#that from me specifically you can just block it

[omgthatdress]

Sooooo ummmmmmm this is something that's probably going to piss a lot of people off, but I feel like I really need to say it.

If you get a message from an account claiming to be a Palestinian fundraiser, it is a bot. It is a scam. You need to report & delete the message and encourage others to do the same.

I know because I get messages on this account DAILY. I have a very high follower count and I'm pretty active and I interact with my followers a lot, and apparently that all adds up to one big bot magnet.

Bots following and messaging this account was a MASSIVE problem before Tumblr fixed its new account policies. I used to spend literally hours blocking and reporting the hundreds of bots that I would get following me each day.

I learned a lot about bots and how to identify them. The easiest way is with no avatar, "untitled" in the blog description (BTW if your avatar is still set to default PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD change it because you run a substantial risk of being accidentally blocked & reported as a bot).

One of the dead give aways of a bot was what I call "word salad" names. Three seemingly random words strung together making no sense, always adjective, adjective or noun, noun. If you reported a lot of these bots, you'd notice the same words kept showing up.

Nowadays, I am bombarded with fundraiser requests and sometimes, they don't even bother to hide the fact that they're a bot. The avatar is default, the blog title is "untitled," and the blog name is a classic randomly-generated word salad.

However MOST of the requests I get come from at least semi-legit looking accounts. There are pictures, a name, a story. Never mind that I've gotten that message three times from different accounts.

Sometimes, they claim to be vetted, but the whole vetting system essentially adds up to "trust me bro." There is no way of guaranteeing that this account isn't just lying about being vetted, claiming to be vetted by a false person, or are using the identity of a real Palestinian to scam people.

Previously, I've seen a lot of people getting attacked for raising questions about these fundraisers and getting attacked for being racist or for harming Palestinian families in danger, like Tumblr isn't a website famous for its scams and the words "The Arkh Project" "All or Nothing" or "Miss Officer and Mr. Truffles" mean nothing to you.

I personally have been scammed by people claiming to be charities on Tumblr before, specifically, The Leelah Project which used the name of a trans teenager who died by suicide to swindle people out of their money.

Luckily, there are actual, respected charities out there you can give money to if you want to help the cause:

Palestinian Children's Relief Fund

Palestine Red Crescent Society

United Nations Relief Works Agency

Islamic Relief

World Central Kitchen

Médecins Sans Frontièrs

One of the hardest things to accept about the situation in Palestine is that realistically, there is very little that your average outsider can do to change it. However, these large, well-respected and trustworthy charities are out there doing the hard work to keep people alive, and should be where the donation money is going

These scam bots feed on people's naïvety and need to believe that they are making a difference, and even worse, feed on the fear that by ignoring them, it somehow makes you a racist doing direct harm to a refugee family, when in fact they are using the suffering of Palestinians to take away money from those in need.

As far as fundraisers that don't send out random asks for donations, I honestly don't know. You'll have to do the work yourself and approach with much caution.

Be careful out there.

[machveil]

CoD Headcanon: Parallel Play

self indulgent? oh yes lol today I bring you my parallel play headcanons with: Simon “Ghost” Riley, John “Soap” MacTavish, and König!

tw: innuendos with John

context: parallel play is often seen with kids - where they ‘play’ without interacting (I’m sitting with my blocks, you’re sitting with your Barbie - we’re playing near each other, but not directly with each other). it can carry over into adults though, of course, since it is just a form of interaction

Simon “Ghost” Riley:

Simon doesn’t really know about the term parallel play, but he does do it. if he’s just gotten back from deployment, or he just needs some him time, he’ll do his own thing. that said, he does like to be able to see you so he’ll stay in the same room as you

he’s perfectly content watching a game on the couch while you scroll on your phone. he’s a big fan of comfortable silence between the two of you. he’ll check in sometimes with a, “How’re ya doin’, lovie?”, or asking what you’re looking at

he doesn’t specifically seek it out otherwise. if you need some time to yourself he understands. if you want him to leave the room he will… but he’ll be just outside the room. if he wants to be near you but you’re not in the mood he’ll drag a chair towards the room you’re in. he’ll grab his phone and sit outside the door while he waits for you to come out

if you bring it up later he pretends he doesn’t know what you’re talking about, “Hm? I was just relaxing, nothin’ more.”

John “Soap” MacTavish:

you like your personal space, so does John! you can do whatever you want, just know he’s going to come up behind you. you’re reading a book on an armchair? he’ll sit on the floor between your legs and poke around his phone - he wouldn’t mind poking around elsewhere though. you’re watching tv in bed? no problem, John will just take a nap next to you… he’ll just drape an arm and leg over you. course, he wouldn’t mind delaying the nap if you want to pay attention to him

he just likes touching you and being close. he’d rather be in your personal bubble while you’re doing something. granted, he knows when to back off. if you actually need a moment to yourself he’ll sulk, but he leaves the room. he tries his best to leave you alone but he’ll come back every five minutes asking questions, “Need a water? I can grab you a— nah? Okay.”, “Where’d you wan’ to eat tonight? I can make a reservation.”, or, “Hey, cannae find the remote, seen it?”

if you really, desperately need alone time your best bet is sending him off on errands or locking the door to the room you’re in. he’s a sweetheart, but he feels he’s doing his absolute best when giving you attention. I mean, when you give him attention it makes his problems go away for a while, he just wants to do that for you

he means well, but he wants to do stuff around you. besides, he’d have more fun partaking in a different type of parallel play…

König:

a man that knows what parallel play is, no doubt. he looked it up as an adult because he felt weird about not wanting to interact with people… but wanting to be near them? absolutely relieved to find out it’s a thing other people feel

not that he doesn’t like doing things with you, he absolutely does, but his go-to way of interacting with people in parallel play. he can read his little history book while you do your own hobbies. he likes a comfortable distance, you can sit on your bed, he’ll sit on a chair in the corner of your room

is so happy if you enjoy parallel play because it’s always comforted him. he used to do it a lot throughout his childhood and teen years, more often than not simply being in the same room as his mother. when it came to other kids? he was too awkward to approach them, and he felt comfortable just being near them (before problems surrounding his height and appearance came up)

of course, he wouldn’t mind if you sat with each other too, “Hm? Ja, come here, liebling. You can sit with me.”

[steaming-system-takes]

IMPORTANT NON TAKE!!!

⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️@/dissociative-misinfo IS SPREADING MISINFORMATION!!!!!!⚠️⚠️⚠️⚠️

They're saying final fusion is a way to "heal" a system. They did say that it doesn't go away, but that's not HEALED!!

They're saying people HAVE to source separate, which is NOT true!!

And they're also just being a dick-face to anyone who says otherwise!!! Please, please, PLEASE be careful when looking at their blog!!!!!!

Good morning (again), everyone. We have some down time in our second period, so I'm taking the time to address this.

As some of you have already pointed out, the blog mentioned is actively spreading misinfo while being extremely aggressive towards people with different views from them. The specific things I'll be talking about are in relation to one of their reblogs of a post on our blog claiming that any form of healing other than fusion/final fusion is "anti recovery". This is blatantly wrong.

Recovery is not set in stone, nor is it completely linear. No matter what condition someone has, they aren't going to recover and/or heal the same way others might. This can apply to any mental illness and/or disorder. Let's say two people are suffering from clinical depression, and both are taking antidepressants as well as going to therapy regularly. One of the two ends up being in therapy longer that the other, simply because the two individuals recover at different rates and in different ways. One may reach a point of recovery by spending time outdoors in natural sunlight more often, while the other reaches a point of recovery by interacting with family and friends more often. Both are recovering, despite their different ways of doing so.

The same logic can be applied to systemhood. For some systems, fusion is their way of recovering and healing. For others, fusion only causes them more stress, more hardships, which can very well lead to more splitting and a worsening mental state. Final fusion is not a cure-all for dissociative disorders. There is no such thing as a cure-all for anything. As a system, a large part of our healing stems from building connections between headmates and being able to rely on each other. When headmates fuse, there is a clear absence of the support they offered the rest of the system. Our headmates matter to us, so of course we react to fusions and dormancies the same way a singlet would react to the loss of a friend or family member. When me and my fellow headmates work together and support each other, we are healing. We're learning to make the most of this disorder and embrace it with positivity and optimism instead of dread and distaste. We're learning that we aren't alone, and that there is always someone we can lean on when we need it. We're learning to trust, which is something we've always struggled to do because of our trauma responses. For us, that is healing. However, we recognize and acknowledge that there are systems who heal and recover in different ways. That's okay. Trauma is deeply personal, and how you recover from it is entirely dependent on the individual. There's no right or wrong way to overcome trauma. Trying to force someone to do something they can't handle/aren't ready for/don't want isn't helping them. That is hurting them. That is anti-recovery, as you're actively reversing any progress they might have made.

As for source separation, that also entirely depends on the individual. We've talked about this on our main blog, but I'll summarize our points to make this easier on everyone. There are reasons that introjects may choose to source separate, and there are reasons they may choose not to. Both are equally as valid as the other. What an alter chooses to identify with/not identify with is no one else's decision but their own. No one has the right to strip someone of their own identity.

We've found out through a reblog from one of our followers that this blog is pro endo. For that reason, we'll be blocking this blog as this breaks our DNI. We encourage anyone else to block this blog as well to ensure none of you come across any harmful/triggering things yourselves. We haven't looked at any other posts from this blog, but we've seen warnings of their posts being paranoia inducing. Please stay safe out there <3

Okay! That was a lot! Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and thank you to the people who have reblogged these posts combating the spread of misinformation. Fortunately for you all, we have some hot takes lined up and ready to post for you! Thank you for bearing with me. I'll try to keep posts on this blog a little more lighthearted from this point on, but sometimes you need to sit down and talk about something serious ^^;

It's better than having Zack do it, I'll tell you that much /lh humor

Yours truly, Mod Green

[talenlee]

Game Pile: Kentucky Route 0, One of Three Games About America

Script and Thumbnail below the fold!

Kentucky Route Zero is a magical realist point and click game of what I’d normally call Narrative Adventure, which came to kickstarter in 2011, then came out in 2013, 2014, 2016, and 2020, because you can’t have nothing for free, even things you pay for. The game is a text-driven game without any of the trappings of your typical point-and-clicker where you jam a ladder in your pants and try to work out why you want to put green dye in the water fountain. Instead it follows the haunted mind of Conway, a trucky driver and his interactions with small handful of people on a part of the Kentucky Interstate, while he to find the place he needs to do his delivery, despite being utterly lost.

I enjoyed what of Kentucky Route Zero I played, but the thing that stands out to me in hindsight is its sound design. It’s a beautifully defined game, audio-wise, with all sorts of thoughtful foley for its environments, and the way that even the pieces of the interface that Conway interacts with have their own sort of specific authentic sounds, chonks and thunks and ch-zzzzses.

It’s also visually splendid, beautiful in what it tries to represent in the heightened reality of its setting but also the format of a videogame. These places look good from the angle that’s chosen, creating lines of artwork and bars of cages, depending on what you’re focusing on, and by being a fixed-camera story of its type, Kentucky Route Zero takes on traits of theatre, with blocking and careful positioning and timing all making up part of how the story unfolds.

A story I haven’t finished.

See, I don’t feel like playing Kentucky Route Zero Act V.

Sit down, traveller. Let me tell you a story.

There’s a chance you’ve heard this story before. I’ve anonymised it here, not because I think you shouldn’t be able to work out who it is, but because the idea of focusing on the who runs the risk of ignoring the what. Plus, I don’t want to direct anyone to a person who said something stupid and encourage fights. That’s not the important issue.

This is the story of when someone perfectly represented something, and probably never realised it.

You will sometimes hear me talk about the take that ‘there are three games about America,’ with a tone of utter revulsion and derision. This is from an incident back in 2020, when a game developer and advocate for inclusive games, had an opinion, on the internet. This advocate is well-established and has a big audience, but also, he’s crucially, not a white guy, not a Christian guy, and not an American guy. These are factors that play into what he said, which was, in summary, that while Kentucky Route 0 was no doubt phenomenal, he wasn’t interested in playing it right now.

To this, an actual adult responded with:

This is legitimately the worst take you’ve ever had. There are only about three games that are actually American, and this is one of them. Everything else is designed for export. Kr0 is a precious and valuable thing. It is of immense and intense personal importance.

Now, resisting the urge to argue with a tweet, which is just generally a bad practice that leads to doing things like wanting to be on twitter, and setting aside this tweet conflating ‘this is of personal importance to me’ and ‘this should be of importance to you,’ this position describes the idea that there are only three games that are ‘actually American.’

What does it mean to be ‘actually American?’

America is a pretty pervasive presence, if you’re not aware of it. Most people in the world have to know about what’s going on in America. We know about your Presidents and your Senators and your Constitution, to the point where people can be more aware of how your country’s laws work than their own country’s laws. I’ve often seen it held up as an example of how poorly educated people in say, Canada and Australia are that we believe we have, say, a ‘first amendment right,’ but the thing is you have to ask why there is that.

We watch so much American TV.

We listen to American music.

We try to make our news broadcasts look like yours, because that’s what real and legitimate news looks like. We try to retell your stories in our local languages because that’s what real media looks like. Our children sing songs in your accents because that’s the culture that a multi-trillion dollar economy has pumped into the whole world.

America demands we attend their wars and surrender our living to become their dead and when we are done America sells the survivors a cheeseburger.

This is not a remarkable or controversial statement. You must know, this is not even vaguely challenging to know about. Everywhere in the world is replicating parts of the American empire, because America exports and enforces the vision of the American empire. McDonalds may sell curry in India, but it’s very important that the curry being sold is McDonalds curry because that is how you know it’s an American style curry.

What this means is when someone tries to assert there are only really three games about America, that’s a kind of specialised brain rot that requires you to consider games that are very much about America as not being really about America. And thus we see the other thing about America, which is it’s not enough for America to be the most important place in the world that everyone else in the world needs to recognise, but also, most of America is inadequately America for this vision of America. You saw this in the wake of 9/11, and the election of Barack Obama: huge amounts of American media resurged in extolling the values of ‘real’ America, as opposed to the parts of America where the vast majority of Americans lived, which just so happened to paint a lot of marginalised people living in the cities as ‘fake Americans.’

I am not bringing you unique information. This is just obviously true things if you don’t live within the boundaries of an environment that flatters you as the most normal thing in the world. The vast majority of the world is not America. There are eight billion people in the world, more or less, meaning that America is about 4% of the world, and yet, it is catastrophically, overwhelmingly, deleritously the common touchstone for how things are ‘supposed’ to work. This is through media imperialism, which is mostly supported by American companies exporting all their media to foreign markets extremely cheaply.

‘about three games that are actually American.’

This fascinating piece of doofusry still, even now leaves me agog. ‘Actually American.’ Kentucky Route 0 is actually American, you see, as opposed to… what? Is America’s Army one of them? You know, the game financed by the American Army? What about Call of Duty, a franchise that is in part subsidised by American military complex manufacturers? What about Grand Theft Auto, a videogame that tells the rags-to-riches story of American excess in criminality, setting aside the way it’s made by a Scottish company. Actually American, because American doesn’t mean America, it means one tiny little pool of ‘America’ where the speaker can imagine there’s a realness and an authenticity to the America-ness that doesn’t involve all the messy realities of what it is to be America. It’s the towns of hard-working people, that suffer under your particular description of oppression, whether that’s cities full of nonwhite people or corporations bleeding the country dry, always eliding the social cruelties and terribleness of these places, as if giving people money stops them from being bigoted (for example).

This is then used to recruit these poor, superior Americans, the you know, America Americans, whose sufferings are noble and whose authenticity cannot be impeached and they are then used as a defense against criticism of, you know, America. It’s the same speech Charlie Daniels gave about how foreigners may think they could push around Barack Obama (a dude who bombed a lot of shepherds with the most elaborate and brutal military ordinance in the world) but they were going to have a harder time taking on Americans who wrestled alligators, who at this point have exactly zero recorded drone strike kills.

This is because America America isn’t real.

‘Real’ America is a nebulous nothing that you can project whatever you want onto, and which is also not responsible for anything terrible that America does. It’s not the American Empire, it’s not the exporter of culture, it’s somehow purer, better, a sort of individualised folk who are to be protected and extolled, shriven of all the things about America that make it anything but its perfect idealised form of America.

I could go on.

I really could.

This is something that defines the world I have to live in. I speak English. I’m white. I’m from a coloniser state. I should be able to integrate easily and smoothly into the white supremacist capitalist hierarchy of American culture, but we are told, that no, we are not acceptable. We are only valid as long as our differences are invisible. We, a real people, do not get to have opinions on America, because we do not know True America. When you spell colour wrong in a chat message, when your accent isn’t quite right, when you don’t know the difference between junior and sophomore year of high school, then you are shown, you are evinced, and you are made very aware that you are other, you are outside, you are wrong.

And really, there’s no good reason for it. We send our soldiers to America’s wars, we buy America’s submarines, and we sing your songs. Our currency mimics America’s, our culture permeats with America’s, we even have such a crushing inferiority complex about the empire that there’s an academic term for what we feel about our own media compared to the media of the truer, proper empire to which we are vassal.

The term is ‘cultural cringe,’ and it was coined by Henry Lawson, who you, odds on, have never heard of. In 1894, he wrote:

The Australian writer, until he gets a “London hearing,” is only accepted as an imitator of some recognized English or American author; and, as soon as he shows signs of coming to the front, he is labelled “The Australian Southey,” “The Australian Burns,” or “The Australian Bret Harte,” and lately, “The Australian Kipling.” Thus no matter how original he may be, he is branded, at the very start, as a plagiarist, and by his own country, which thinks, no doubt, that it is paying him a compliment and encouraging him, while it is really doing him a cruel and an almost irreparable injury. But mark! As soon as the Southern writer goes “home” and gets some recognition in England, he is “So-and-So, the well-known Australian author whose work has attracted so much attention in London lately”; and we first hear of him by cable, even though he might have been writing at his best for ten years in Australia.

This is imperialism. This is a way in which we have been induced and brought by the empires around us to accept their ways as correct, as the normal, as default. And that is the mindset you must have if you want to look at the breadth of videogames, with their American ideas like health insurance, readily available guns, the importance of freedom, the ubiquity of air travel, the branding and iconography of types of food and the sports metaphors and then say ‘yeah, this doesn’t have anything to do with America, not really.’

Anyway, this thread, this incident, was a big deal at the time, in that there were a lot of people from within the community of game developers and journalists who seemed very happy to line up and get mad at a brown foreigner for being inadequately enthusiastic about the possibility of playing a videogame. But don’t worry, after a day or two, an apology was forthcoming for all of this fracas, by which I mean, the original developer apologised for being so thoughtless as to, again, express honest lack of enthusiasm in a videogame.

For me, this was a kind of break point, where I started just blocking indie devs on sight. I don’t want to know what they’re involved in, I don’t want to promote their work, and I will hold tiny grudges against them that I do not seek to transfer or encourage in others. This was one silly incident in which a lot of people said something silly because they don’t know better, or they’re arseholes.

None of this is fair to Kentucky Route 0. It’s a game with its own intentions and its own perspective. It’s not trying to make this conversation happen. Kentucky Route 0 has been choked and gripped by this position around it, where to talk about an American game, someone put a cross on it that made it the avatar for All Things America. The wild thing to me is that I had, prior to this point, played two episodes of Kentucky Route 0. I thought it was pretty good, and I liked what it did with the negative space of dialogue options – when a character you’re controlling makes excuses, the excuses you choose show you other things you could be making excuses about that you, the player, didn’t know beforehand. That’s some good Narrative Storytelling Design, I like that a lot. But now I can’t really engage with Kentucky Route Zero because the main thing it makes me think about is how this final chapter, meant to round out the game’s story and present a conclusion and a point, became this flashpoint for a lot of people to be very casually racist.

Which kinda poisons the whole thing for me. It’s an authentic thing, I’m sure, it’s a thoughtful thing, too, but the people stepping up to say I should care about it did so in a way that made me hate them.

Any time you see me say ‘three games about America’ I’m talking about this, and the attitude of a particular kind of American that America is, as always, exceptional. It’s real easy to not realise when you’re just voicing your self-centeredness and how easy that is to ignore the opinions of people around you and what they’re saying. This is what I’m talking about when I mention ‘the three games about America.’

[fade for credit text]

By the way, the three games about America are Crash Bandicoot, Sam & Max Hit The Road, and Bust A Move.

[py-dreamer]

Yea!!! Can you tell I have favorites lol

so since it's the 20th in my time, it is officially my birthday today!

But I wanted to get this out regardless so kinda count it as the previous day's ig

I will be posting something later today probably but it will most likely just be a compilation of all the cakes I've done thus far.

Ok but um on with the cake!

It's like a cheesecake and I basically copied Tengen's cake with like a jelly filling with fruit suspended in it, peaches (obviously), strawberries and blueberries cause I like them and sod it I'll put them on this goddamn cake!

The thing Wukong's sitting on is one of those peach ice creams that's gotten so popular lately with the sprinkle of pink dust thingy on top.

On either side of the cake is the fillet from the journey and the hat from the brotherhood era, one from his reckless past and one from his redemption and I just think that's neat.

The blue puffy stuff is meant to be his nimbus clouds represented as cotton candy.

I have the baiju jar in there as reference to Wukong becoming immortal again due to the all the wine made from the peaches of immortality at the festival.

The staff as a little candle was so fun! And I like pocky so I chucked them on there to fill space and it looks good so sue me

The grey thing behind the staff and balloon is meant to be the Buddha's hand that trapped him under the mountain and a reference to his imprisonment under 5 phases mountain.

Peach popsicle! Of course I had too! A lil something from the present for our (shadow) peachy friend

Mk's stone as well, had to add his son in there too. The baby ever.

(probably just a cookie but it's the thought that counts)

The two sugar cookies are meant to be his logo (aka the lmk logo) and fireworks, again taken from Tengen's cake.

The sun is a candied/tanghulu esque orange thing. Like an orange slice coated in yellow melted sugar shaped like a sun and the phoenix feather cap since I consider it iconic enough to put in here. I didn't want to put it on him, blocking a lot of the decorations so I just hung it to the side and I think I'm happy with that.

A lot more monkeys here! It was very fun popping them in! I know I only gave Mac 1 but I mean Wukong's the monkey king for a reason. Let him be a loving grandpa and invite his subjects on the cake with him. He granted them immortality by ripping their names out the book of dead, let them have a place on the cake too

Also, yes that is the origami pilgims in the bottom left, I couldn't leave them alone could I?

Now the elephant in the room (or at least in my head), yes I did use @maplesleep's matcha pancake design for flower fruit mountain.

Cake on cake. Bit much but hey, I like cake and pastries better than candy normally so win for me.

And I couldn't just make cake about Sun Wukong without mentioning his home/origins of ffm. I do genuinely love the inginuity and adorableness factor of the pancake design and hope they don't mind me slapping it on my...cheesecake? Jelly cake? Jelly-cheesecake?

(also I have to ask @maplesleep, did you watch the 3rd emirichu anime cafe video, specifically the urusei yatsura cafe as inspiration for the 'sun wukong's strawberry sponge cake punishment' parfait thingy, gorgeously drawn btw I used those drawings as inspiration quite a bit for these cakes, or saw the urusei yatsura collab anime cafe

cause I couldn't help but notice the similarities between that and the 'shinobu's maiden strength parfait' cause if you didn't that be a pretty funny coincidence lol)

So what do you think? You think I could make it as another lmk food chef for lego? Can I join the club lmao?

I do realize in retrospect the disrespect I did Mk by making his cake so plain by comparison to his mentor's. But I think that's a testament to my improvement and attention to detail when making these cakes as the days have progressed!

I consider Mk's in particular to be the most lacking and I lowkey feel so bad for my boi for not giving him the main character status he deserves.

I might draw him again, idk. Not anytime soon though, like I said, I'm quite busy now more than before and I need a break, still glad I could serve y'all another slice of cake though!

[clanwarrior-tumbly]

Eyes and Eyefestation who actually do want their partner to look at them?

Eyes

"Don't look at me, don't look at me, don't look at me-" is what they used to say in the past in frantic undiscernible whispers, wishing they didn't cause hotel visitors physical (and psychological) pain.

Now that they have you as a partner--wearing special glasses/contacts to block 90% of the damage they'd normally cause--they are delighted that you could look at them and talk without being in agony!

You never really got to see their eyes before, and now that you could and also saw the blue flaming aura surrounding them...

You swear you're staring back at a literal angel.

Something truly ethereal.

Since then, they've kept you company throughout the hotel, hanging out near the key and the real door, lighting up dark rooms and warning you of Rush in the greenhouse.

When you're stuck in the mines, Eyes still keeps up with you via teleportation, making their presence known and trying to help where they can (ie blinding Giggles).

But they've grown rather needy since realizing you could look at them.....as now they want you to do nothing but that.

It's tough when you gotta hide, look for Screech, or avoid Figure, Seek, and the Grumbles. And often the tiniest distraction meant starting back at the broken elevator.

But your death isn't too concerning to Eyes, as you'll just come back and be able to look at them more and more.

Why would you ever wanna stop?

Eyefestation

After learning she stuck around the Hadal Blacksite specifically to spite humans, you thought she'd put you into that same category of awful people who tortured her with injections..

But after you found your own workaround her radiation beams, she's..actually grown quite fond of you, impressed with your ability to adapt and meet her one request:

Look

Look

Look.

And indeed you do...or at least whenever it's safe.

I hc she has object permamance so if you're just walking by an Abstractee, she'll get upset thinking it took you away from her..

Only to be content when you reappear a second later.

Unlike Eyes, she knows you have to prioritize avoiding Pandemonium, and Mr. Lopee certainly won't allow you to stay behind and chat with her if you're with a group.

Still, she's convinced Painter to lock you in more gauntlets with her, and he's surprised, thinking she utterly despised you.

But no, she wants to just look at you and be alone with you. Even for a short time.

And Painter still obliges, now believing you cared more about her than the crystal.

[the-catboy-minyan]

So if all Hezbollah members, including civilians that never saw combat (and people who owned a pager but weren't members of Hezbollah), can be classified as terrorists and any innocent child that gets killed when you attack those members are at fault for being in "such close proximity to terrorists to get hurt" even though those bombs were activated when the members were just just doing normal daily task in public such as grocery shopping then can we apply this logic to the IOF?

Can we blame all non-combatant soldiers for the massacres done by other soldiers and can we target those soldiers when they're off-duty in shops, schools, hospitals and if an Israeli child got killed or injured then its their fault for being "in close proximity to terrorists" or does that logic not work because only Christians and Muslims can be terrorists?

Also calling people being disgusted by you for making jokes about this terrorist attack "hatemail" and a "Jews are baby killers" thing (when you're literally laughing and justifying killing children) is laughably pitiful, you get 1/10 for self-victimization.

Plz try harder to not shame your colony of self-victimizers, you can't let those dead children steal the attention from you.

bitch you know what Hezbollah is, right? you understand the concept of terrorist organisations, right? fym "civilian hezbollah members"??

also lmao IOF I see who I'm talking to here

the fact that you're literally projecting how the antizionist movement treats current and former IDF soldiers and using our own arguments against us, it's just hilarious to me. the IDF is an actual military force with branches and roles of people that will never have to hold a gun in their lives except for the mandatory first 5 week training period. my friend reached military age and she's literally about to go serve in a dog shelter, a regular fucking dog shelter, like a volunteer job but getting paid by the government for it.

again, I'm not talking to someone about "think of the innocent children who died from an attack that hit 99% terrorists" from a person who didn't confirm if they cared about civilian israeli lives. over 100k people displaced, >1400 people murdered and raped horrifically, or are we not human enough in your eyes to deserve compassion?

any civilian being harmed is horrible, but you literally can't make an attack on that scale while guaranteeing 0 collateral damage, I did not personally make jokes on that situation, only shared ones I found on reddit, and I would not cheer if the attack did significant collateral damage, and from reports it seems that other people got hurt only in extremely specific situations. you'd fucking cheer if it was done to the "IOF" even if it harmed more kids than soldiers, so don't give me a fucking lecture over my morals, there's a block button at the top right.

these type of jokes are so out of character for me anyways, this is not something I usually joke about, but I had a horrific day yesterday and yknow what I think it's funny to think about how terrorists lost their balls from pagers. the VAST MAJORITY of people sustained minor injuries from that attack, the vast majority of the terrorists who carried their pagers barely even got harmed, this is really the hill you wanna die on? that an attack that barely grazed people is evil because of circumstances outside the attackers' control?

[tadpoles-and-daydreams]

Y'know sometimes deity work is just them shaking you by the shoulders going "DUDE JUST CHILL."

CUE THE DEATH MENTIONS/GRIEF TW bc I don't usually post about this so I feel like writing it into the post is important

The past few days, I've been completely unable to... witch. Witching is an action now. I've been struggling to get anything from my deities and guides. Tarot- which I usually can use for consistent yes/no answers- is now only giving me "maybe"s no matter what I ask. I feel like my trust in my deities and in my craft has suddenly plummeted despite having witnessed the most dramatic, flashy gift from them to my mom like a week ago. etc. etc. I tried just using the cards as their meanings and it felt... like I could interpret them but they were definitely not the usual "OH DAMN y'all just gotta say it like it is" energy I'm used to. I started to feel bad, like I'm in some sort of slump for no reason, and just generally was salty because I actively had been trying to start readings up again and now I can't until that blows over.

Then today, as I was making my breakfast, I was just thinking about it and admittedly getting a bit frustrated with myself- and suddenly one of my deities (I think Loki or Hades, I can't get a clear answer rn) just slam dunks a realization into my head like "SIR. SIR. You just had your first father's day since your dad died like two days ago. Don't ya think that mayyybe there's some feelings there, even if you're not actively processing them out in the open? That mayyyyybe you might be subconsciously processing a lot that can't be processed consciously?"

I just stood there like O.O for a second. I know I'm not the greatest at connecting emotional dots, but sometimes I forget that if I'm feeling shitty it probably has a 100% logical reason that I'm just not seeing. They brought a couple other things to mind that I'm dealing with that, while I often forget about them consciously, I currently have every reason to be in a slump about. I really am glad I have my guides there to just plonk thoughts that are distinctly not my own into my head sometimes so I stop questioning why I'm in such a weird mood XD

The point of this post is, really, don't beat yourself up guys. Plz. I mostly post happy lil funny things, but I also value transparency and authenticity. So sometimes I'll end up posting some heavier stuff, especially when I someday get more into working with heavier emotions in my craft, because I think it's important to post it. Maybe it'll make someone feel a little less alone. And, if it doesn't, then this post is just for me and that's okay <3

[triangular-static]

look i understand if people just don't like the idea of billford, i think we have a different internal concept of what shipping means (they're not good for each other at all but i need to dissect their dynamic like a bug. you understand. it's fun) but it's fine to avoid things you don't like, good for you genuinely

however people saying they like. don't see it. like. i'm not saying there's no platonic way to read it, i'm aroace spec myself i'm all for reading things in different ways. but i do think saying they weren't partners in any queer sense at all is trying too hard to go against what the narrative is trying to say, or missing it. somehow

anyway media literacy time if a character makes a joke like this

and the previous context of that joke within the show is that it's about an ex wife. what connection do you think the text is trying to get you to make.

and that's just from a writing point of view. not even noting that from an in universe perspective ford likely knows the joke from the same source as stan. and is therefore. placing himself in that role of the joke are you seeing where i'm coming from

(not to mention bill's side of this text which is. extremely manipulative but also does not read very platonic. again, it can technically be read as platonic! bill literally can manipulate ford's feelings. but the specific wording used is very much meant to look like possessive ex partner wording whether the character means it that way or not. it's coding. look again i'm not saying it was good for them i'm just saying there was something there.)

and then there's also the divorce/break up/rock bottom input on the website. like. how else is that supposed to be read. and the corresponding page in the book itself.

the language being used here. like yes he's saying it in a joking way but then there's the other side that isn't joking which is him crying at the bar. it's the both sides (the very coded language on top of the very genuine emotions and dynamic beneath)

i know most of us are on the same page with this i've just seen a couple people saying they don't see it when this is some of the most clear cut coding i've ever seen. and these are just the things that explicitly reference a relationship off the top of my head i'm not even including the general vibes of Everything

tl;dr it's barely even subtext anymore it's all but straight up text. what's not clicking have we forgotten what coding is (lighthearted i just enjoy the phrase what's not clicking. what's not clicking)

[iratusmus]

fiona fox is the love + light of my life . also no i am not taking any criticism on her questionable tshirt collection i can and will defend all of my choices.

also bonus artist commentary in the alt text

[sheltershock]

The other day I was rewatching Hollowtone’s vod on Psychonauts 2, which is fun because of the chat overlay. And there’s the part where you can open the powers menu and see all the nice embroidered badges and the nice signatures of the teachers that gave you them…. except Sasha’s. And this makes sense, he wasn’t authorized to teach Raz psi-blast, so it would be really bad if he’s showing off his cool badges on his bag and someone sees Sasha’s signature. So Ford signed off on the marksmanship badge. But the chat in the vod is coming up with hilarious reasons why Sasha didn’t/couldn’t sign off on it, my favorites being:

“He’s only capable of of writing in Times New Roman”

“His handwriting is bad, toddler/doctor level”

“Sasha writes exclusively in latin”

“He actually can’t write”

“He uses telekinesis for everything, if he touches a pen he instantly dies”

And I was thinking about how ridiculous they were, but when I actually think about it… is there ever a proven time he actually writes something down? Like with his hands?

He’s living in a time period where typewriters existed, and in the current time, computers do, and therefore printers… And in one of the promotional comics he’s not even using his hands to eat with a fork, he just uses his powers. He uses telekinesis for most things actually. I don’t find it out of the realm of possibility of just using telekinesis to write things down. And then, I guess he’d never actually have need to learn to do it with his hands…

Maybe Sasha can’t write.

[qsmpbutwithsignlanguage]

How do accents work in SMPs? Because I'll read fanfictions where it's like, "He spoke with a distinctly British accent," or "Her words sounded vaguely German," or even fanfics where another character starts speaking in a different language and they're saying things like 'Chiquito' or 'Me como caca', that kind of stuff, but it's like. This is Last Life. Or Quesadilla Island. Or L'Manberg. Britain and Germany and Spain don't exist in these worlds?? Your cubito busts out Dutch pleasantries which implies the existence of the Netherlands and it's like. Is L'Manberg just some random island in the middle of the Pacific that nobody is touching with a ten foot pole or...?

Don't think about it too hard, though it's kind of funny to imagine these people are fighting for their lives and the lives of the people they love and somewhere out there there's just. Spain. Having elections or promoting tourism or trying to keep people from peeing in its oceans or something. I just find it kind of fun to think about.

[hella1975]

obligatory 'i feel a bit bad to that one anon bc it's the usual case that your ask wasn't actually bad so much as a bit annoying but alas it's the breaking point of something that's been bugging me so now im making a post about it' disclaimer but if you really really REALLY feel the need to ask me when the next update is going to be on a fic - and please ask yourself if you really need to - then i have some things for your consideration. the first is that i have a tag called 'taob updates'. when i am writing taob, i talk about it on here. initially and mostly, it's bc i genuinely enjoy sharing the experience and it helps me get my thoughts in order, but also it's my way of going 'hey, taob is happening! look!' if there have been posts in the 'taob updates' tag lately, then yay! an update is imminent and/or i tend to actually SAY on those posts how long i think the chapter will take. 'what if there haven't been any posts in that tag for a while?!' i hear you cry. 'what if you're actively posting for another fandom and clearly enjoying yourself and dont want to constantly have cold water dumped on you for a thing you currently aren't thinking about?' well.... maybe.... maybe i am not writing taob at that time..... and crazier yet.... maybe you demanding it isn't going to make me switch interests at a moment's notice.... food for thought x

[bananasfosterparent]

[dabihawksluvr]

To those who see a lengthy post, and respond by saying 'nah I ain't reading all that'.

I will say this as kindly as possible.

You are being an asshole.

[ratwars]

🌞- I wanna make out with you

💥- you’re really damn annoying

🌈- we have lots in common

👻- I wish I never met you (found your blog)

Pshhh.

Ask game