crafting. Yet, she doesn’t often compare well with many of the other girls in town, they see her as weird and “too much”.

(In all fairness through, it is not too kind to either of the characters as their personalities are more complex than just awkward nerd and artsy girl-girly.)

Dipper and Mabel’s personalities are very different but somehow, they—along with their Gravity Falls family—manage to solve mysteries and save the town, multiple times.

Gravity Falls is an honestly genius series that completely changed the way cartoons were made. Originally when writing a series, you’d create a base of your story; characters, the universe and a basic plot. Yet, when creator, Alex Hirsch (who was in his early/mid-20)s and his small team first began constructing their show, they planned out everything they could possibly think of for the first season. Additionally, outlining some answers for their biggest mysteries that would be answered at the end of the series.

Despite being rated TV-Y7, this series really pushed the boundaries of kids’ television. From the teeth being ripped out of a deer’s mouth by a demon, rearranging the functions of every hole on a man’s face to an aggressive pop-rock sock puppet show that ended in a dramatic slow-motion scene of the puppets burning. Gravity Falls wasn’t afraid to get a little weird or creepy. Or create some genuine nightmare fuel. 

From the beginning, Gravity Falls had built a mystery into its series, hiding secrets and clues all throughout the show. Most notably were the backwards-recorded message and cryptograms, using roughly nine different kinds, even creating two of their own.

The inclusion of cyphers and mysteries for fans to solve is possibly the reason why this series was so successful. As one of the first shows to do something like this, Gravity Falls used social media and internet fandoms to its advantage.

As mentioned earlier, cartoon fans have quite a presence on social media platforms like Twitter and Tumblr. They create theories and share fun ideas about their favourite shows. Viewers of Adventure Time, Gravity Falls and Steven Universe were all included in their share of theory fun.

Sometimes, fan theories end up being correct but when you’re Gravity Falls creator, Alex Hirsch, you don’t just watch from the sidelines as your viewers figure out the biggest mystery of your show. No, you create a hoax to get your viewers off your trail and that is what he did. Around 2013, only halfway through the first season of the show, viewers had started to follow the clues, theorizing who was the author is Dipper’s mysterious journal.

Unfortunately for the Gravity Falls production crew, the viewers were right— for the sake of readers who have never seen the show, I will not mention who the author was as it would be the biggest spoiler.

In 2013, a supposed leaked image of a tv showing a younger version of the show’s crazy old man character, Old Man McGucket, writing in the infamous journal was uploaded anonymously (by Alex Hirsch) to 4Chan.

Despite the image only being on up for a few hours, it spread like wildfire. Much to the team’s success, theorists stopped searching for the answer to “who is the author” and just accepted the image of McGucket as the truth.

To further push the fake-out, three words were posted to Alex’s Twitter, “fuming right now.”

The tweet was deleted a few minutes later and fans genuinely believed that someone from the Gravity Falls team had leaked the most important part of the story.

While doing research, I came across a Reddit post from April 10th, 2013, the day after ‘leak,’ Alex’s tweet was uploaded. In this post, user, TheoDW uploaded an image of Alex’s tweet with the caption, “It seems that Hirsch got mad at last night’s leak. He already deleted this tweet.”

Seeing the reactions of these Redditors in 2013 is kind of weird and crazy to look at. “He has every right to be upset. Someone internally released a plot revealing screen shot of series breaking spoiler information,” a deleted Reddit account commented.

“This is Alex Hirsch’s biggest success by far, he spent a huge amount of time carefully planning out the series, and then in a moment someone releases a major spoiler. It would make anyone upset,” the user, Time_Loop commented.

“Seriously, this is a nightmare for a storyteller, and shows a breach of trust. I feel so bad for him–honestly, I hope whoever did the leak gets caught and appropriate action is taken. You don’t f–k with someone’s story like this. It’s unprofessional.” the user, lonelybeloved angrily commented.

In 2014, this ‘leak’ was finally disproven when viewers were given an episode on McGucket’s backstory and an amazing tweet from Alex Hirsch. 

Alex had post an image of himself playfully pointing at a monitor with the supposed leaked picture with the caption, “1) Make hoax  2) Upload to 4Chan  3) Post angry tweet about "leak" 4) Delete tweet 5) Let internet do rest”

It is so interesting to look at these comments know that all of this was orchestrated by Alex.

I wish I had been old enough at the time to follow theories and fandom stuff like I do now with current cartoons but really looking at this from an outside perspective, this was insane!

The real author wasn’t revealed until 2015 and when viewers first got the answer to this biggest show on their screens, they must have freaked out!

Following the finale in 2016, a single frame of a stone version of Bill Cipher, the show’s villain, flashed in after the credits had finished.

Alex Hirsch and his team actually created a real-life statue of their villain for their viewers to find and on July 20th, 2016, the Cipher Hunt began.

By following clues, the Hunters found themselves all over the world; Russia, Japan and then travelling throughout the United States for the final 12 clues. When the hunt took them to Los Angeles, actor, Jason Ritter (voice of Dipper Pines, also a massive fan of the series) and Alex Hirsch’s twin sister, Ariel Hirsch (the inspiration for Mabel) joined in the fun helping the search.

Finally, the hunt ended on August 2nd when someone tweeted out an image of the found statue in Oregon, the same state in which the fictional town of Gravity Falls exists. The Cipher Hunt had ended but finding the statue wasn’t Alex’s goal for the scavenger hunt, it was about the journey and bringing together the viewers, more than having them actually find the statue.

Creating its own hoax, an international scavenger hunt and quite a bit of nightmare fuel, Gravity Falls was a show truly unlike any other.

The 2010s saw some of the strongest cartoons ever made, Adventure Time, Gravity Falls and Steven Universe acting as the leaders for multiple different changes in the medium; storytelling, worldbuilding, interaction with viewers, utilizing social media, representation and further pushing music into the cartoon world. From what was created this past decade and what has already been released in 2020, I’m so excited to see what comes next.

I have another one of these which is on Steven Universe’s representation and music if you would like to see that too!! 

[migeviellardi]

Random Story Ahoy!

Leo’s Wisdom

It was a silent afternoon where the sky smiles beautifully in its blue fill covered in puffy cotton clouds. Mikey's been holing up in the kitchen, working on some recipes he's been searching from the internet. He prepared all of his signature utensils and organized the ingredients for today's recipe. He was about to start when Leo stumbled upon the room.

"Hey, Miguel." Leo greeted with an aloof grin.

"Sup, Leo. How's your day?"

"Oh, it is a great day. I just found new wisdom." 

"Cool! What is it?" 

"Wanna hear it? Okay, listen to this!"

#####

Donnie just got back from his journey exploring the junkyard, he didn't get much from it. Frustrated, he went to the kitchen to catch a mug of coffee. He saw Mikey stood still on the kitchen counter,

"Hey, Michael." no response. That weirded him out, he shrugs and prepared his favorite dirty bean water. He took the filled mug and approached Mikey. "Something bothering you?"

He placed his hand on his shoulder and Mikey turns with his eyes looking in both directions, eerily quiet and unresponsive. Donnie slowly recoils in horror and went straight to his lab. He sat down to relieve himself, not sure what's with Mikey's expression. "Now that was weird," he said, sipping his coffee.

"Hey, Donald." Leo's voice nearly made him choked, he turns to him coughing.

"What?!" he yells, irritated.

"Whoahoo, chillax bro! I've come in peace." Leo calmly replies.

"What do you want?"

"I have a wisdom."

Donnie snorts, "Please, since when you have wisdom?" he scoffed. Leo shrugs,

"Just this morning. Wanna hear?"

"Pfft, sure, why not?"

 #####

Raph did a good stretch after hooking up with his exercise schedules, now all he wanted to do is relax and back to doing his 3D ship model puzzle again. Suddenly, he heard crashing noises. The sounds came from Donnie's lab, he hurriedly runs to make sure his brother's okay.

"Donnie, what happened? What's with-" he dodged just in time before a titanium bust of Donnie launches at him, it got stuck to a wall. Raph looks at his brother who is in a temper tantrum and breaking everything in his lab with his rocket hammer. He screams frantically as he demolished his table. 

"Whoa, whoa, Donnie! What's wrong, buddy? You can tell me anything." Raph tried to calm him down. Donnie stops, panting hard, slowly pans to Raph, and starts screaming. He runs at Raph with his hammer in the air. Raph panics and closes the lab. He can hear Donnie trying to smash his way out from the inside.

Raph runs to the kitchen, "Mikey, there's something seriously wrong with Donnie! You gotta help me!" Mikey didn't respond, he stood still, staring at his utensils. Raph gone worried approached him slowly. "Hey, what's wrong, little man? Are you okay?" he turns Mikey's shoulder to reveal Mikey's weird eyes and his blank expression. Raph gasps,

"Mikey, what happened?!" he shook his little brother's shoulders, Mikey remains quiet. Raph biting his claws in panic, he has no idea what's going on. He ran out of the kitchen, looking around for someone, Leo suddenly appeared right in front of him.

"Hey, big bro." Leo casually greeted.

"Leo! Oh, thank goodness! Something's wrong with Donnie and Mikey." he reports.

"Nah, I just told them my wisdom. Not a big deal." Leo shrugs, Raph tilts his head curiously.

"Your wisdom?"

"Yeah, wanna hear some?"

Raph nodded. 

 #####

April strolls calmly along the sewer tunnels with a pizza box in her hands. Her cheery smile indicating her mood has been really good and decides to treat the boys some yummies. When she arrived, she blinks in confusion at Raph's behavior. He walks around with pieces of bread, one in each hand and drooling all over the place. What's confuses her more is when he places the two pieces of bread on the opposite side of a skateboard and began biting. She grimaced at him.

She then startled at the loud noises coming from the lab. She approached the closed door and peek through a small gap. She saw Donnie smashing about with his hammer while he screams in anger. Donnie threw a chair at the door and made her jumped back. She went to the kitchen, a bit shook. She placed the pizza box on the dinner table. At the corner of her eyes, Mikey stood against the kitchen counter. 

April smiled and approached the box turtle, "Sup Mikey. Do you by any chance know what's going on with Raph and Donnie?" Mikey didn't respond, "Hellooo, earth to Mikey?"

Mikey still didn't respond. She turns his shoulder and saw Mikey's weird blank expression. She grimaced once again, "Ooukay?"

She slowly walks backward from the kitchen. Scratching her head, "What on earth is going on here?" 

In the living room, she saw Leo lounging around in a bean bag reading his comics. She gingerly walks closer and cautiously looks at his face. "Leo?"

Leo looks up, "April! What's up?" he greeted.

April sigh in relief, "Oh thank goodness. W-What is happening with all the boys? Raph has gone, coo-coo~. Donnie just threw a whole chair at my face. And, Mikey...I-I don't know what's up with him. He's all...broken or something."

"Oh, yeah. I told them about my wisdom, that's all. No biggie." he grinned calmly. April raised an eyebrow.

"Wisdom?" Leo nodded,

"Yeah, wanna hear it?" he asked. 

"Okay, hold on. What is this 'wisdom' thing that you told them?" she emphasized the 'wisdom' part with her two fingers.

"I told Mikey that Ketchup is a custard for junk food. Which is true if you think about it. Mikey took it just fine until he suddenly just went all quiet." Leo explained. April gave him an awkward look.

"And Donnie?"

"I told him this; The only time the word ‘incorrectly’ isn’t spelled incorrectly is when it’s spelled incorrectly. Yeah, I think I broke him after that." Leo added.

"You think?"

"And, finally I told Raph that if you put two pieces of bread on either side of everything, then everything can be a sandwich. Which probably a bad idea considering Raph is always hungry." he smiled, somewhat calm in all this. There's a pause of awkwardness in the room as April gave him an unimpressed look.

"I knew it was a bad idea to introduce Reddit to you."

[xb-squaredx]

Rise of the V-Tuber

As a platform, YouTube has gone through a variety of “eras,” wherein a particular trend catches on and defines the website for some time. In the early days, you had funny cat videos, then Let’s Plays of video games became rather popular, and now we seem to be deeply entrenched into a new era that has exploded in popularity as of late. If you’ve frequented the website at all in the past few months, it is almost inescapable. Cutesy, anime-styled avatars that play games, sing, chat with viewers, or even cook! What does it all mean? Where did they come from? Are they here to stay? Most importantly, how does one crawl out of the rabbit hole once they fall into it? All that and more will be revealed as we delve deep into the wacky, wholesome and sometimes worrying world of V-Tubers. (photo credit YuuGiJoou. Check her out on YouTube, Twitter or Twitch!) 

THE ORIGIN

To begin properly, let’s define the subject. A “V-Tuber” is a “Virtual YouTuber,” someone who streams on YouTube (or any other streaming platform) using a digital avatar as a proxy. The streamer in question typically uses face-tracking software so that the avatar can emote (or at least attempt to emote) to match their own reactions as they provide entertainment for their audience. While it may seem as if V-Tubers are rather new, in doing research on the topic, you’d be surprised how far back things go.

For starters, the concept of a virtual celebrity has been around for a while, with one of the most notable efforts being Hatsune Miku, a Vocaloid voicebank program. Hatsune Miku is every bit as famous and beloved as a flesh-and-blood singer or entertainer despite being nothing but voice synthesizer software. Vocaloid got its start back in 2000, eventually being reworked into a commercial product in 2004, though it wasn’t until the programs started receiving anthropomorphic character designs that it took off, with Hatsune Miku’s own debut in 2007, and the rest is history.

Many will consider “Virtual Idol” Kizuna Ai as the true pioneer of what we call a V-Tuber today, making her debut in 2016, however one could make an argument that Ami Yamato, a 3D-animated vlogging channel debuting in 2013, beat her to the punch. Honorable mention of course goes to Any Malu, a Brazilian animated YouTube vlogger who debuted in 2015 and eventually gained her own show on Cartoon Network Brazil. While Ai may not be the first, she is undoubtedly considered to be the codifier that many later V-Tubers would follow. Ai’s entire shtick was being an AI program that wanted to connect with humans, playing games, singing or interacting with fans. Following her explosive popularity, it was clear that other companies would follow the model established by Ai, with their own spins on it of course.

Nijisanji, established in 2018, proved that this trend could be incredibly profitable, becoming trailblazers in their own right as they established various “branches” of their company in several countries with their own unique performers that could cater to a wider range of viewers. As of this writing, Nijisanji employs over 164 “Virtual Livers,” most of which come from their Japan branch, alongside their Korean, Chinese, Indian and Indonesian branches. Similarly, there is the Hololive corporation, which saw substantial growth throughout 2020 in particular. Established in 2016 originally as Cover Corporation, at first Hololive was the name of an app meant for use in 3D motion capture, though following Nijisanji’s success, Hololive was rebranded as a V-Tuber competitor and also features a variety of colorful characters spread across many different main branches. There is of course the Japanese branch, as well as Hololive Indonesia, the relatively new (and highly successful) Hololive English, a defunct Chinese branch and an all-male Holostar branch in Japan.

Other, smaller V-Tuber groups have sprung up alongside the corporate powerhouses, such as VOMS Project, established in March of 2020, as an independent trio of streamers, and more recently at the tail-end of 2020 with V-Shojo, featuring a group of Western streamers (who ironically mostly stick to Twitch). Outside of this of course are the countless independent streamers who utilize avatars for one reason or another across many different platforms. Even prominent Twitch streamers seem to be getting in on the act, such as Pokimane, though that one has not come without some backlash. So consider that a rough history of how V-Tubers got started in Japan but how did they gain a more global fanbase? Well, in a word…”memes.”

GOING INTERNATIONAL

I won’t deny there had to be at least SOME overseas fans who enjoyed watching V-Tubers before they became more well-known, but for many Western fans their introductions to V-Tubers in general typically came from viral videos taken from various streams that spread like wildfire, eventually getting people curious enough to check them out. For Kizuna Ai, her playthrough of Resident Evil 7 gained notoriety for her mimicking the cursing of the English-speaking player character, and for Hololive, arguably the first real Western breakthrough for the company came from a now infamous moment from Sakura Miko’s stream of Grand Theft Auto 5. 

Also from Hololive, Inugami Korone in particular had a variety of memes spread about her due to playthroughs from various games that even got acknowledged by the developers themselves. Her playthrough of DOOM 2016 resulted in a short-lived Easter egg implanted into DOOM Eternal, and her video on Banjo-Kazooie (and the animated Eekum Bokum fan video that spawned from that) got the attention of Rare, Xbox and even Grant Kirkhope, the composer for the original game.

Honestly, the real unsung heroes of sorts for V-Tuber popularity might just come from foreign fans that would clip and translate various moments from streams that helped to build an international audience. There are dozens of Twitter handles and YouTube channels that specialize in spreading these clips around and if you factor in the YouTube algorithm, once you see one video your feed will be flooded with similar videos. It is no surprise fans call getting into the fandom “falling into the rabbit hole.” When you look at the more popular members of Hololive, often the ones with various viral clips have the higher subscription counts. In the case of Aki Rosenthal, one of the older members, her sub count exploded after a fan translated a section from a then-recent stream in which she talked candidly about her less-than-stellar growth as well as the difficulties of standing out in general. While at one point having the lowest amount of subscribers (well below 200,000), in the months since that video her sub count has more than doubled going past 400,000. Sometimes the talent needs a little push.

Now, within Hololive itself, I think Kiryu Coco is also partially responsible for expanding the fanbase, being one of the few employed talents with the ability to speak English (likely a native speaker), she gained a large international fanbase as she would work to translate what she or other members were talking about on the fly, and later on established an ongoing series where she would directly engage with fans over websites like Reddit and “rate” the various memes they would send in. Coco also pushed for establishing what would become Hololive English, which has proven to be a gigantic success, each member of that branch blowing past more established talent’s subscriber counts, with Gawr Gura becoming the first Hololive V-Tuber to pass one million subscribers and just recently passed the two million mark. So yeah, V-Tubers are a big deal now but…what is about them that makes people want to watch them in the first place?

THE APPEAL

So, right off the bat, if we’re going to ask why someone would want to watch a V-Tuber I think it’s fair to ask that of virtually ANY internet personality. The reason why someone would watch Game Grumps or Pokimane or Jojo Siwa or whoever else is the same reason they’d watch Kizuna Ai or Inugami Korone or Ironmouse: they’re entertaining. I guess that seems like a bit of a cop-out answer, right? There MUST be a reason why V-Tubers have blown up in popularity over the last few years, so are there things that make these particular Internet entertainers stand out from the crowd?

Undoubtedly, the fact that these streamers are playing a character is a deviation from the norm, though the dedication to staying “in character” seems to vary from person to person, and over time many V-Tubers tend to open up and are far more genuine. At any rate, even the best actor out there can’t possibly make up various daily happenings or childhood stories for their characters on the fly, day after day, stream after stream. Still, I’d imagine the decision to use a proxy as opposed to their real self can be liberating, a mask they can wear to speak more freely or a role they can play up for entertainment. For the most part, I think the persona aspect is mostly harmless fun that makes the streamer seem more distinct; ask yourself which is more eye-catching: some normal human playing a game and occasionally cracking a joke, or a one-eyed pirate girl discussing her raunchy past? Or maybe you’d rather watch the grim reaper practice her raps? Even talent that don’t really play up their character much still often have interesting character designs; we have princesses, dragons, devils, robots and more. A little something for everyone!

Speaking a bit more personally, I find it interesting to watch streamers from an entirely different culture and how they interact with fans or engage with games. I find it funny when Inugami Korone or Sakura Miko plays more Western-oriented games like the DOOM series or Grand Theft Auto V respectively. Often times they’re blown away by the culture clash, or they view these games through a different lens since it’s so different from what they’re used to. In particular, those two are just genuine goofballs that are funny all on their own. More chat-focused streams are an interesting view into daily life in Japan, such as the stories Houshou Marine tells, though obviously a given V-Tuber’s viewpoint isn’t a metric you can apply to the whole country, but she’s still interesting to listen to. Takanashi Kiara is also notable for her multilingual skills, which has helped her bridge the gap a bit more between the various Hololive members through her Holotalk segments where she interviews other V-Tubers. Outside of Hololive, Amano Pikamee from VOMS Project is just a bundle of energy that’s fun to watch as she rages in Super Mario 64 or Super Mario Sunshine. Her tea-kettle laugh is also just kinda charming. The V-Shojo group stands out for being super vulgar compared to the more corporate V-Tubers and while I don’t watch them all that much, there’s still some fun chaos to be had. Still though, I think there’s one big elephant in the room that would also help explain V-Tubers catching on at this specific point in time: the pandemic. Streaming is one of the few jobs not really affected by the pandemic, and with people stuck inside, they’re more likely to scroll through YouTube or Twitter and find a funny clip and then…well, you know… It’s one bright spot in an otherwise dark time…but I’d be lying if I said it was all sunshine and rainbows.

THE DARK UNDERBELLY

The overall idea behind V-Tubers, at least in Japan, seems to be an extension of Idol Culture…and uh…if you know anything about Idol Culture in Japan, it is all kinds of scummy. Exploitative, filled to the brim with harmful rules and regulations and largely catering to some vary unsavory “fans,” I’ll make it no mystery that I find it incredibly distasteful. Look no further than what happened to Minegishi Minami from the idol group AKB48. To keep a long story short, the obsession with “purity” and being this idealized Japanese beauty means idols are effectively locked into their work, unable to discuss or in many cases partake in romantic relationships, as that would make them less “desirable” to their audience. This unfortunately does at times extend to V-Tubers.

Take Tokoyami Towa, who was suspended for some time and forced to make an apology video for…having some male voices briefly heard over Discord during an Apex Legend stream. She even lost a lot of subscribers and support from Japanese fans following this, though once learning of this, Western fans flocked to her as a show of support. Hololive has also dealt with a variety of issues coming from Chinese fans; though that’s a particular hornet’s nest I don’t want to delve into here too much. To sum it up, fans can get obsessive and toxic, which can lead to the talent being harassed. It is for this reason, it is generally agreed upon by fans to not delve too deep into the personal lives of the V-Tubers, for fear of being doxxed and the illusion being broken. These kinds of issues certainly bring up some interesting questions regarding how talent should be treated moving forward.

Are these V-Tubers characters or just alternate sides of real people? Where does the fantasy end and reality begin? Ultimately, the lines are somewhat blurred. Talent certainly brings some of their own personality into the performance, but they are forced to remain anonymous and as can be seen in the case of Kizuna Ai, they are not always in control of the character they’ve been given. Kizuna Ai’s initial actress was for a time replaced, and “clones” of the character with different voices and personalities started to spring up, likely as an attempt to compete with the likes of Nijisanji and Hololive. In cases where V-Tubers retire from the industry, or “graduate” as some call it, all of their hard work cultivating a fanbase might end up being for nothing as they were forced behind a proxy that isn’t truly themselves and I imagine it can be hard to start over again from square one. Never mind the attempts to step out of the shadow of your older work. Man, Perfect Blue was downright prophetic at times, huh?

I don’t want to dwell on the negatives too much though. It’s worth noting for one thing that Nijisanji seems relatively lax regarding how their talent operates, whereas it seems Hololive is the standout for adhering to the idol ideal, though considering how some of the talent acts (in particular Kiryu Coco), one has to wonder if they’re softening their stances a bit. Many V-Tubers generally talk about the positive aspects of the industry and being given the opportunity to reach people from all over the world. Shortly after Ina’s debut in Hololive English, she was actually brought to tears when told her art streams convinced people to get into (or back into) the hobby, which had been one of her goals for becoming a V-Tuber in the first place. Ironmouse, now a member of V-Shojo, has an immune system disorder that keeps her bedridden and forced to stay inside, so the opportunities afforded by this particular type of streaming has allowed her to reach out to others and as per her own words, has changed her life for the better. While there are definitely “fans” that go too far, corporate practices that are outdated, or harmful and a slew of potential unfortunate implications, ultimately I think most people out there are just looking for quality entertainment, and these digital proxies give these entertainers an outlet to connect with fans in a way that they might not have otherwise.

CONCLUSION

V-Tubers are in a bit of a boom at the moment, though I can’t imagine it’ll last forever. We’re quickly approaching market saturation and after a point, people can only follow so many streamers at once. Hell, as I was editing this up, it seems as if prominent YouTuber Pewdiepie is about to step into the ring, so who knows what kind of shake-up that could bring. The bubble will undoubtedly burst and what becomes of V-Tubers then is still up in the air. Or who knows, maybe V-Tubers will endure and replace all entertainment and we’re just watching the beginning of a cyberpunk dystopia. Stranger things have happened! Considering the world is still reeling from the effects of the pandemic, that should largely have an impact on the popularity of V-Tubers for some time to come, though as we emerge into a “new normal” in the world, it’ll be interesting to see how these entertainers continue to evolve. Now, I suppose there is one question I never quite went over before now, isn’t there? How does one escape the V-Tuber rabbit hole? Well, I’m sorry to say but there is no escape.

Enjoy your new home!

-B

[valla-chan]

65 Questions You Aren't Used To answered by ME

1. Do you ever doubt the existence of others than you?

    Sometimes, but it always goes away fairly quickly.

2. On a scale of 1-5, how afraid of the dark are you?

    3, im not actively afraid of the dark itself but it can exacerbate paranoias

3. The person you would never want to meet?

    The guy on reddit with like 100 different parasites he spreads to people around him

4. What is your favorite word?

    Catgirl or Ghost maybe idk

5. If you were a type of tree, what would you be?

    Monterey Cypress

6. When you looked in the mirror this morning what was the first thing you thought?

    Oh my god my hair is so fucked, i look dead in the face too

7. What shirt are you wearing?

    gray longesleev :)

8. What do you label yourself as?

    gray-ace trans girl who is probably actually nonbinary but ignores that for the sake of simplicity

9. Bright room or dark room?

    dark

10. What were you doing at midnight last night?

    in a voice call watching my friend stream hl2: lost coast

11. Favorite age you’ve been so far?

    19-20

12. Who told you they loved you last?

     gf :)

13. Your worst enemy?

    congress republicans

14. What is your current desktop picture?

    I have 3, and currently all of them are on images of hatsune miku

15. Do you like someone?

    mhm

16. The last song you listened to?

     No Children - The Mountain Goats

17. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up?

    Mitch McConnell

18. Who would you really like to just punch in the face?

    Donald Trump

19. If anyone could be your slave for a day, who would it be and what would they have to do?

    A clone of myself, who i would make work on my portal mod lul

20. What is your best physical attribute? (showing said attribute is optional)

    My hair perhaps

21. If you were the opposite sex for one day, what would you look like and what would you do?

    I dont know if this would make me male, female, or a trans man!

22. Do you have a secret talent? If yes, what is it?

    Getting people to like me when i want them to, i guess? It sounds manipulative but if you dont use it to manipulate people, and you dont always do it (because sometimes you dont want the person to like you), then is it?

23. What is one unique thing you’re afraid of?

    I am afraid that my perception of other things is inaccurate and eventually i will realize that people around me regard me as someone who is very much detached from objective reality.

24. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your disposal.

     Crab+lobster mix, avocado, cheese, caramelized onions, bacon, sourdough bread, basil+a bit of garlic, and probably other stuff i cant think of.... oh and sunchips stuffed inside that i could pull out and eat.

25. You just found $100! How are you going to spend it?

    Save it!!

26. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, but you have to leave immediately. Where are you going to go?

    California!

28. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place?

    1) If you die we eat you

29. What is your favorite expletive?

    simply saying the word KILL!

30. Your house is on fire, holy shit! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don’t worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what’s the one thing you’re going to save from that blazing inferno?

    My computer :( it would cause the most extreme impact to have it be destroyed. i would feel terrible about everything else though

31. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be?

    I’d rather not say.

32. You got kicked out of the country for being a time-traveling heathen who sleeps with celebrities and has super-powers. But check out this cool shit… you can move to anywhere else in the world!

    sounds awful :(

33. The Celestial Gates Of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn’t think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person/etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back?

    My kitty :(

34. What was your last dream about?

    I was playing a hidden level in Frogger: the Great Quest but then @ sleepysoul DM’d me to ask what my newest video was about cause she was weirded out by it, and i went to my youtube channel to find this bizarre video about crab-catching, which slowly descended into this video showing bizarre and cosmic horrors. For some reason i thought i uploaded it and tried to defend the video, but i could not explain it

35. Are you a good….[insert anything you’d like here]?

    I am a good 3d modeler, texturer, game mapper, and other things that have to do with digital 3d artstuff

36. Have you ever been admitted to the hospital?

    no

37. Have you ever built a snowman?

    yes

38. What is the color of your socks?

    All of mine are tan or dark blue. super lame and boring

39. What type of music do you like?

    Most currently, it fluctuates between “weirdcore” type aesthetic playlists of music, and anything Vocaloid.

40. Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets?

    Sunrises, because im usually not awake for them so they are extra special

41. What is your favorite milkshake flavor?

    strawberry maybe

43. Do you have any scars?

    One on the side of my butt where i tore it open on the bathtub faucet, one on my elbow from a bike accident, and 

44. What do you want to be when you graduate?

    I dropped out :(

45. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

    my cheekbones and eyebrow ridge stick out so weirdly, id make it not look like that

46. Are you reliable?

    on small things? yes. on big things? nope, not in the least.

47. If you could ask your future self one question, what would it be?

    Have you finally gotten out of this rut and found happiness and success?

48. Do you hold grudges?

    i kinda do but try not to

49. If you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature, what new animal would you create?

    Catgirl

51. Are you a good liar?

    only when im not trying to.

52. How long could you go without talking?

    consecutively, maybe a fourth of a day

53. What has been you worst haircut/style?

    short.

54. Have you ever baked your own cake?

    I’ve helped, but never done it myself!

55. Can you do any accents other than your own?

    Oh, believe me, no. But i do it anyway because its objectively hilarious

56. What do you like on your toast?

    Not beans.

57. What is the last thing you drew a picture of?

    Miku :)  (it turned out so badly i scrapped it)

58. What would be you dream car?

   Golden Leopard Print Golf Cart

59. Do you sing in the shower? Or do anything unusual in the shower? Explain.

      I lie down as to not pass out (and cause warmn wotter....)

60. Do you believe in aliens?

    [redacted]

61. Do you often read your horoscope?

    never

62. What is your favorite letter of the alphabet?

    E? (it has a nice synesthetic color)

63. Which is cooler: dinosaurs or dragons?

    Dinos

64. What do you think about babies?

    gremlins. strange beings. they are very strange and creepy-ish but can be cute but RARELY. keep away.

[ra3lynn3]

Hey everyone! I’m here with a little one-shot. Mucho thanks to @promptdumpster for the inspo. Shout out to the reddit user for the ideas behind Gale’s soliloquy, too. Forgiveness on any grammatical errors made, I went unbeta’d on this one. I hope you enjoy :)

Xxx 

“What’s up with your friend Katniss?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, are you two friends, or are you...friends?”

Peeta laughed at this. 

“We’re just friends. It took long enough to get to that point with her, I don’t even bother trying anything else.”

“So, what’s her deal? Is she seeing anyone?” 

“I don’t think so.”

“Has she said anything about me?”

“I don’t think so.”

“You’re really not helping here, ya know?”

Peeta sighed, “Ok, listen. She’s coming to the Halloween party this Saturday. If you really want to get to know her and figure out how she feels about you, just get her drunk.”

“I...don’t think that’s such a good idea.” Gale hesitated. 

“I’ve been friends with her for over ten years. Trust me. Buy a few bottles of vodka. When she starts getting giggly about stupid stuff, ask your questions. She will tell you everything.”

Gale took a deep breath and nodded as he grabbed two bottles of vodka from a nearby shelf. 

Xxx

The music thumped as dozens of costumed party-goers danced around the crowded room. Katniss forced her way through the throng to make her way to the kitchen.  She scoffed as she shoved a couple preoccupied with sticking their tongues down one another’s throats out of the way of the drinks. 

“Nice costume!” She heard a voice shout over the noise. 

She glanced up to see Peeta’s new roommate, Gale, smirking at her. 

“Right. Thanks.” She replied turning to walk away. 

“Hang on! Can I get you something to drink?” 

She stopped to consider him. She shrugged and nodded without a word. 

“I’m Gale, by the way.”

“I know who you are. I’m Katniss.”

“Is that why you went with the cat ears?”

She rolled her eyes. “Peeta gave me shit about not being dressed up. It was his idea. Something about irony.” 

“Not much for Halloween, huh?” 

“Maybe when I was ten.”

He handed her a drink. He tapped his cup to hers before taking a drink of his own. Katniss brought the cup to her lips and took a hearty swig. 

“You dance?” Gale asked as the two turned and surveyed the room. 

“Not at all,” Katniss replied. 

“Ok,” Gale muttered under his breath. 

“I’m going to go find Peeta. Thanks for the drink!” She offered before walking away leaving Gale alone. 

“Can I go now, please?” Katniss whined as she interrupted Peeta’s conversation with a scantily clad redhead. 

“Nice to see you too! When did you get here?” Peeta asked, ignoring her attempts to annoy him. 

“Went with the James Bond look I see?” Katniss replied ignoring him back and giving him a thorough once over in his well-tailored tuxedo, and perfectly coiffed hair. 

“Women love it.” He cooed seductively in her ear. 

Katniss pulled back to look him in the eyes. He smirked at her. She licked her lips seemingly lost in a trance. She shook her head and put a space between them. 

“Your roommate is weird. I liked Finnick better.”

“Be nice. He wants to get to know you.” 

“No thanks!” She said as she turned to walk away. 

Peeta grabbed her arm and turned her back around to face him. 

“Don’t make me lecture you! You and I both know it’s been a really long time since you’ve even given a guy the time of day.” 

Katniss rolled her eyes and turned to escape. Peeta gripped her arm again turning her back to face him. 

“Please? He’s a decent guy. Have fun. Loosen up.” Peeta suggested with a shrug. 

“What does it matter to you?”

“You’re my friend and I’m tired of you hanging around ruining my chances of getting laid!” 

“The redhead?” Katniss asked incredulously. 

“Maybe,” Peeta remarked dismissively looking around the crowded room. 

“You can do better.”

“Go!” Peeta said turning her around and giving her a shove back toward the room. 

She stumbled a bit but made her way back through the crowd to find Gale where she’d left him. 

“Hey! Peeta told me to be nice. Can we start over?” She said holding out her hand. “I’m Katniss.”

“Gale.” He replied taking her hand in his, offering her an award-winning smile. “Did you want to go outside away from all this noise?”

“That sounds like a great idea!” Katniss agreed. 

Gale grabbed a bottle of vodka as the two made their way to the front porch. 

“And then I said, ‘you can’t put a pickle in there!’” Katniss laughed at the punchline of her anecdote. 

Gale laughed along good-naturedly. 

“Oh no!” Katniss remarked dramatically. “We’re out of vodka! I’ll be right back!” 

She wobbled to her feet, using Gale’s shoulder to steady herself. 

“You got it?” He asked snickering. 

“Totally fine.” She replied with an air of superiority, tossing her hair over her shoulder. 

Her first step was a bit of a stumble, but she managed to find her way inside. As she made her way toward the kitchen, she noticed Peeta had found the redhead again. The two had their hands all over each other. The girl looked like she was devouring Peeta’s neck. Katniss suddenly felt queasy at the sight. Scowling and turning away, she headed for the kitchen grabbing a bottle of white liquor. She tore the cap off and took a hearty swig. She cringed as the liquid burned on the way down. With the bottle in hand, she made her way back out to the porch to sit beside Gale. 

“You’re back!” Gale announced excitedly. 

“I’m back!” Katniss replied sitting down with a huff. 

“You ok?” Gale asked noticing her change in demeanor. 

“Totally!” Katniss said a little more excitedly than she had intended. “Let’s play a drinking game!” She suggested. 

“Ok. Let’s play truth or drink. We ask each other questions and if you don’t want to answer you have to take a drink.” Gale replied. 

“Alright. Who’s the most inappropriate person you’ve fantasized about?” 

“Easy. Cressida Monroe.”

Katniss pulled a face. “The actress with the half shaved head? You’re into that, huh?”

“What about you?” 

“Umm..” Katniss hesitated for a moment. She glanced behind her at the house before saying, “My ninth grade chemistry teacher, Mr. Mitchell.” 

“Next question: what’s the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done while you were drunk?” 

“Fell flat on my face and twisted my ankle. That was a fun ER visit! Thankfully Peeta was there to keep me company. I don’t handle doctors very well. You?”

“Fell asleep butt naked in the front yard of my frat house.”

Katniss barked a laugh, “Of course you were a frat boy!”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Have you looked at yourself lately? You totally fit the mold. Tall, dark, handsome. You know the type.”

“And am I your type?” 

Katniss shrugged and took a swig from the bottle. 

“Oh! That means you don’t want to say. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?”

Katniss took another swig. 

“What’s the biggest secret you’re keeping from everyone?” Katniss offered after cringing and shuddering from her drinks. 

“I’ve never been in love.”

“Love.” Katniss scoffed. 

“What?” Gale asked incredulously. 

“How is that a big secret?”

“I have a reputation to maintain!”

Katniss rolled her eyes, “Forgive me. I didn’t realize you were a Casanova.”

“So...what’s yours?” 

Katniss shrugged staying quiet until Gale gave her a nudge, “Well I guess if we’re making confessions... I’m in love with someone and they have no clue.” 

“Why don’t you tell him...or her?” Gale asked taking the bottle from Katniss’ hand and taking a swig for good measure. 

Katniss shot him a look, “I can’t tell him because it would ruin everything.”

She grabbed the bottle back. 

“Or you could and it would set your life in motion in a way you never thought possible,” Gale said thoughtfully. 

“Yeah, the worse way possible!” Katniss retorted. 

“No. Nope. No way. As a dude, I’m telling you, you should go for it. It might not happen right away, but when a guy first meets a girl he might just categorize her as like ‘roommate’s friend’. But then, like, he gets to know her better. And if they mesh, something crazy happens in his mind.”

“Like what?” 

“Well, usually he starts to notice things about her appearance - good stuff. Usually something small like her eye color, or the freckles on her nose. It's nothing he can put his finger on, or describe, really. All he knows is that just looking at that part of her makes him feel good. He starts wanting to do that more.”

“You sound like a bit of an expert. You sure you’ve never been in love?” She glanced at him in disbelief. 

“Nah. I thought I was a couple of times though.” He sat quietly staring off. 

“So...?” Katniss prompted. 

“Oh!” Gale startled, seeming to remember he was in the middle of an elaborate explanation, “So then it turns into the guy noticing an expression she makes. Like it could be her genuine belly-laugh or the way she furrows her brow in concern or scowls when she’s thinking. And then it happens.”

“What happens?” 

“He gets a little flutter in his chest.”

“So what? I get a flutter if I run too fast.” 

“So, they stay friends for a while, get to know each other better. Then, one day, she hugs him goodbye....and he suddenly can't stop thinking about it. He plays it over and over in his head. Like the feel of her breasts through two shirts, her arms around his back, her smell...he finds these little mental movies of her playing in his head when he's driving somewhere, squeezing out his other usual daydreams.”

“Shortly after that, the guy realizes that whenever he looks at this woman, he feels good. He likes her lines, her curves, her sounds and smells... It's like she's gradually turned from a black-and-white photo into a 3D color movie with surround-sound. He starts wondering what he can do to keep her around, to make her happy. He realizes that he likes looking at her more than any other human being in the world. To him, she is perfect and beautiful.”

Katniss sat dumbfounded allowing Gale’s truth to sink in. Which, thanks to her befuddled mind, took a bit longer than usual. 

“So what do I do with that information, Mister Smarty-Pants?”

Gale sighed, “You go for it! Duh.”

Katniss giggled stupidly and took a final swig of the white liquor the two shared between them. She stood on wobbly legs once more and took a purposeful step up the porch toward the house before she turned back to Gale. 

“What if he doesn’t feel that flutter? She asked seriously. 

“He will,” Gale assured her with a small smile. 

That was all she needed to boost her confidence beyond the lack of inhibition she felt in her drunken state.  Walking back into the house, her head and chest rattled with the bass pumping from the sound system. She stood and swayed as she looked for Peeta. She caught sight of him in the kitchen digging through a bag of chips. 

“Hey.” She offered as she approached him. 

“Hey.” He replied, continuing to look steadfastly through the chip bag. 

“What are you doing?” Katniss asked after a moment of watching him. 

“Looking for the perfect chip.” He replied and shook the bag to one side, his entire face nearly inside of it. 

“Why?”

Peeta sighed and put the chip bag down, “Because I’m very drunk and very hungry, and I know the perfect chip is out there. In fact, it’s somewhere in this bag.” 

“Does it taste better?” She asked feeling genuinely invested in this quest of his. 

“Of course!” He said looking very heavy-lidded. He pulled the bag to himself again and dug through it, “Everything about it is better.” 

“What happened to Poison Ivy?” 

“She found Batman,” Peeta said nodding in the direction of the redhead who was now making out with a short, pudgy version of the caped crusader. After a moment, Peeta suddenly stopped and pulled a chip from the bag. He examined it carefully on all sides and smiled. 

“Is that it?” Katniss asked in disbelief. 

“This is it,” Peeta confirmed before opening his mouth wide to stuff the entire chip in. 

“You’re so weird,” Katniss remarked shaking her head with a smirk. 

“You love it.” He replied smugly.  

“Yes, I do.” She said looking Peeta squarely in his eyes. 

He swallowed hard, staring back at her. 

“It’s really loud in here. Do you want to go out back?” Peeta suggested after the two looked at each other for a while unspeaking. 

Katniss nodded and trailed behind Peeta as they exited to the back patio. The quiet was deafening. Katniss felt like she had cotton shoved in her ears. Peeta sighed contentedly as the two sat down on a metal gliding bench. He threw his arm behind her, resting it on the back of the seat. 

“I’m glad I came to your dumb party,” Katniss admitted begrudgingly. “And Gale is pretty cool after all.” 

“Is he?” Peeta glanced at her questioningly from the corner of his eye. 

Katniss shrugged nonchalantly, “I guess.”

“He was asking about you earlier.”

Katniss shot him a confused look. 

“Why?”

Peeta scoffed, “You know why.”

Katniss sat thoughtfully for a moment. 

“He asked about us actually.” Peeta continued. 

“Us?”

“Yeah. Wanted to make sure he wasn’t stepping on any toes, I guess.” 

Katniss nodded. “Is he?” She finally asked. 

Peeta gave a bashful shrug. Katniss gave him a gentle nudge. They glanced at each other from the corners of their eyes and smirked. 

“Peeta?” Katniss said after a moment, her voice shaky. 

“Yeah?” His tone seemed hopeful, he gave her a look to match. 

“I think I’m-“ Katniss stopped abruptly and searched his eyes. 

“What is it? You can tell me anything, you know.” 

“I’m gonna be sick!” She admitted before bolting from the bench. 

She made it behind the seat just in time to throw up in a nearby rose bush. She felt like she should be embarrassed, but didn’t have much time to mull it over before another wave hit her. She felt Peeta’s hands gently gather her hair from her neck and away from her face. After a while, the sickness subsided. 

“Sorry.” Katniss apologized as she wiped her mouth with a shaky hand. 

“I’ve seen worse at work,” Peeta replied nonchalantly. 

Katniss teetered on her feet in front of him, her eyes feeling heavy. 

“Let’s get you inside.” He suggested as he pulled her arm up and over his shoulders. 

He casually scooped her up into his arms in the next moment when he could see that her legs were useless for the trek. 

“Are you trying to seduce me?” Katniss teased, her words heavy and slow from the effects of the alcohol. 

Peeta laid her gently down on his bed, “Yep, you figured me out.” He replied with a roll of his eyes. 

He walked off then, much to Katniss’ confusion. She sat up and squinted when he flicked on his bathroom light. She heard the water running and eased back down on the pillow, closing her eyes as he switched the light off again. In the next moment, she felt a cool, wet cloth being pressed to her forehead. She sighed in relief and relaxed deeper into the pillow. Peeta brushed her hair from her face, twisting the end of her braid around one of his fingers. Katniss opened her eyes, taking in the sight of him sitting next to her at the edge of the bed. Her heart seemed to swell as she pressed her palm to his cheek. 

“I want to grow old with you.” She whispered. 

Peeta blinked and shook his head, “You’re drunk!” He laughed. 

Pulling one leg up and then the other, he slipped his shoes off then undid his bow tie and a couple of shirt buttons. Katniss slid over to make room on the bed. She curled into him, laying her head on his chest as he laid down beside her. 

“You don’t want to grow old with me?” She whimpered pathetically, feeling on the verge of tears. 

Peeta’s chest shook as he chuckled at her once again. She felt his hand making lazy circles on her back as they lay quietly for a moment. 

She popped up suddenly looking wildly at him, the washcloth sliding down her face, “Am I a black and white picture to you, or a 3-D movie with surround sound?” 

“Umm..”

“Do I give you flutters? Do you like my smell?” 

“Katniss, what-?”

“Am I your chip?” She cried, feeling panicked. 

Peeta cupped her face in his hands, “Chill. Out.” He said slowly and calmly. “What are you talking about?” 

As his blue eyes met her grey ones, Katniss felt like she could melt into his touch. Her mind and heart were whirling wildly with emotion. She gave her head a little shake, suddenly unable to meet his eyes. She muttered something about Gale then decided she needed to brush her teeth. Pulling out of Peeta’s grasp and clumsily climbing over him, she made her way to the bathroom. When she returned to bed she found Peeta fast asleep. She smiled at his sleeping figure and carefully laid back down beside him. 

“I love you, Peeta Mellark.” She whispered as she touched her forehead to his temple and quickly fell asleep. 

She woke in the morning to an empty bed and a raging headache. Groaning, she pushed herself up to sit and looked around to gain her bearings. Her recollection of the previous night was fuzzy at best. After a moment she stumbled to her feet and made her way to the kitchen where she found Peeta flitting around in his boxers and a T-shirt, cooking. 

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty!” He said jovially, catching her eye as she shuffled in and took a seat at the kitchen table. 

“Hey yourself.” She grumped as she laid her head down on her arms. 

“Quite a party last night, huh?” 

Katniss shot him a look and grunted a response. Peeta slid a plate full of food in front of her, taking a seat beside her at the table with his own. Katniss felt her stomach churn and cringed at the sight and smell of the food. She carefully pushed it away from her as if it might explode. She had gone back to resting her head as Gale sauntered in and sat down at the table where Katniss had left her plate. He dug into the food hungrily. 

“Mornin!” He greeted them in between bites. “How was your night?” He asked looking between Katniss and Peeta. 

“Fine, why?” Peeta asked. 

Gale looked at Katniss pointedly waving his fork at her, “I just wondered about you two since our little conversation...”

“I gotta get home. Just remembered I have a ton of papers to grade!” Katniss said jumping from her seat. 

The movement made her head spin, which made her nausea worse. Gale’s words had suddenly brought back enough memories from the night before that she didn’t want to stay around and wait for Peeta to get curious. She wasn’t quite ready for her drunk conversation to reveal too much of her sober heart. 

“What did you guys talk about?” Peeta asked as he watched Katniss flee from the kitchen and down the hall to his room. 

“You.” 

“Me?”

“She’s in love with you,” Gale said with a shrug as he went for another bite. 

“No, she’s not.” Peeta scoffed. 

“Trust me, dude. She is.” 

“Dude, no. She’s not.” 

Both men turned and watched as Katniss made a hasty retreat with her head down; jacket and bag clutched to her chest. 

“Bye.” She muttered quickly as she slammed the front door behind her. 

“She is,” Gale said finally, looking Peeta dead in the eyes. 

Xxx

“Well hello, Peeta. You’re a bit early for lunch, aren’t you?” An auburn-haired woman greeted Peeta with a knowing look.  

“Not here for lunch today, Annie,” Peeta replied with a tight smile.  

He ran his hand through his hair as he signed in on a nearby clipboard. He hadn’t felt this nervous in a long time. He clipped a visitor badge to his scrubs and exited the office. He glanced at the colorful artwork hanging on the walls as he made his way down the hall. The sounds of children’s voices filled the air as he stopped just outside a familiar classroom door. Peering in, he noticed Katniss bent near a student’s desk explaining something on a page to the boy sitting beside her. Peeta’s stomach did a quick flip flop as he went to tap lightly on the door’s window. He caught the attention of a raven-haired little girl. She jumped to her feet and made for the door to open it for him. The movement caught Katniss’ attention. She stood and looked his way, an unreadable expression crossing her features as their eyes met. 

“Hi, Mr. Mellark! Are you here to read to us again?” The little girl asked in greeting as she opened the door. 

Peeta smiled at her, “Not today, Jeannie.” He replied with a small smile. 

“What are you doing here?” Katniss asked as she came up beside them. 

“Mr. Mellark!” A few of the other students shouted in greeting. 

A couple of the children even left their seats to hug his legs once they realized a familiar guest was among them. He smiled and squeezed them back. 

“Let’s get back to work, boys and girls. Mr. Mellark was just leaving.” Katniss announced as she gripped Peeta roughly by the arm and walked him forcefully toward the door. 

“What gives?” He asked as they made their way out to the hall, giving his arm a rub. 

“Aren’t you supposed to be working?” Katniss asked as she crossed her arms. 

“Yes, but you won’t return my calls or texts. I was starting to get worried.” Peeta replied. 

Katniss seemed distracted as she poked her head back into the classroom to check on her students. 

“I’ve been busy.” She said with a shrug as she turned to give him her full attention. “In fact, now isn’t a great time either.” She said as she poked her head back inside the class. 

“We need to talk.” He pleaded. 

“Ok. Can it wait until I don’t have a class full of seven-year-olds waiting on me, please?” She let out a huff of annoyance. 

Peeta nodded in defeat, running a hand through his hair. He turned and took a few steps back down the hallway before thinking better of it. 

“I just need you to know something before I go.” He said as he stopped to turn around. 

Katniss stepped back out into the hall, a small group of children popped their heads out around the door to watch. 

“What is it, Peeta?”

He took a deep breath before admitting, “Katniss, you’re my chip.” 

“I’m your chip?” Katniss scrunched her face in confusion. 

“Yeah. Always have been.” Peeta said with a shy smile as he rubbed the back of his neck. 

Katniss wracked her brain trying to make sense of what he meant as he turned and walked away. As she ushered the small group of children back into the classroom and got them settled into their task, the realization hit her. 

“I’m his chip!” She muttered. “I’m his chip!” She shouted as she sprinted for her classroom door. 

“Johanna, I need you to watch my class for a second. I’ve gotta take care of something.” She said urgently to the teacher across the hall as she made a mad dash for the front of the building, hoping to catch Peeta before he got to his car. 

She growled in frustration as she felt heavy drops of rain hit her. She scanned the parking lot quickly, noticing a pair of taillights as Peeta’s car pulled from its spot. 

“Peeta!” She cried as she ran toward his car. “Peeta!” She called again coming alongside his window, hitting it with her hand. 

“Katniss, what are you doing? It’s pouring!” Peeta admonished as he rolled down his window. 

“I don’t care! I’m your chip!” She exclaimed. 

She stepped aside as Peeta got out of his car. 

“Katniss, I’m sorry it took me so long, I just didn’t think-“

Before Peeta could finish his thought, Katniss grabbed his face in her hands and pulled him to her. Their mouths crashed against each other. Peeta wrapped his arms around Katniss’ waist as he tilted his head to deepen their long overdue kiss. She slid her hands down his face, lacing her fingers at the nape of his neck. 

Peeta pulled back a moment later and whispered to Katniss’ mouth, “There’s rain pouring down my butt crack.”

She threw her head back and laughed. “Thanks for the visual.”

Peeta smiled as he pushed a matted wet strand of hair from Katniss’ forehead. 

“I love you.” He said, swallowing hard. “God, I don’t know why I’m so nervous!” He admitted with an awkward chuckle. 

Katniss chuckled, “I love you too.”

[loquaciousquark]

Talks Machina Highlights - Critical Role C2E45 (Dec. 18, 2018)

Evening, all! @eponymous-rose​ is off tonight with such silly things like family and events and real life obligations, so I’m here to make bad jokes and have opinions instead.

For those who hadn’t heard, Brian & Ashley are engaged as of this week! Brian is taking both her last and first name to be ultra-progressive. Tonight’s guests: Sam Riegel & Matt Mercer. Matt is here willingly. Sam is not. We’re discussing Episode 45: The Stowaway, sponsored by LootCrate. Brian asks Sam for an impromptu song ad; he rhymes moot and loot and jigs and everyone is a little closer to death than they were a few moments prior.

Tonight’s announcements: Pub Draw & Name Drop are two new shows on the Critical Role channel--check out critrole.com for more details.

This Thursday’s episode is the last of 2018; Critical Role then returns on January 10.

Liam’s oneshot, The Night Before Critmas, airs at 7pm Pacific this Friday night. He’s been planning it for two years, and the VOD will be available December 23.

Talks Machina is also breaking for the holidays and will return on January 8, where they’ll have a cast-wide discussion on the state of the campaign so far. The questions open on Reddit, Twitter, and email on January 4th.

CR Stats: Nott has the most kills of the group with 37. The 45th HDYWTDT occurred in episode 45 as well. Twiggy’s dragon kill was the fifth guest kill of the campaign, and the 2nd guest HDYWTDT. In campaign one, guests got 22 kills and four HDYWTDTs. This was the longest episode of campaign two and the fourth longest of the series.

Matt and Deborah had met extensively to discuss backstory and mechanics, but hadn’t discussed much personality. The only person who wanted to check voice/accent was Khary (with Shakaste).

Deborah was one of the first guests they reached out to when they started streaming all that time ago, but she initially said no because D&D was such a personal thing for her and she didn’t want to share it with the internet. Everyone agrees she was worth the wait.

Everyone’s furious about Daredevil’s cancellation. :(

Sam thought it was fun to play alongside another Arcane Trickster because... “she was very good at it, all that great stuff that I forget to do.” Nott was jealous that many of the things that made her unique were present in Twiggy. However, the jealousy was later reversed because of how excellent Twiggy was in the fight.

The Happy Fun Ball was a narrative device Matt had been planning for a long time--he liked the idea of a pocket dungeon with lore attached. When they realized Deborah’s schedule would put her on a boat in the middle of nowhere, he found a perfect opportunity to bring it in.

Sam asks if Matt intended the device to be a one-use single episode thing, or something recurring, something for the party to further explore at their will. Matt explains very circuitously (and hilariously) that certain DMs may have in the planning of the introduction of the Happy Fun Ball originally intended for such Happy Fun Balls to leave with the guest, and were very surprised when said Happy Fun Ball (and all its hundreds of extraplanar rooms to explore) was left behind with the party instead. He then basically dares Sam to press a button and see what happens.

Nott doesn’t resent Fjord for touching the window or setting a time limit on the library exploration. While it was cool in the library, there were too many things attacking them.

Matt doesn’t necessarily intend his traps for Travis, but he likes having good buttons and bad buttons. “I just want shit to happen. Surprise me!” He admires the player that occasionally gets bold, rather than the one who always sends their minions out to touch all the tiles and trigger all the traps before they ever set foot in the dungeon. He also enjoys the meticulousness of Liam being at the same table as Travis’s impulsiveness.

Sam does not want the fans to send him larger flasks. His current flask holds 128 oz, which is exactly a gallon.

GIF of the Week: @criticalschluck with a hilarious movie-trailer-style GIF of Travis explaining he’s got an intelligence of 6 (Grog), then an intelligence of 14 (Fjord), then pushing buttons and experiencing... consequences.

Nott approves of Caleb’s choice to abandon the books to go back to the party. While she wants as much knowledge in his head as possible, it’s because “a smarter Caleb is a more powerful Caleb, and hopefully a Caleb that can stay alive a little longer.” Matt likes watching characters be put in situations where they have to choose between long-reaching character goals and the people they have chosen as their family. He was fascinated to see the struggle as he was ticking down the time on his sheet. He’s very excited to see what’s going to happen this Thursday.

Brian and Matt both fanboy over Sam’s 1hp decision.

Sam reflects on Jester’s being left behind--”not in a malicious way, you know, but sometimes in a big family someone gets left behind at a mall!”

Matt circuitously explains that the stained-glass window could be used to access other places. This man’s being slipperier than soap suds on wet tile tonight.

Nott was aware that the hit she took for Jester could have been a killing blow, but she was ready--”it was what goes through her head around Caleb a lot: ‘I’ve got to protect my friends.’” She’s very protective and very maternal, and Sam would have been okay if that had been the last of Nott.

Both Sam and Liam (and others) have begun to experience the in- and out-of-game changes that come with finally beginning to really know these characters. They certainly wouldn’t have died for each other at the beginning of the game, even knowing how hard their friends worked on these characters. It was originally a “system shock” (as Matt puts it) which required check-ins after certain blow-ups at the beginning of the campaign to make sure they (the players) were all okay. Now, though, they’re closer and closer to being willing to die for each other for both in-game and meta reasons.

Sam reflects on how both Caleb and Nott hate themselves, but manifest that very differently in how they treat other people. Caleb withdraws and puts up thick walls; Nott is quick to trust and care about everyone.

Nott is least close to Yasha at the moment. She’s still a li’l scared of her.

Matt had a few battle options planned out regarding which parts of which chamber were futzed with. The black tapestry was the one curtain they didn’t mess with that would have led to a “very rough encounter.” Matt had six maps built off-stage, just in case.

Sam’s backup character is a handsome actor named Sam Seagull.

Brian is annoyed that every encounter starts with the chat screaming “TPK.” Matt: “I hope not. That’d be my fault if that happened.”

While the dragon was very powerful, Matt had expectations that the party would understand very quickly that the fight didn’t necessarily have to end with the dragon’s death--he wanted them to understand the challenge was the exit, not the dragon. However, they came in in a different order than he’d anticipated, including party staggering, and that was when he started to get nervous.

Whatever magic had first triggered the first crystal would have been the same magic required to open the second door. It was proximity-based.

Fanart of the Week: @tehsasquatch, with this super-cool portrait of Nott.

On whether Nott feels as if she’s earned her comma: sometimes, especially in encounters like these, Nott feels just for a moment that she can be brave, she can be useful, she can be heroic--and then the moment it’s over the world comes crashing back down. When she’s out of those moments, she feels that she’s still just a goblin.

Is Sam ready for Nott to get the spotlight Fjord’s currently in?

Sam: No. Matt: [very intense face]. There’s a lot of backstory elements that he and Matt know that no one else is aware of, and he’s nervous about those coming to light.

The Traveler’s appearance was complete improv. Matt was reading the situation and the emotions and looking for ways to facilitate a heroic story, and when the dice worked in her favor, he felt it would be a wonderful, dramatic story beat to suddenly include--especially since the Traveler hadn’t responded much recently. Matt: “Yeah, that was really cool.”

The Traveler/Jester relationship has evolved in ways Matt both did and did not expect. He wasn’t sure how seriously Jester was going to take it. It’s the difference between believing in something and allowing that thing to define you as a person. He loves it. Sam: “The Traveler...is Taryon, right?”

Nott doesn’t see Caleb as abandoning her at all. “He’s a weak, puny man who needs to get himself out of danger.” It would have actually been harder if Caleb had been there, because if Nott had had to make a choice as to who to protect, Jester would be dead.

After Beau’s emergence from the orb, she probably for a few minutes would have thought that they were all dead behind her. It wasn’t that hours or days had passed--just a few minutes. Matt found Beau’s and Caduceus’s conversation at the end very fascinating and compelling, especially as a way to end the episode.

Nott agrees that Jester is not as happy and fine as she appears to be, especially after their talk about boys, but doesn’t feel it’s as severe as Caleb’s issues. “Jester’s a functional person.” However, Sam’s excited they’re getting past the “flitty person from the first half of the campaign” to the “core of sadness” as the story progresses.

Matt’s sure Yasha was not happy at all that her friends all disappeared without warning. “She spent six days thinking her friends were never going to come back. She doesn’t cry in a corner; she’s familiar with grief and loss. She hardens herself and moves on.” He’s hoping they’ll get to see some of that this week.

Critmas Spotlight: The Blind Weaver, a really, really cool 3D painting by a lady named Elaine Ryan, which has layers upon layers of polyurethane stained to make an amazing effect. See @elaineryanart on twitter and tumblr for more!

Talks Machina: After Dog

They decide where guests sit at the time of the episode. Matt likes to avoid the edges so they don’t feel like the outlier. Sam requests no attractive guests be placed immediately adjacent to him so that it does not detract from his glory. “That’s why I sit next to doggo Laura Bailey.” Brave man. Brave, foolish man.

Sam likes oatmeal raisin cookies. I am DELIGHTED, WHAT AN OLD MAN WHO SHARES MY TASTE. He also likes Werther’s, which is bringing back so many memories of my grandmother’s house. Matt likes ginger snaps, which are my favorite Christmas cookies also. I would kill for ginger snaps right now. Matt and Sam both are excited about pumpkin pie.

Essential D&D gifts, per Matt: dice, PHB, HeroForge custom minis if you really want to get them excited. He finds that getting in there and making a character can really help hook someone on the visual aspect & get invested in their character. Everything else is fluff. Sam suggests a music playlist for the first game; when he ran his first game with his kids, he liked having gridded paper to draw the maps on.

Matt does not feel that the crew of the ship has been mistreated, but they have been “neglected and dragged through places they didn’t expect.” He does think they’ll talk about everything they’ve done to all their friends and family when they get home in a very “you won’t believe this!” kind of way.

Sam always wears the same tie when he’s voice directing and on the first day of a new show. He’s wearing it tonight and can’t discuss the new show.

Favorite holiday movies! Brian: “Love, Actually” and “Die Hard,” as well as “Miracle on 34th Street.” Matt loves “A Christmas Story” (my favorite also, bless this man). Sam likes “Prancer” and “Scrooged,” but realizes mid-sentence that this is Brian’s first Talks as an engaged man.

Brian on proposing: ”It’s...the best.” They’d been together for over six years & met during the first Last of Us game. Brian describes himself as a former “piece of shit” and a very different person back then. Ashley had no expectations that he was going to propose & was totally surprised. Gah, this is too romantic.

Brian: “I always imagined for years what that moment would be like, and this topped all of my expectations... What more can you really hope for in this life than to feel that feeling with another person? It’s to me the pinnacle of our human experiences to be able to say ‘I’ve been through hell and yet found someone that I can definitely say I want to spend all the days of my life on this earth with,’ and the fact that it happened is fucking cool. It’s like heroin with none of the bad side effects.”

It was extremely stressful--but only the logistics. Apparently Matt’s proposal was extremely logistically intensive; Brian sympathizes.

And on that lovely, quiet note, we’re done for the night. Happy holidays, everyone. <3

[entergamingxp]

Skyrim Grandma Announces That She’s Taking a Health Break Due to Stress over Demeaning Comments

May 26, 2020 7:12 AM EST

Youtuber and Skyrim gamer Shirley Curry is taking a two-week break from streaming because of high levels of stress from patronizing and negative comments.

If ever there was a time to come together and be kind to each other, it’s now. But it seems as though there are still people out there who just don’t give a damn how they make others feel even in the midst of a global pandemic that continues to take the lives of the young and old. Skyrim fanatic and YouTube sensation Shirley Curry is one of the kindest and purest streamers around but lately, even she has succumbed to the parasites that plague the YouTube comment section and announces that she needs to take a break due to the upsetting and patronizing comments she has been dealing with and how it’s seriously affecting her health.

Skyrim Grandma, aka Shirley Curry, had only celebrated her 84th birthday last month with her fans and looked to be in great spirits but now, we see quite a different side to Shirley and it breaks my heart. In a video posted at the start of this month, Shirley, as usual, greets her fans with a “Good Morning, Grandkids” but this time it lacks her normal cheery voice. Instead, Shirley speaks solemnly and states right off the bat that “it’s not going to be a happy video”. Curry continues to speak honestly about her frustrations over comments she has received criticizing her gaming ability and knowledge of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and because of this, her health has suffered causing an overload of stress.

“My blood pressure is going insane. My stress level is way too high. And I’m going to have to take control of it. Some of the comments are stressing me out way too much,” Curry continues “I know that I shouldn’t let these things stress me out, but they do. That’s just the way it is. From now on I will respond to very, very few comments. I will be deleting a lot of comments.”

The real crux of the matter of Shirley’s frustration is that, even though she knows every inch of Skyrim and knows how to play it, she has people telling her she should be playing differently, or backseat gaming, while other comments tell her to go and play a different game as she’s not playing it how they think she should. As any fan of the lovable grandma will know, Shirley enjoys making up her own stories as she travels the Skyrim world and roleplaying different characters and even though the vast majority of viewers truly love her style of playing, others will always think they know what’s best for her.

“If you want to do those things go on and play your game, and let me play my game, and if you don’t like that go watch somebody else play their game. I don’t have to be reminded and told all the time which games to play”  she says. “I look at all the games, I’m a gamer, if I wanted to play them I would be playing them. I don’t have to explain myself”.

To try and help ease her stress brought on by these comments, Shirley has had to take the difficult decision to take a two-week break from YouTube and try to start a new streaming schedule which she hopes will be less traumatic than her previous daily uploads and tailored to help prevent previous assholes from having a voice.

Last year, Shirley finally had her dream come true when Bethesda invited her out to the studios where she got scanned using photogrammetry technology – which takes scans of real-life objects and translates them into high detail 3D – so that she can be added as an NPC into the series she loves so much. Initially worried that she may not be around long enough to enjoy The Elder Scrolls VI as by then she will be 88 years old, Shirley was still over the moon at being given the chance to be immortalized into the game. This opportunity came to pass due to the overwhelming outpour from the gaming community who set up a petition to add her to the game themselves with Reddit user and modder phantom-scribbler taking the lead.

I hope that Shirley can continue to do what she loves and that this break will help ease her stress levels so that we may see her smiley face and wholesome content back on our screens again. As easy as it is to tell others to ignore hateful comments, it’s not so easy for many and can cause a great deal of stress and pain. The bottom line here is: always be kind.

    May 26, 2020 7:12 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/skyrim-grandma-announces-that-shes-taking-a-health-break-due-to-stress-over-demeaning-comments/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=skyrim-grandma-announces-that-shes-taking-a-health-break-due-to-stress-over-demeaning-comments

[framing-visualculture]

What’s with digital wallpapers in Chinese homes?

This article was originally published on medium.

In China, copying is not at all bad. There is a term “Fu Zhi Pin,” referring to copies of things made with such craft and exactitude that it is worthy of study in a museum. Fast forward to 21st Century and contemporary Chinese domestic space. Copying, or maybe copy pasting, is celebrated, but in a different way. The trend of plastering wallpapers of digitally rendered nature and blog space backgrounds onto walls and floors of Chinese home is an intriguing one. How did the copying of Western architecture in residential communes and homes lead to saturated, digital wallpaper and Karaoke style lighting design to be the preferred taste of the older generation? The answer lies in breaking down the aesthetic of “China Too Cool.”

Knock-offs, counterfeits, unoriginal. These are the words that usually come to mind when we think about things “Made in China.” As China has risen to become the largest export economy in the world, exporting over 2 trillion US dollars worth of goods in 2017, it has become no exaggeration to say that in almost every region of the world, everyone must own or at least have encountered something manufactured in China. In today’s episode, we’re going to consider goods and cultural productions made in China, and question the stereotype of unoriginal counterfeit goods. To do so, we’ll first look at what’s China’s fascination with copying, and then examine architecture and interior design choices to understand the phenomena of tacky, repurposed aesthetic taste that I call “China Too Cool.” The term “Too Cool” is the phonetic English translation of a subcultural style “土酷” (Tuku), which in Chinese means “tacky cool.” The emphasis should be on the English term “Too” and not the Chinese “Tu” as in tacky. It should be considered in its double meaning of both outdated and cool, cooler, coolest — too cool. This style is marked by an attitude of poking ironic fun at but also embracing the stylistic elements of dated popular taste.

To get a visual image of Too Cool, think of the Microsoft rainbow word art on a full background of digitally rendered nature, printed on a glossy, plastic laminated cheap notebook. For visual references, I suggest going to the Instagram page of @butterfly.minmin, a 3D graphic artist who is the living embodiment of the saturated visual overkill of Too Cool.

This dress is set against a digital backdrop of QQ chat, China’s online messenger popular in the early 2000s. It is now regaining popularity with Gen Z users, to set themselves apart from their parents and grandparents who are using WeChat.

There is a long-standing tradition of imitation art within China that boasts of its own classification system. The highest form of simulacrum bears the essence of the original — the qi, or in English, the “life force” — to the extent that the image evokes and becomes a “real” substitute of the original. In this case, art imitates and reproduces life, capturing not a perfect copy of the appearance but its essence. We can see this in traditional Chinese ink painting, where the mountains and lakes do not look realistic, but they exude the spirit of the sublime beauty of nature.

A Chinese ink painting by the late artist Zhang Daqian. He topped art sales in 2011, surpassing Picasso.

The act of perfecting copying is also highly regarded by the Chinese as “testament to cultural and technological achievements.” Journalist and Columbia University professor Alexander Stille points to two Chinese terms, “fangzhipin” and “fuzhipin”, to explain the Chinese attitude toward the copy: “Fangzhipin is closer to what we would call a reproduction — a knockoff you would buy in a museum store — whereas fuzhipin is a very high quality copy, something worthy of study or putting in a museum.” These instances of copying are for the sake of understanding the beauty of form and structure, of technology and craftsmanship, and of artistic achievements. For the Chinese, to perfectly reproduce something shows thorough understanding and extraordinary craftsmanship. Value is perceived in the skill of making, not necessarily in having a new idea.

In the book Original copies: architectural mimicry in contemporary China, author Bianca Bosker examined the intriguing phenomena of “simulacrascapes.” These are themed residential communities in China that replicate archaic European and American towns. For instance, you will have “Little Paris” residencies that feature a miniature Eiffel tower in the middle of its park, or a replicated Venetian neighborhood complete with a canal running through it.

A replica of Venice in Dalian, a modern port city in the North-Eastern part of China

While both the Western and Chinese intellectual elite sigh at the “backward” mass scale replication projects, quick to dismiss them as “kitsch”, “fake”, “unimaginative and cliché”, Bosker provides a more nuanced reading of the phenomenon, explaining the conditions for their existence and viewing them as “monuments to the ‘New China’.” These mass scale residential simulacrascape developments, aimed at the expanding middle class, owe their success to their visibility as “coveted status symbols.” Much like the conspicuous logos of branded goods, these themed residencies featuring the trademark forms of Western cultural achievement are meant to signal wealth and luxury. Beneath the surface of “West worship” actually rests a mindset of Chinese superiority, the conviction that all the good things of the world can be found in China, and tailored to Chinese taste to resemble Chinese peoples’ conception of the foreign — the historical tourist spots showcasing the celebrated moments of Western culture.

Let us now examine the interior choices made by home buyers: by looking at the domestic space, we get a glimpse into the popular taste and preferences of individuals. A little search on Zhihu.com, China’s Quora/ Reddit, brought me to revealing explanations of popular contemporary Chinese interior design choices. What the term “European-style” translates to in China is literally: chandeliers, Greek columns, pompous gilded Rococo motifs and gaudy Baroque furnishing.

Notice the chandelier, Rococo bed frame, and wallpaper, and heavy curtains.

Italian philosopher Umberto Eco once explained that such “eclectic frenzy” and “compulsive imitation” “prevail where wealth has no history.” This aesthetic had seen an earlier manifestation in America, in the seemingly “artificial regions” of post-urban California and Florida and it is happening now for the Chinese nouveau riches, especially after the disruption in historical, cultural, and aesthetic richness as a result of the Cultural Revolution. The Rococo motifs and Greek columns, once elements of high culture and luxury are today considered archaic and kitschy for their irrelevance and impracticality to contemporary urban living. This is especially so after the new standard of design elevating functionality over appearance set by the Bauhaus school and Modernist architecture.

A more interesting development of this interior appropriation is how these “European style” copies evolve into mutations with Chinese characteristics. What is kept of the “European style”, in other words, the elaborately ornamental Rococo and Baroque, is the essence of sensory overload, but the manifestations are more in keeping with “current” trends.

State of the art 3D renderings extending your living room to a fantasy world of nature.

One image from Chinese Quora Zhihu.com shows the design on a sliding closet door (top left). It features bright, saturated colors of blue skies and soaring birds, a high-definition landscape rendering of detailed grass, gradient-infused lotus plants in the foreground, a flat pictorial space, and an unmistakable uplifting mood. It is all too much. It’s too artificial, too uplifting, too bright, too much, “Too Cool.”

This was a photo in a series uploaded by a millennial netizen expressing her disbelief at her parents’ interior design choices for their new house on the outskirts of the main city. She is not alone in her lamentation; threads voicing outcry over outlandish new wedding home designs gifted by their loving parents are ubiquitous on the Chinese Internet, gaining popularity and resonance with every “Like”. Among those are bed frames with a Microsoft logo that acts as a lamp, a virus-molecule-like structured lighting fixture, a bedroom with crowded magenta rose wallpaper and magenta bed sheets, big digitally rendered aurora flowers, and a kitchen floor fully covered with a stock image of retreating seawater and sandy beach.

Imagine cooking in this kitchen. You can almost pick the salt from the sea water.

These acts of personalizing your living room wallpaper or lighting fixtures are popular with older people from small cities in China. That, combined with their love for nature and saturated colors result in a home of digital pretense of nature.

In order to understand “mom and dad’s” unwavering belief in the aesthetic choices of these interiors, we have to put things into context and perspective. Whatever is “fashionable”, “trendy”, or “cool”, “has always to be differentiated from the mainstream.” So we have to ask: in comparison to what are these design choices cool and trendy? If we think about the older, simple countryside homes with wooden furniture and undecorated walls before the rapid urbanization and digitization of China, then all the examples I have presented exhibit an extraordinary sense and creativity in being different. They are most likely not going to be defined as refined and classic, but in terms of “coolness”, in terms of novelty, these interior designs might stand a chance, even if only within the circle of “mom and dad” or small-town folk.

Globalization and localization aren’t just buzzwords for the marketing director, they can be felt when you enter the doors of these Chinese Too Cool interiors. From replicating western architectural clusters to recapturing the essence of newfound wealth and self-expression, Chinese designs take on a life of its own. To only see the designs as tacky knockoffs would be a missed opportunity to embark on a nuanced cultural reading of Chinese thinking.

This article is an excerpt based on my essay “China Too Cool: Vernacular Innovations and Aesthetic Discontinuity of China.” In my essay, I propose Too Cool as a lens of understanding the generational and economic differences in modern China set forth by the country’s rapid urbanization. I talk about cultural productions made during the cultural revolution and right after during the economic reform of Open Door policy, cultural appropriations of Bollywood and poor copies of Japanese anime, as well as bizarre Taobao aesthetics. The overarching theme and mood is a relatable one of displacement and using creativity to regenerate meaning and identity. If this interests you, you can get a free pdf version of my essay here.

[lovehaswonangelnumbers]

New Post has been published on https://lovehaswonangelnumbers.org/lovehaswon-energy-updateweekly-astrology-january-1st-8th/

LoveHasWon Energy Update~Weekly Astrology January 1st-8th

LoveHasWon Energy Update~Weekly Astrology January 1st-8th

By Archeia Aurora

This is a very intense week with a focus on the fire signs of Sagittarius and Aries as well as the earth sign Capricorn. We are entering a powerful week of transformation as the old crumbles and the new bursts forward. We are being pushed to step up now fully into our truth and walk our talk. Those out of integrity will be getting their karma and their lessons.

The Grand Water Trine will soften this somewhat as it calls for deep healing of all of our wounds and fear of shining our light. We are warriors and we must now embody this. The programming made us weak but that is not who we truly are. Our spiritual discipline is essential now as we must stay dedicated to transforming all lower energetics as the energies no longer support the lower. 

Welcome to the New Paradigm! 

January 1st: Mars Enters Aries

Mars enters Aries on December 31st and he is truly at home in his warrior sign. This is bringing us into the new year with fire blazing as Mars surges our passions, courage, and warrior spirit. We will be emboldened now to stand purely in our truth and in the face of opposition.

January 1-5: Grand Water Trine

January 1st-5th features a Grand Water Trine between Chiron in Pisces, the Cancer North Node, and Venus in Scorpio. There are wounds around our relationships with the masculine/feminine, and our self worth that have to be healed. The North Node in Cancer is guiding us towards compassion, forgiveness, and self nurturing. There is no more room for anger, resentment, or self hatred. This trine will help us feel deeply into our buried wounds and heal them fully. The deep wounds of separation and unworthiness will finally see the light. 

  January 3rd: Mercury in Sagittarius square Chiron in Pisces

January 3rd to 4th features a square between between Mercury in Sagittarius and Chiron in Pisces. 

Our communication may be filled with passion to express our truth and knowledge but there is a wound around how it is received and rejection. Chiron in Pisces highlights our spiritual wounds and Mercury in Sagittarius rules higher consciousness. There is a clash here between these two and we have to come to a place of acceptance that there are those who are not vibrationally in resonance with us or our words.

  January 5th: Mercury Enters Capricorn 

Mercury shifts out of Sagittarius and into Capricorn on January 5th, just before the Solar New Moon Eclipse in Capricorn. In Sagittarius, Mercury was aligning us with higher consciousness ideas and divine thoughts. He was pushing us to share this truth and find our voice. We learned lessons about being reactive or forcing our truth onto others.

Now that Mercury is in Capricorn, we can use the knowledge we gained and put into practical use. How are we going to use this information to manifest our truth in the physical? This is about anchoring in the etheric to our physical vessels and communicating in a grounded and centered way. We can begin to express new ideas about how to restructure our reality to fit the new paradigm.

  January 5th: New Moon Solar Eclipse in Capricorn 

This is the first solar eclipse of the year and it falls between Pluto and Saturn who are both in Capricorn. The heaviest aspect of this New Moon will be the Sun conjunct Moon in Capricorn. Capricorn can feel more somber than other signs but only because he truly knows what it takes to be on this path. 

We all have a large responsibility to ourselves and to our contracts to fulfill what we came here to. We have to have accountability for our own energetics and what we have manifested for ourselves. This New Moon will about taking a real look at ourselves and where we have not done the work we came here to do. We have to harness our inner power and strength to step up into the roles we promised to fulfill. 

There will be a large focus on karma and the 3D structures that are currently dissolving. The old paradigm government, corporations, and hierarchy are falling and they are falling fast. There will be repercussions for those who have chosen the dark over the light, for those who have turned a blind eye to the truth, and have continuously chosen blame, judgment and projection. This is all for lessons and growth so we can wake up and begin embodying the divinity we truly are.

  January 6th: Uranus Direct in Aries 

Finally, Uranus stations direct in Aries on January 6th. Uranus, the rebel, was in Aries since 2010 and finally moved into Taurus in May of 2018. He then went retrograde in November and headed back into Aries for some unfinished business. 

There were things that still had to be resolved and let go of that we hadn’t fully released yet. Aries is the sign of the self, of the warrior spirit within, and of the destruction that can occur when we fail to act in the best interest of the whole. We have to let go of the self-importance and begin serving the greater good, serving love. 

Now that Uranus is moving forward we are ready to let go of these lower behaviors and things that have been holding us back from unity consciousness. We will also feel more motivated to begin living a life full of passion and love.

  January 7th: Venus Enters Sagittarius

Venus finally moves out of Scorpio where she has spent an overwhelming amount of time the last few months, and into Sagittarius. In Scorpio, she was digging up all of the buried wounds and trauma we had yet to heal around love, relationships, and self-worth. We have done alot of healing and now we are ready for expansion. 

With Venus in Sagittarius, we will be inclined to interact with more beings who are in resonance with our soul and to expand our love to all of humanity and all of Creation. We will crave connections that are now based in higher consciousness and true unconditional love, rather than the lower 3D aspects. 

Our self-worth will now be bolstered as we seek expansion and growth rather than comfort zones and stagnation. It’s time for joy, laughter, and love everywhere present. Use these moments to truly break out of from any limitations you have been placing on yourself and see the Universe from a grander perspective. 

  January 8th: Mercury in Capricorn square Mars in Aries

This is a tense aspect as the planet of communication squares the planet of action. Mercury in Capricorn is serious and wants to get down to business, to figure out what needs to be done and do it ! Mars in Aries is fired up and wants to GO GO GO, sometimes to impulsively. Mars here can also become over powering and seek domination rather than cooperation and compassion. 

To use this aspect in its highest, we must combine the passion of Mars in Aries and the determination of Mercury in Capricorn to harness our inner strength to do whatever it takes to get the job done, to do our inner work and to stand strong against those opposing love. 

It is time to rise up, to use our spiritual discipline to transform anything of the lower and learn how to embody the divine qualities of perseverance, commitment, and determination. This is a powerful aspect that help propel us to the next level.

  *****

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[savetopnow]

2018-03-28 16 VIDEO now

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Bad Lip Reading

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[noctisdev]

Okay okay so here's the plan, I'm going to introduce myself in this post and then introduce Temple in the next post.

Warning: I suck at spelling! Sorry.

Heyo, I'm Joyous or Joy. Hm, where to start? I was born in '04, so I'm 17 now. I was born in the "Wonderful" United States of America in a state called Georgia. I was born as Sean a "beutiful" baby boy, with a freakishly large head. Like gosh darn, a HUGE head. Anyways, my brother was born a couple years later. Our parents met in the Navy, married when I was conseived and soon after my brother's birth they divorced. My dad went on tour often, and my mom wasn't there so I was baby sat by my Nana (my dad's mom) until my dad met another newly divorced mother. She had three kids, and my brother and I would be hang out with them as she babysat us. After a while, I don't know how long because I was a child, they started dating. Three years later, when I was 4 and a half they had a child and got married. At the same time my mom had a kid too. We started moving a lot (I've lived in Georgia(twice), Texas(four times), California(once), Arizona(like 5 times), Tennessee(once)). With all the moving I didn't have any friends, nor did I be able to stay in school, so we did home schooling. At around the age of 5 or 6 I started visiting my mom for the summer. Throughout the moving and summer vacations, I played games falling in love with them. I especially loved halo, portal, gears of war, and minecraft when I was growing up. I would make paper versions of games and come up with entirely new ones, that my step-mom would through away (because they were bad). The best non-electric game was a game we called circles, basically a DND lite. You would roleplay as a human who would gain a gem that was magical (and when in use they would make circles, thus the name), then they would adventure.

When I was 11, I moved to Arizona with my mom because she noticed that my knowledge was of a first grader (I was supposed to be in 4th grade). So I started school, and had a lot of trouble learning. We spent hours fighting over homework. After a very hard year of work I finished 4th grade with an A. I still don't know how to read a clock though. Later, around 5th or 6th grade, I started making games with scratch. I remember some very bad fnaf games I made, and a space game where you can't leave your room. In 7th grade I took a computer science class (and an engineering class where I got an A, and taught my teacher stuff, but that's just bragging) because I wanted to code. I incorectly thought my dad was a coder in the navy, but he was a decoder of information. I quickly realized my love for coding, finishing a 1 year long class in a semester. I also found my best friend in that class, and I taught him how to code. We both finished early. I also started experimenting with a game engine called unity. But gave it up quite quickly.

In high-school my best friend and I were accepted into an accelerated computer science class (even though I applied after the dead line). I had to drop out of that high-school because I get sick easily. I had to stay home for 2+ months because I had a very loud constant cough, that distracted the classes. In that time (2019) I picked up unity again but this time I did ✨research✨. Thanks to Brackeys, and BlackThornProd I taught myself to code. I also taught myself basic modeling (thanks to blender guru), even though I couldn't make the cup handle or the donut frosting correctly.

I finished my first game in 2019, it was a really bad speed game, based on brackey's tutorials. Then I quickly made my own platformer game called Light The Way. I started a few other games, dropping one after I got a new idea (I think this happens to most people). I plan on using some of those ideas for future games. I realized that I hated 3D modeling, and so I taught myself to do pixel art thanks to Brandon James Geer. It was a lot of fun.

This is the first thing I ever made, notice the computer is an exact replica from the computer from Pokémon (I got the idea from a video by Mr. Geer). I copied the furniture as well, only building off in the right room. The panda is my stuffed panda I have in person. While I was teaching myself, my now ex, gave me a tablet to try working on and I made this.

I loved the style I came up with that at that moment I decided to make a game, with my mouse because mouse is better (mouse gang). I came up with an idea and made started working on temple.

(While working I tried 3D modeling again and I enjoy it a lot!)

Anyways I moved back with my dad, in texas. In August I plan on starting streaming development on the game.

If you'd like to see my other work you can go to my reddit

If you'd like to talk please join my discord! (Note: I do not talk like this, I am quite bubbly and emotionally charged in my texts. For e.g. "Heyo! Howdy do, I'm doing dandy as candy 🍬") the discord is currently dead, but if you join it won't be!

I also have a YouTube (which im reworking) and a tiktok to teach how and why game development works!

Darn this is long.