#that we're leaving entire chunks of the community out

[foxxsong]

Hm. Hmm. Hate to see someone you usually respect the opinion of have a bad take that could've stayed an opinion until they started throwing accusations at people that tried to have a discussion about it.

[fiddleyoumust]

So, the reality series The Boyfriend has eaten a large chunk of my brain recently. I'm not usually a huge reality TV person, but this show is scratching my brain so well, and I think it's mostly because it's very communication focused. So we get a lot of these men being exposed to different ideas and perspectives, different ways of communicating and problem solving, and most importantly, different ways of being in intimate relationships.

Shun is not my favorite person in the house, but I do find him the most fascinating to watch navigate these new relationships. He's extremely low energy, moody, introverted, outwardly calm, and reflective. He very obviously does not trust his own instincts about love and relationships, which is understandable given what he's revealed about past partners.

There is obviously a lot going on with Shun below the surface, and I get the feeling he is an extremely emotional person who has gotten very good at masking those emotions because he's never had anyone who cared about him enough to unmask them. We show our emotions to others because we want something in return - validation, comfort, understanding, etc. But we are able to show those emotions because we have an understanding with the people we are showing them to, that we will get something in return, that they care enough to give us something back for being open about our feelings.

Shun, an orphan who spent his entire childhood in an orphanage and who has had mostly toxic romantic relationships, hasn't had anyone he could trust enough to share his emotions with, so he is very closed off, even though he has a good understanding of his emotions and is a very good communicator when he needs to be. I think Dai (the guy Shun is most interested in) is a great fit for him, even though Shun hasn't fully realized it yet. Dai is ready to be that person for Shun, and his desire for Shun to trust him, his desire to be Shun's safe space is palpable in every move he's made to get closer to Shun.

In one of the most recent episodes, Shun passes up the opportunity to spend time with Dai simply because Shun's in a bad mood. He immediately feels bad about it because he knows his rejection hurt Dai's feelings. When Dai gets back from the daily mission, Shun makes a failed attempt to explain himself.

The conversation is so interesting because Shun is making a case for why not going with Dai was his perogative and Dai, who is just a really excellent person, and who has really tried hard to meet Shun where he is emotionally, is 100% not interested in having that conversation. Because he doesn't actually care if Shun wanted to go or not go, it's Shun's disregard for Dai's feelings that he's upset about. It's being taken for granted. They are not having the same conversation. But Dai also doesn't want to tell Shun how to fix it because he wants Shun to care about him enough to figure it out on his own.

They leave that conversation with Shun feeling worse than when he went into it. He goes off to sulk with a bottle of wine. Then Taehon, another contestant, joins him, and they have one of the best conversations I've seen on a reality show.

Shun talks about why he didn't go on the daily mission with Dai and how he doesn't feel like he had to volunteer to go, even though he likes Dai a lot. Taehon validates Shun's feelings, and here is the part that really hit me, and the part that I really hope Shun remembers later because he's revealed a bit about his past relationships and it seems like he was very much a person who got obsessed and lost himself to the whims of the men he's been interested in.

Shun tells Taehon, "I'm not obligated to go with Dai. We're not even dating yet." And Taehon replies, "Even if you were dating already, you're still not obligated to go." And MY GOD I hope those words stay with Shun for the rest of his life. That was something someone like Shun NEEDED to hear. You do not have to bend to the whims of your romantic partner. They are not entitled to drag you beyond your boundaries, and it is 100% okay to set boundaries and demand your romantic partners respect them.

Shun goes on to wonder if he wasn't wrong, why does he still feel so bad about what happened. Taehon tells him maybe focusing on right and wrong isn't what's important here, and Shun all on his own realizes what he feels bad about is hurting Dai's feelings, and even if hurting Dai wasn't intentional, and even though Shun had the right to not spend time with Dai, he should still let Dai know he's sorry that his choice caused Dai pain.

So, Shun apologizes for hurting Dai, and Dai is very happy, and the two of them get back on track. The entire show is so emotionally satisfying because you get to see in real time the ways people communicate, the intricacies of navigating new relationships, both romantic and not. If you enjoy watching people in all their odd, frustrating beauty, I highly recommend checking out The Boyfriend on Netflix. It's delightful.

[thecoolerliauditore]

I need your thoughts on Martyn.

Jesus Christ in heaven where to start.

I was planning to write massive essay posts about each of the winners sooner or later, I guess Martyn can skip the queue. As a treat.

BAD traffic series martyn analysis post don't read. LONG POST

note: rules I'm operating by are to keep the analysis primarily traffic-based (although this one's kind of an exception because. mr watcher lore) and I'm not rewatching entire POVs so stuff might be wrong so on so forth

Why is he... Like that?

So before I even start talking about 3L I feel the need to address Martyn's background first because, not unlike alot of the other members of the cast, Martyn's previously established relationships from series like Evo have a significant impact on how he behaves.

This is kind of difficult for me to talk about because it breaks my "no material outside of the traffic series" rule for these essays specifically, but I think it's honestly just more fun incorporating Martyn's off-series lore drops and such into his character instead of leaving them out.

So here's the basis I work from -- Martyn is the most unreliable narrator in a full cast of them. His lore is his character's version of events, not an unbiased retelling.

Whether the Watchers exist and whether they're the same entities present in Evo doesn't matter all that much, since all we know is that they are very real to Martyn, at least. Taking the lore as Martyn's POV also helps iron out some of the more awkward creases it creates when viewing the series as a whole (e.g. Grian's involvement with the Watchers surely means he would reference them himself, yet he doesn't) and lays the groundwork for some really interesting things about Martyn himself when you try to put the dots together on how he arrived at these conclusions. I'll be referencing these as they come up chronologically.

So, without over complicating things, here are the rules I'm playing by when it comes to pre-3L Martyn:

Evo did really happen with the same people, however the exact details are muddy.

Martyn knew Jimmy prior to the games and the two already had some sort of personal connection going in.

We're not trusting a word out of his mouth. Especially if he says them on stream. But we are going to acknowledge what those words are.

With those parameters set, let's move on:

Third Life, and the guy who gets a little too into it

Like Grian, Martyn immediately acclimates to the game's survival-based mechanics. Martyn spends a good chunk of the first session of 3L seemingly aimless, but he makes observations and choices throughout that show he has survival at the back of his mind (e.g. him quickly establishing an alliance with Grian and Bigb while sneakily putting them in his debt through the diamonds he finds early -- even if this doesn't end up paying off to anything).

Unlike Grian however, Martyn less desperately clings onto a need for an edge to survive and seems almost comfortable in playing the game. A running theme for him throughout all the seasons will be that he seems to feel most comfortable when he has some amount of unspoken power over others, whether that be something as silly as testing the waters with his creeper soundboard or later when he starts playing 4D chess with himself in regard to his loyalties.

"Power" might be not exactly the right word for what Martyn yearns for, but it's the best word I can find to really describe it. He's always the one with a card up his sleeve or a plan B or, arguably most importantly, the one with control over the situation and responsibility over his own and others' wellbeing.

In my mind, at least, I think it might be a consequence of Martyn actually being quite sensitive in terms of relationships and having this very deep-seeded need to protect his loved ones from harm but lacking the emotional intelligence necessary to allow himself to be vulnerable about those feelings and communicate properly. So instead he finds some way to protect himself emotionally (usually overdramatic and makes him way worse) and treats everyone including himself with a level of un-seriousness that alleviates the tension for him.

If I were to dig deeper into this specific point I must say Martyn seems to have chosen to perform a very specific breed of masculinity, with his constant agonizing need to protect and lead while not having to confront his own perceived weaknesses, and alot of his insecurities and frustrations come from being denied that husband-y role to play.

His interactions with Jimmy early on in 3L portray this side of him quite plainly. After seeing Scott hit him around at Renchanting, Martyn gets Jimmy alone and asks him if he's okay but after Jimmy dodges the question, Martyn quickly becomes frustrated and starts acting very overdramatic (e.g. threatening to cut Jimmy off, "I can't look at you", so on) even as Jimmy keeps insisting they keep talking.

In my humble opinion, it's clear to me from how he speaks to Jimmy in this scene and further on, and from his referencing of their Evo relationship, that this is these two's established dynamic - the way Martyn dramatizes everything feels almost as if he were making a joke of it, teasing Jimmy, almost akin to how an older sibling or very old friend would act. It's possible that Martyn didn't expect Jimmy to take any of his threats seriously (although he definitely was laying on the pressure to try and get him to agree in the moment) and that's why he's so taken aback when Jimmy does act almost afraid of him from this point forward.

Not once does Martyn ever verbalize his own feelings regarding the matter. He never says that he's scared or worried for Jimmy, or even makes any sort of subjective judgment on Scott's character for hitting Jimmy in the first place. He makes it all about Jimmy, never communicating *why* he is doing what he's doing which ends up giving off the impression he thinks he knows what's best for him, which of course never communicates to Jimmy that Martyn cares for or loves him and ends up pushing him away as a result.

Speaking of Scott, despite Martyn clearly not approving of the way he treats Jimmy (judging from the aforementioned conversation and his later lore streams where he essentially calls Scott and Jimmy's marriage a sham), he does not ever act antagonistically towards Scott. Which I think is indicative of another key trait of Martyn's - an almost uncanny ability to push aside his own feelings at least momentarily for the sake of the game.

Martyn does not speak badly to or about Scott. He even explores the nether with him very early on and the two literally joke about trapping the Flower Valley and killing Jimmy together.

I think there's an understanding and perhaps a level of respect, on Martyn's end, towards Scott. One of the first observations he makes about Scott's base, after all, is its defensive location and Scott, like Martyn, values his own competency and likes to pretend he's more emotionally unattached to his partner than he really is (the parallels between Martyn/Ren and Scott/Jimmy are even somewhat lampshaded by Martyn himself when he refers to them as "my red" (Ren) and "your red" (Jimmy) later).

It seems that Martyn doesn't dislike anything innate to Scott's nature, and even has love for his manipulative traits. If it were anyone other than Jimmy Scott was hitting, I'd argue, Martyn wouldn't have raised a fuss about it. Not to mention, there's also a sense of "keeping your enemies closer" when it comes to these two, as both seem acutely aware the other is useful on their side and a threat anywhere else.

I'd argue despite the fact he's able to push his dislike towards Scott aside, he definitely still feels spiteful towards him, as he ends up hunting him down pretty mercilessly come the end of the series (after Jimmy dies too - so perhaps there was also a level there of feeling the need to put up with Scott beforehand as he was Jimmy's only ally, but now that Jimmy's gone there isn't any need to be friendly with Scott anymore.)

Now onto the heavy-hitter Martyn 3L relationship - his dynamic with Ren.

I'll be honest I think most treebark shippers have summed up their relationship way better than I could. You could probably go into the tag and see thirty eight analysis posts more indepth and accurate than mine. However I will say that one thing I see rarely mentioned is this very obviously being Martyn's first time meeting Ren (I'm talking about characters here but here is your acknowledgement this is definitely a result of this literally being the case for the CCs).

He's not used to Ren's mannerisms -- during their first meeting, Ren says his usual "ex-squeeze me" (instead of "excuse me") and Martyn responds "no thankyou, I'm married". Not to get too into it as this is The Martyn Post but Ren's POV would imply the same since he sees Martyn's name in chat and he immediately starts theorizing about what kind of player he is.

I think Ren essentially being a stranger to Martyn at the start of the series makes it easier for him to act manipulatively and keep him at arm's length, as well as be in denial about the whole emotional attachment thing. For so much of their alliance during 3L Martyn is acting, performing to match Ren's vibes, except he's not.

^this quote and the concept of freudian slips informs like 88% of my worldview, if anyone's wondering why I'm. like that.

"The Hand" is very much not how Martyn naturally acts or behaves, down to the change in speaking patterns. It's a persona that I think both Ren and Martyn never take too seriously or mistake for Martyn's authentic self, but it's also something Martyn uses to express his innermost feelings he disallows himself from usually. Yes it's all silly even in-universe but I think there's something special about how he constantly expresses his devotion as The Hand, even if he's doing it with a layer of irony. Plus, I think it says something that, jumping later in the timeline, his flashbacks in LimLife are much more true to the character of The Hand than Martyn himself.

This section is already long enough but I do have to mention Bigb, Grian and Scar or I'll explode.

Earlier on, I touched on Martyn giving Grian and Bigb diamond swords early and it being an attempt to leverage an alliance between them. This I admit might be a slight reach however the reason I say that is Martyn continues to pursue Bigb and Grian as allies throughout the season.

Bigb is cut and dry enough, he ends up floating around the outside of Dogwarts as a not-quite-member after the siege in which pretty much half the sever were antagonized by Grian and Scar. I'm probably not the person to thoroughly dissect Martyn/Bigb but there's something interesting there about how alot of people tend to have this general fondness towards Bigb and Martyn is no exception.

As for Grian, Martyn acknowledges that Grian is responsible for the siege, possible moreso than Scar, but keeps questioning how "gone" he is, worded as if he believes Scar is manipulating him. I've seen people compare this to how he acts towards Jimmy and Scott which I can definitely see the throughline. However, I think while both are an example of Martyn's protector/saviour complex, they are innately different due to Martyn's relationships with both the perceived victim and captor in each case.

Despite Grian also being an ex-Evo member, Martyn does not act towards him with the same familiarity he does with Jimmy. He also brings up Grian's welfare with Bigb and not Grian himself, with Bigb being the other person involved in their earlier established sword alliance. To me, it feels as if Martyn is more testing the waters for if he can still get Grian on his side than out of any genuine concern for Grian, although it is possible he's projecting some of those leftover feelings regarding Jimmy's situations onto Grian and Scar.

The other reason is, I think, Martyn might genuinely be afraid of Scar himself and villainizing him as a result. Everytime Scar shows up in Martyn's POV he's paired with tense music and sporadic editing that makes him appear more unhinged. Martyn has also said on tumblr he found Scar intimidating at the time, which is of course a dubiously canon source but I find it applicable enough.

It makes sense, too. When you compare Martyn's treatment of Scar vs his treatment of Scott. These are both people he has recognized as real threats and he assumes both are manipulating their respective partners, but while he remains friendly (at least outwardly) towards Scott he's constantly wary of Scar, drawing weapons on him pretty much on sight even before the siege.

I think Martyn fears Scar because he doesn't understand Scar. Scott is someone like him who he knows the inner workings of, or at least that's what he believes, so while he doesn't care for him he doesn't feel a need to keep him away. Martyn always assumes a level of coordinated malice from Scar that is more than often either completely unfounded or a result of something originating from Grian (my favourite example of this is, right before the siege, Scar wanders over with his bee on a lead and Martyn starts yelling "he's got a bee! what does that mean?!" as if expecting the bee has some pvp reason behind it. when scar just wanted to have a bee).

That isn't to say that Scar isn't malicious - Martyn is right like 90% of the time that Scar's not-so-subtle friendly hellos have some sinister plan behind them, but he doesn't ever truly get that Scar isn't the evil mastermind he thinks he is.

I'd argue this fear is what also makes Martyn not pick up on the fact that Grian is the more manipulative one out of the two - something that even Scott seems aware of - because he never spends enough time with them on friendly terms to be aware of that dynamic.

Last Life AKA big brother syndrome in full blast

Okay that was a long ass section sorry lmao have to establish everything there. Everything from here on is gonna be a lot cleaner I swear.

The Southlanders could honestly have their own ultra-long post about how they're the perfect disaster team-up lord of the flies esque situation the series has to offer.

Impulse, Grian and Martyn are all similar in that they understand they have to play the game a certain way through keeping their loyalties dubious while Mumbo, as a newcomer, is extremely naive and goes along with whatever the more assertive members of the group say. And Jimmy is Jimmy.

Martyn takes on a leadership role within the group, being the one to constantly spearhead their humour and come up with new often disruptive plans (usually targetting Scott because he totally isn't spiteful still, albeit in a very playful way). After Joel traps their base with tnt minecarts, Martyn is the one to keep everyone else back and disarm them, a huge contrast to 3L's siege.

Their group embraces the rules of the game - if you turn red, as Grian does early on, you are kicked out from the group as a threat. There's this sinking feeling throughout all their spyglass shenanigans and life-trade trust exercises that this is still an alliance in a death game and if you prove yourself to be a detriment, you will be kicked out.

It's no wonder than why Jimmy, who gets his usual bottom of the barrel treatment, tries to run away with Martyn's life during one of their trust exercises. He's been shown at this point he can't fully trust the Southlanders to protect him forever -- how could he, when Martyn, again, never slips in any sign of affection between the teasing?

To Martyn, however, this is a betrayal of his trust. His plea to Jimmy to return sounds a lot like their conversation back in 3L on the snowy mountain regarding Jimmy and Scott, except this time Jimmy accepts Martyn's offer and Martyn tells him he was lying, calling him an idiot for believing him in the first place. This is probably the harshest Martyn acts towards Jimmy in the series, but it's worth mentioning that to Martyn the timeline of events goes he offers Jimmy his protection and alliance--> Jimmy refuses--> Jimmy dies (which Martyn probably sees at least partially due to said refusal) --> he gets Jimmy back and does everything in his power to keep him safe --> Jimmy does the equivalent of *killing him* and tries to get away with it.

Martyn still obviously cares about Jimmy despite being upset at him, as after his usual dramatics and declaring a trial for Jimmy in which each of the Southlanders vote on his fate, Martyn still votes to keep Jimmy in the group (again, something Jimmy is never made aware of).

Possibly partially because of the Jimmy incident and the overall dog-eat-dog culture of the Southlanders, Martyn does to them what he never managed with Dogwarts - betrayal. At least, on some level.

Ironically, it's Ren he betrays them for, forming the Shadow Alliance and even giving the life Jimmy had attempted to steal from him to Ren instead. My read of this has always been that it supported Martyn truly being happy enough for Jimmy or someone else to have his extra life, but Jimmy's act of betraying him itself being what hurt him.

I think now's a good time to start mentioning the Watcher Lore, as here is where it starts kicking into gear. Martyn's claims of emotional bonds not carrying over from previous seasons is not only a very natural progression from his emotional distancing in a coping mechanism sense, but also enables him to betray Ren too later on and not have to confront the guilt that comes with that when he tries to lead him into a tnt trap in the final 1v1v1v1. However, he still cheers for Ren as a ghost and even says that he would be happy to see Ren win, indicating he really does not hold any malice towards him.

I've seen people make jokes about the watcher lore being Martyn schizoposting and I'm sure I've made similar jokes in the past but. Speaking very genuinely here Martyn's questionable sanity is a big part of his character to me.

His Episode 8 of LL literally begins with him acting out the usual running joke of him stealing Mumbo's intro, except Mumbo and Jimmy are dead at this point and he is doing their voices and talking to himself. When the illusion is broken, he panics and the video immediately cuts to him running around obviously distressed with a disembodied voice demanding things from him.

I'm obviously not authorized to diagnose every single one of Martyn's many mental illnesses, but I think mentally breaking down in a timeloop death game is a fairly average thing to happen to someone, and Martyn might be especially susceptible due to his aforementioned need for power and responsibility in every relationship (i.e. I'd like to think he feels some helplessness/guilt over Jimmy and Mumbo's deaths, leading to this sequence).

Not to mention, someone who is emotionally vulnerable coming up with a nebulous Group of Evil People who are the source of all the bad things in a helpless situation of violence is. Something that happens historically quite alot. To try and find reason in the madness is just a human instinct, I think.

One thing I feel like I should mention is his "marriage" with Mumbo which. I honestly don't see as anything more than a gag. Not that Martyn isn't a massive hypocrite but "marrying" Mumbo would be very much contradict what he has to say about Scott/Jimmy's situation. I do think he cares for Mumbo and potentially Mumbo's naivete served as incentive for Martyn to put on the usual assertive/provider role but I don't think there's much more than that (no hate to the shippers, tho, if they knew eachother for like a week longer they would've kissed)

Double Life. Oh no

Double Life Martyn is one of my favourite POVs in the series because it is. Hilarious. Unfortunately.

To start off, he is one of the players who almost immediately accepts the soulbound system as romantic and his views on Cleo/Scott's relationship are heavily based on that (I love that one clip where he mocks them in front of Jimmy).

Him acting flabbergasted at Cleo rejecting him despite pretty much having no relationship with her prior to this season is a really funny contrast to Scott and Pearl, especially when he continues pursuing her like they're recently divorced and Cleo's just like. rolling her eyes. It's all very performative on Martyn's end and why I mentioned his sense of masculinity at the start, because in theme with DL being The Feminism Season TM this is when it comes full throttle in display with the way he treats Cleo.

Martyn keeps referring to himself as a "provider" and refers to Cleo's relationship with Scott as "childish" -- Martyn trying to win over Scott's partner to his side, assuming he knows best for the partner and calling their relationship a sham? Does any of this sound familiar?

Cleo is not like Jimmy, however, and is very clear to Martyn in terms of what she wants from him - which is an apology, no diamond swords or heart-shaped houses, but Martyn in all his emotional denseness can't understand this and keeps assuming there must be some hidden strings attached.

I couldn't find the original meme I had in mind but these are within the same genre. The one I remember had captioned something like "dads don't say "i love you" but they will buy ten boxes worth of the fruit they overheard you say you liked once", which pretty much sums up Martyn's emotional intelligence to me. He would much rather give you way too much of something he thinks you need (e.g. with Jimmy the playful teasing, with Cleo the acts of service) than just say "I love you".

Cleo's blunt honesty serves as a stark contrast to Jimmy and brings something out of Martyn that we rarely ever see -- a genuine, vulnerable interaction in which he has to admit he's hurt. Cleo immediately denies him the role of rescuer he wants to play by telling him directly that she, not Scott, was the one who came up with the idea of teaming up and even gets Martyn to verbalize he's hurt by their actions and cares for her.

Once that illusion is shattered for Martyn and Cleo even admits she's acting manipulatively towards Scott, Martyn realises he and Cleo are more alike than he initially assumed and that he doesn't need to take care of her like he always tries to with his relationships. Ironically, the one relationship he has that is born almost entirely out of government mandated performative romance, is the one that gets him to examine how he views people especially his romantic interests the most.

This is, of course, all said with the fact that following this very heartfelt moment, the next time he speaks to Cleo he pushes her off a fucking cliff and kills her in mind. And the fact that he was very much beating the shit out of her and even called their relationship "toxic" himself early on in the season.

It's kind of hard to gauge Cleo and Martyn's relationship from this point forward but Martyn definitely chills on the namecalling and cooperates with Scott and Cleo for the main part going forward.

I think it's also worth mentioning that, despite Scott once again being the object of his spite, Martyn is once again friendly with Scott all season. When he catches Cleo and Scott mid-axe crit, it's Cleo he starts hitting and not Scott, despite them both being responsible. Behind his back, Martyn will claim Scott is "ruining" Cleo but to his face Martyn is always respectful. He actually even calls Scott "pretty"/"hot" in the last episode, which has some implications I'll talk about more in the Limlife section.

Martyn, like everyone else, is weird about Pearl. Uniquely in his case, Pearl isn't a witch nor demoness, but rather a non-factor he seems to have had written off and her triumph in the end comes as a shock to his system.

He dismisses her concerns over and over in the first episode as they are exploring together and, instead of seeing her as a natural source of allyship, doesn't value her enough to keep her around as an alliance even after Scott and Cleo dump them. In his heart to heart with Cleo, he even very randomly speaks badly of her, although he immediately seems to feel a bit of guilt over it.

He never seems to view Pearl through a sympathetic lens despite the two being in the same circumstance and, again in the same conversation with Cleo, they both agree that she could act as essentially a pawn (an "extra healthbar") for them like Cleo uses Scott.

I feel the need to clarify that while, yes I do believe Martyn is Weird About Women, I also do think he's honestly above average and sees them more as people than some other men in the series (note: my standards are not very high)

He sees most people as nothings that can be manipulated or competition that also can be manipulated, it just so happens that all the women in the series so far land squarely in the former and it took Cleo saying to his face "I'm taking advantage of Scott" for him to realise she wasn't a victim. However, even afterwards, he never treats her with the same competitiveness he has for people like Scott and Scar (albeit it makes enough sense in this season since she's attached to his healthbar, but this remains the same for future seasons). And as a reminder, he holds respect for those he deems as threats, which might have something to do with why he feels comfortable hitting Cleo but not Scott.

As for Ren and the Broken Hearts Club, they didn't get a lot of time together this season since both were preoccupied with their own soulmate dramas and being awful to Pearl but what we do see of them ranges from heartwarmingly nostalgic to a little bit hollow. Martyn saying to Pearl that they're the same at this point doesn't really read to me as him being truly sympathetic since this is post the "you should go use pearl as your second hp bar" conversation and Ren is way too busy to deal with the emotional turmoil of what's going on between himself and Bigb to really pay attention to Martyn.

Ren is still very kind to Martyn, especially considering the last time he saw him in LL Martyn was trying to kill him, but there's an emotional gap between the two that's very noticeable at least to me when compared to 3L and LL.

I think Martyn, at this point, convinced of his own "emotional bonds don't carry over seasons" logic, might be a bit too comfortable on relying on Ren. In both DL and LL he runs to Ren when his current alliance gets shaky and Ren is a source of definite comfort for him (as he said so himself on stream). Ren, as a source of comfort, is not a threat to Martyn aka not someone he needs to keep tabs so when said source of comfort falls through the gaps, you get:

Limited Life. The one where he compares himself to Joffrey from GOT

I don't think I have much to say about LimLife Martyn that hasn't already been said.

I will say I don't necessarily think Majorwood is purely his rebound relationship from Ren, the Mean Gills forming is very much not OOC for either Scott or Martyn (this is pretty much how they acted with eachother at the start of 3L) and their resulting give and take coworker-esque dynamic is a very natural place for them to end up from their previous interactions. Scott, like Martyn, tries to shed his emotional attachments with each new season so they are, in a very literal sense, making eachother worse by reinforcing that habit by normalizing it to eachother.

However, the parallels to their respective 3L partnerships I can't blame people for pointing out, right down to Martyn killing both Ren and Scott in the seaons he was teamed with them and the latter being happy about it.

I think it's time to say what I've been implying with Scott and Martyn throughout this whole thing and that is that they are eachother's ideal ally. They are both aware of the game, play the game, emotionally distant, manipulative and make themselves suffer more for that mindset. I don't think there was ever a moment in their allyship where either assumed the other wasn't going to stab them in the back later, despite the mutual respect they have being very real.

Martyn spends a lot of time this season just wandering around talking to various people, alot like how he acted in 3L before he and Ren became an official thing. It's almost as if, without Ren there, he loses his default go-to guy and is once again sizing up the competition around him.

The one exception I would say would be his interactions with Cleo, who he seems genuinely friendly with, even offering himself up as a "godfather" for the Clockers before the whole server became some form of extended family. You'd think this alliance would also have some basis in the ever present Scott/Cleo alliance but Scott's constant sacrifices for the Clockers are never discussed between him and Martyn, in fact the two of them rarely talk about anything ever past base-building and dolphin-wrangling, and the Clockers seem to treat them as two seperate entities rather than an alliance (e.g. Bdubs seems almost entitled to Scott's life after a certain point, but none of them ever even consider asking Martyn for time).

That, and of course the fact that Martyn kills Scott very unsympathetically towards the end, really point me in the "Martyn is still spiteful towards Scott" direction -- after all, alliance or no alliance, I don't think Martyn would want to be in the conversation with Scott where he tells him about his "love you back" exchange with Jimmy. Martyn certainly respects Scott, loves Scott I'd even say, but I don't know if he actually likes Scott.

I think it's also interesting that it's this season where Martyn's Watcher Lore interludes make a return, just in time for his source of comfort (Ren) to be missing.

Re: the watcher lore the comment Martyn makes about swapping out souls of players who are too "damaged" is very in line with his DL seeing women (and "weaker" men like Jimmy, Mumbo and, of course, Ren) as default victims as, knowingly or not, he implies through this that all the women in the series have souls too weak to withstand the horrors. This also in turn implies that he himself is not broken, which I think he'd like to believe.

Secret Life. It's happy again :D oh wait no

Secret Life starts with Martyn kissing Jimmy. I feel like we moved on from this way too fast in general I mean on the cheek or not he did kiss him he did literally kiss him.

I'll be honest I think the Big Dogs POV is the one I'm least familiar with out of all of these but from what I do remember it's very nice to see Martyn and Jimmy settling back into what seems like their Evo dynamic or even their pre-horrors LL dynamic.

Unfortunately Jimmy is not Cleo and thus cannot get Martyn to be the slightest bit vulnerable, so their dynamic remains stagnant and neither acknowledge the awkwardness that still resides between them.

Jimmy is at least very clearly holding onto some discomforts, judging by his behaviour late in the series when he acts aggressively towards Pearl and celebrates Lizzie dying. He even chases Scott down with a sword on horseback earlier on and, very early in one of Pearl's episodes, he quickly switches between sounding sad and angry.

It's clear to me at least SL Jimmy has reached some sort of breaking point, and this never gets acknowledged by Martyn (I like to think he just lacks the EQ to deal with it). This all cascades into Jimmy attempting to kill Martyn and running away before dying.

SL Martyn feels almost like, to me, the 3L Martyn who successfully convinced Jimmy to team with him and the disaster that comes with that. Martyn certainly has continued to be his survivalist self, not trusting outsiders to the point where when the Wither/Warden combo is unleashed, he immediately assumes they're picking off reds and goes to hide.

Weirdly enough, his protective tendencies towards Jimmy are pretty much gone. It's almost as if when he doesn't see an active threat (e.g. Scott) he assumes things must be good enough and leaves it at that, which also implies he can't comprehend that He might be detrimental to Jimmy himself.

Obligatory. Yes he still misses Ren. Him literally basing his alliance concept off of dogs is. hilarious. I'm so sorry babygirl.

Real Life is, again, non-canon to me but turns up the "dad who buys you 45 mandarins" energy to 11 with him being Ren and Skizz's pseudo-dad. I love Ren having a crisis about his own RP btw it's the funniest thing and he does it like. Everytime.

Uh yeah I hope that's long enough

[stagefoureddiediaz]

Big fan of you and your blog 👋🏼 you have such great analysis on everything ❤️

Do you really think Tommy will be gone before the mid season finale? Don't you think there's a chance he'll be there the whole season like Taylor? I'm sure he's not staying but what if Tim decides to give him more screen time for the plot?

I hope you're having a wonderful day!

Hey Nonnie

I'm so flattered you enjoy my blog and find my analysis interesting! I don't know what to do with having a fan - how exciting - I've never had one before 🥰🥰🥰

I really really do think Tommy will be gone before we go on mid season hiatus and he definitely won't be there all season like Taylor was. The Taylor lasting an entire season was created by a variety of things going on all at once - JLH was going on maternity leave, which left a gap in things that they needed to do something with and the network was actively blocking the show from telling the story it wanted to tell, so they were forced into a situation that they tried to make the best of, and tried to do something different with - the entirety of season 5, but especially the first half, was a mess from a production perspective - they reshot a pretty sizeable chunk of ghost stories and lots of discussions were going on behind the scenes and Tim had also stepped back as a show runner (because he was throwing his toys out of the pram because Fox wouldn't let him tell the story he wanted to!) Fox didn't really want to fund the show and didn't really care about it. Things are very different now were on abc - the network is really excited about the show and are giving Tim and the writers room the freedom to tell the story they want to - hence the fact we got Bi Buck last season and as the 100th episode no less.

The other aspect to this is that I don't think Tim is all that impressed with LFJ's behaviour - there are rumours that he has apparently been difficult on set and refused to play some scenes out how they were written. He was also making all those cameo's and making borderline to definitely not ok comments on other platforms. He's clearly damaged his standing in the industry and I think it likely that he won't get much work come his way from the disney studios going forward!

The show clearly took action on the sm front as he went entirely silent for the entirety of the summer and even now his sm presence is next to non existent - unless its been carefully curated on the 911 sm platforms. This is very likely because they are managing him and his access (even to the point of ensuring he isn't taking pictures and video when on the lot so he can't post to his pages). We've also had only the 1 singular tv interview outing for Lou - with Oliver (because he couldn't be trusted alone as much as the fact that its Bucks arc) which is a clear indicator of things - because this was a pretty big thing when it happened - for not just bi representation, but for the queer community more widely - this is prime time network tv showing someone coming out later in life - thats perfect fodder for

My impression (very much from the outside of things but based on what I've seen and experienced over the years) based on some of the things Tim said both at the end of s7 and the beginning of s8 (which should always be taken with an entire vat of salt!) is that he has made some changes to his plans for the show - because he decided to get rid of Tommy earlier than he had intended to when s7 was still airing.

The impression I was getting from the subtext of what he's been saying, is that he had plans for the bt arc which were a bit more substantial that would've lead to a bt break up sometime in the last 2 episodes before going on mid season break. But we're now in a situation where its looking like he'll be gone by roughly half way through 8a (well it would've been half way through had he not made the plane emergency in to a 3 parter rather than a 2 parter) and that other storylines have been shifted around to accommodate this.

so yeah - I don't think there is any risk of Tommy being given more screen time for plot purposes - Tim is clever enough to have figured out how to reduce it without it impacting the story he wants to tell. So trust the process and just know it won't be much longer (and I'm sure Oliver will be the one throwing the biggest party when he's gone!)

I hope you've had a wonderful day as well 💜

[ghostinthelibrarywrites]

Ooh, 3, 23 and 65 for the fic writer ask game!

Thank you for the ask!

3. Describe the creative process of writing a chapter/fic:

So when I'm starting a new fic, I usually start out by writing the first chapter/scene or two while the idea is still fresh and exciting in my head. This 1) gives me an idea of whether this is actually an idea I want to commit to (I have many, many, many snippets of fics in my drafts that I started, was really excited about for a couple thousand words, and then fizzled out) and 2) helps me establish things like setting and character dynamics (especially if it's an AU.)

Once I've gotten the first chunk written and have decided if this is actually something I want to write, that's when I outline. My outlines are usually bullet points and normally shift around quite a bit as I'm writing and characters go off in their own directions. Often, the ending of a fic is entirely different than what I originally imagined, so I try to be flexible and let it happen.

As for chapters, I typically try to write from beginning to end, unless I have a particular scene that won't leave me alone or one that's giving me trouble, in which case I may jump around a bit.

23. Best writing advice for other writers?

If you hit a block in a scene you're writing, copy and paste the last few lines you wrote into another doc and try something different. Often, the problem isn't the last line you wrote, but a couple of lines back and reworking or scrapping those lines entirely can rejuvenate a struggling scene.

If that doesn't work, try a different POV! I can't tell you how many times a scene or fic has felt like pulling teeth until I realized I was trying to make this one character's story when it was really another.

And if that doesn't work, you might just need a break!

65. Tell us what you're most looking forward to writing--in your current project, or a future project.

I'm really looking forward to chapter eight and onward of young blood (never get chained)! The next couple of chapters are necessary setup for the second half of the fic, which is why they've been a bit of a slog to write, but we're pretty much going to hit the ground running at the end of chapter 8 and not let up until the end of the fic. I'm excited for all the yelling in the comments :)

I'm also excited for the Crystal-centric fic in the MSI-verse, which I'm hoping to have out sometime in late January/early February. One of the two timelines focuses on Crystal and Edwin's enemy-to-friends dynamic and I'm just a sucker for these two learning to communicate and appreciate each other.

Get to know your fic writer!

[emcscared-whumps]

we gettin on the sweat tonight lads

i'm sick without really feeling sick (test results pending lol), so tonight, we're gonna see just how fast i can bust out a finished piece >:)

there will be no consequences! because i wont be infecting my client at work tomorrow!! :D

im talking a bust portrait of a character with a simple face angle, simple expression, simple lighting, that otherwise fully rendered and polished

and im going to log-- (OH GOD I SPELT LOG WRONG WHAT THE FUCK)-- the *actual* time i spend on the piece because i found out that clip studio can tell me how long ive had the canvas open, but i'm sure that i leave canvases open for entire days without touching them, so... that is not accurate enough for me

anyways; the reason? a friend and i were talking about art commission pricing and the habits we've noticed in the art community, and i got curious: what would *i* price my stuff if i were to hypothetically sell it?

through some basic maths and reasoning between us, i have discovered that the key to making a good rate is skill at speed

(it's not as bad as it looks, my american friends, i am using aud :) currently, 1usd = 1.50aud, 50aud = 33.28usd)

we talked about how much is a fair price for the product vs how long it takes to make, and i discovered that if you're quick at making a character bust lineart of moderate quality for $15, and can do one in 30 minutes, accounting for *only* time spent drawing, you'd be making $30 an hour, which is pretty cool considering it'd only be bust lineart. ($20 for bust lineart would yield $40/hr, but i'd only charge that of my skills and precision were reliable and en pointe. it could even be pushed to $25, but i wouldnt go more than $30 unless some super complex shit was happening and i happened to be very very good. at which point you still want to be as fast as physically possible)

there was a plot twist though: rendering times.

hypothetically, if i charged $20 for bust lineart, extra $10 for flats, extra $10 for shadibg, and extra ($5 to) $10 for extra finishing details (little backgrounds etc), that would be $50 total for a fully rendered bust. if i took 4 hours to do it (which i think is reasonable time (for me) to do most things by hand), all of a sudden, that's made my $30-40/hr into $12.50/hr.... which is kinda (very) shit lmao

with this in mind, i have one question: just how fast can i make stuff, and what quality will it be? what would i theoretically be paid for my fully rendered bust pieces?

i usually an very VERY slow partly coz i cannot stay focused on a piece for long enough chunks at a time, or, if i can, i will stop halfway through and leave it for several weeks or months, leading to a turnaround that is at such a leisurely pace even *snails* would be envious

ALTHOUGH. last year, my friend (same as above) alerted me to a built-in time-lapse feature in clip studio. i was intensely curious. for whumptober that year, i had a very clear vision of a piece i wanted to do for one of the prompts, so i used that to test the feature. i sat down at about 1700, stopped only for dinner, and had the whole thing exported and posted to tumblr at around 0100, about 7 hours. i have a sneaking suspicion that was the fabled beast called hyperfocus lmao. the [piece] was a roughly rendered full-body shot with a dynamic pose, both hands exposed, and a more complex expression, not bad considering that my pride piece took 10 months :)

bust portraits are my most comfortable style of piece, so i will experiment with those, especially since my character profiles need them, and also i want them all to look cohesive, which means i will re-draw all of my current ones (rip pete, timmy, and kate lol)

(hm, if i took 3 hours instead of 4, that'd be $16.70, if i took 2, it'd be $25... still not even close to that tasty tasty $30-$40/hr... so the solution would be to up the price of rendering since flats are easy. extra $20 (instead of $10) for rendering, since it's as complex as anatomy with lineart, bumping the total price to $60 (which is starting to *really* push the envelope of what i think people would pay for my art). so if i took 4 hours at that price, that'd be $15/hr, 3 hours would be $20/hr, which is better but still kinda shit for all that extra work, and any faster might reduce the quality to a point where it isnt worth that extra $10...)

......... i'll let u guys know the results lol

[marigoldplastic]

I'm not doing okay

It's currently 3 AM. Usually, this isn't an unfamiliar time of day for me, but right now, it's foreign and something I wish I wasn't experiencing. I'm scared, I'm angry, I'm frustrated. I wish there was more I could do, but all I'm capable of is slowly building my life and urging myself to succeed.

Thoughts race through my head wondering what my future will look like. Will my dad ever be able to walk me down the isle? Will he be able to see me graduate from Community College? Will he make it to the liver transplant? Right now... a lot of these things are looking like a "no". I'm devastated. You really can never prepare yourself enough to see your hero and most beloved family member in such a vulnerable position. He's so weak and is becoming increasingly frail... all in the span of a couple of short weeks.

I'm awoken tonight, at 2:30 AM, by the echoing sounds of violent vomiting through the walls from the master bathroom to my room; it really is a shame my closet wall is the bathroom wall. Now I can't sleep anymore. Not that my sleeping has been any good lately. Restless, on and off fits of weird, and often times uncomfortable, dreams have been plaguing me this past week and a half. I guess I can try to find the bright side tonight. At least I know I'll be awake enough to shower this morning. It's 3:29 AM and I need to wake up at 6:45 to prepare to leave for my classes and drive my friend to school with me.

Guess the early bird gets the worm...

I feel very... alone. I feel like I pissed my best friend off, just by talking about my textbook buying habits. I don't know how to talk or be around people on a deeper level. Even these friends, who have known me for nearly a decade now, are foreign to me at times. Sometimes I feel so selfish, like I don't pay enough attention to them. Sometimes I find it really hard to relate to them. They like to say I'm rich. I'm really not, but I can't ever say that to them because they just don't believe it. The only reason I have the things I do is mostly because of my brother, or years and years of saving items and things. From collecting hand me downs and taking advantage of every opportunity I can when I can.

Especially back in the day, when I lived in the desert and my dad was with Karen still, we struggled a lot. Karen would spend all of my dad's money. He was retired and got a decent pension, but that wasn't enough to support his child with a birth defect AND his selfish wife's spending habits; so he got another job at a Tax Man. Those years were really rough... He wasn't around a lot and the abuse I suffered from Karen was at some of its worse at that time. I only have the things I have because I played my cards right. I'm not rich, I may be fortunate, but I'm not privileged in such a way like that. Things are quite a bit better now, because my dad's new wife - my step mom - has her own pension. Which is great because Karen took half of my dad's in the divorce.

My dad... he used to buy meat on sale on the extra weeks of work during the longer months. He would store them in a deep freezer and use that to feed the family for the month until he could scrounge up enough to buy more again. He struggled to pay bills. He got angry at Karen for spending money they didn't have. But my dad is SMART. He worked his ass off and saved every penny he could to provide for his family and kids so they never FELT poor. This extended to me, even in his retirement. To say we're rich is an insult. I hate that my friends can so casually call me that because we play our cards right. We were never given a good hand, we just played the slow and long game, and put on good little white people smiles.

My dad shouldn't have spoiled me like he did. As I get older, the more I realize just how much that took out of him. The only reason we got the Oak Hills house was because he put his entire inheritance into building it. His dead father, who he loved so much, left him a small chunk of change and he couldn't use it for himself. He used it to build a house in a better school district for me and used it for my extensive surgeries. That money is just gone. Especially after the divorce... he never kept documentation of his inheritance he put into the house so that was never given back to him after the divorce. I struggle to keep my leg healthy because of how much he struggled to give me the medical help I needed.

We may not be outwardly struggling... but we're not well off. My stepmom, god my stepmom had it even worse than my dad did. She would collect cans from people at her various jobs to pay for her children's necessities and extracurricular activities. They would run the water on the lowest possible pressure and have lights on only at specific times of days because some months the bills were almost too expensive to pay. I shouldn't have to apologize for being "privileged" the way I am. It's not a privilege. It's the result of years, decades, of hard work, tears, and thrown away dreams. This isn't being rich. This is what sacrifice looks like. And now it looks like a frail man who shouldn't be dying as quickly as he is.

I don't know what I'm going to do with myself when he passes. As time moves on... I feel less comfortable confiding in my friends about the struggles I go through. I fear judgement. I fear being too intense. I'm just not built to interact with people, no matter how close they are to me. I can't control myself, I can't control my emotions, I can't be a good friend unless I'm throwing money at them. Even when I have no money to throw, I still do it. Why do I feel the need to buy people's friendship. I guess the answer is simple. I'm not good enough to have friends with just my personality and social skills. I need to have something that makes people want to keep me around. Otherwise... they'd easily see what a shitty person I am.

It's funny how I worry about my dad walking me down the isle someday... I don't know if I'll ever get married. I'm an awful partner and my mental illnesses, whatever the fuck they may be, are just too intense. I feel horrible putting people I love through my tantrums and indecisiveness. I'm one of those people that probably shouldn't be alive. I'm more of a burden on this world than it's worth.

If only my dad didn't put his inheritance into my leg. I'd much rather of killed myself years ago then grow up to be the person I am and see my dad in the state he's in now.

[theme-park-concepts]

Like what I'm thinking about is this:

In screenwriting (and other types of writing) it's common to make an outline that looks something like

Because of x then y, Because of y then z and so on.

Which is fine for writing a screenplay, but thinking of a story in those terms isn't always conducive to creating an nonverbal experiential story even if you technically could frame it that way. Like when you do that you almost always by consequence get stories that require characters to explain things to you along the way, lots of changes that are hard to follow, a big ole plot etc.

I'm thinking a bit of what sondheim says about lyric writing and how it differs from poetry. In poetry the words are the entire piece of art and must carry themselves. But in songs, the words sit on the music and come alive. So you have to take that into account when writing them. On the page "oh what a beautiful morning oh what a beautiful day" looks too simple and boring. But you sing it and it soars. And I think something similar happens in experience.

Like you almost have to craft an experience that on the page, or explained, actually looks too simple, like the events of a children's picture book. Because once you add in the actual experience of it, it comes alive.

Like with flight of passage, the actual ride portion beat list would look positively boring for great chunks of it.

It'd be like:

we follow our tour guide through the air and down to the river. And then to the waterfall. And then to the forest. And then to the ocean. And then a whale jumps in our way so we turn around and fly under the wave. We fly past more rocks. A big dragon gets angry at us and chases us for 2 seconds so we get out of his way and rest in a cave. We look at the cave and some glowing dandelions. We leave the cave for no particular reason and do some fun flight tricks because we can and it's the climax. We basically repeat the beginning now, flying back over the trees, down to the river, rhinos get in the way this time so we back up slightly, and dive off a cliff because I guess that's the way we get to the ocean again. We look at the whale jump up again and it's over.

Like can you see how this kind of storytelling utterly doesn't work with an screenwriting/plot framework of a leads to b, b leads to c, c leads to d? Like technically everything in the story does have a cause and effect but the cause and effect are largely irrelevant to the larger experience arcs at hand. The reasons are often just "because that's the way to the next destination", or "because we're really into flying now". And it'd be so tempting if viewed from a traditional story writing angle to make the encounter with the banshee a much longer and multi-step battle, or to cause the cave to collapse to make us leave, or turn the momentary 2 second minor obstacles into big sequences, or send us on a "quest" of some kind. So many modern rides will do this and create an intricate flowchart of events that lead to each and every 13 second scene and it's just too much to keep track of. Too much to communicate in too little time. "Because that's the way the road goes" is all the reason you sometimes need. The plot requires itself to be way simpler than you expect.

And then the real question becomes how do you tell a story with sophisticated themes while having a plot no more complicated than The Very Hungry Caterpillar. And the answer seems to be, or at least one answer, is priming the audience with a shit ton of exposition in which the very simple plot can sit inside a very complex world in which it is meticulously framed. Which luckily, in the theme park world, you have 2 hours worth of queue to do that work in.

[infiniteglitterfall]

It doesn't.

I think their point is that

Jews are indigenous to this land and have been there continuously for more than 3,800 years,

their land has been under colonization since the Greco-Roman Empire;

the Romans were replaced by a series of Islamic empires, until the Ottoman Empire finally fell at the end of World War One;

and that the reason it's called Palestine in the first place is not because there was a group called Palestinians who were indigenous to it. It's because the Romans were like, "fuck you Jews for revolting yet again! We're killing another half-million of you, selling 97k more into slavery, downgrading you from a Roman state into a mere district, and renaming that district after your long-gone enemies, to really show you that you don't deserve to live here!"

Calling the Jews colonizers, when the entire pushback against Jewish immigration was, "this is Arab land! What do they mean, self-determination?! They have always been second-class citizens at best!" is Quite A Move.

Calling the Jews colonizers when they had no colonial power behind them for forty years of immigration -- and then Britain arrived, and immediately prioritized Arab League interests, because those countries had The Oil -- is also Quite A Move.

Calling Jews colonizers for fighting back against a MASSIVE act of war, a brutal invasion, massacre, and destruction across 21 towns, is Quite A Move.

Yes, definitely, Israel should have just... ignored Hamas's public statement that it would repeat the attack "again and again and again" until Israel was destroyed. That its entire reason for existence is to destroy Israel because Jews Are Bad.

And the fact that it's apparently now capable of the most detailed planning ever seen in a terrorist attack. Down to having floor plans from every town: dentist's offices, youth centers, supermarkets, elementary schools. Down to giving its fighters phonetic guides for phrases like "Lie down on the floor" and "Take off your pants" in Hebrew.

It's no big deal.

Calling the Jews colonizers for saying Israel is trying to wipe out Hamas, a powerful terrorist group that harms Palestinians even more than Israelis, rather than attempting genocide of a fraction of Palestine, is Quite A Fucking Move.

The timeline for this war starts on October 7, because that's when Hamas committed a fucking act of war.

And it's amazing how many of you in the notes (and how many people in general) have just weirdly assumed that Israel constantly kills civilians in Gaza.

Like you're vaguely aware that October 7 was kind of bad, so you have to extrapolate backwards from it to guess what Israel must have done to deserve it.

And yet, anything you can come up with is something that Israel has done in the West Bank.

And yet, Israel has never been at war with the West Bank.

Israel and Palestine have never been at war with each other at all.

Only Israel and Hamas.

Only since Hamas took over Gaza, and got powerful enough to start wars.

The timeline for Israel's current existence starts on May 14, 1948, when Israel had to declare independence because Britain pulled out.

When Palestine should have declared independence alongside it.

But its leader, Amin al-Husseini, refused to. Because he was a literal Nazi war criminal.

Who had been working for months to convince the Arab League to immediately invade and destroy Israel.

And who had been organizing militias in attacking and besieging Jewish and Jewish/Arab towns across the land ever since the U.N. voted to partition it into two states. Which had already driven 350,000 Arab Palestinians to leave.

You could go all the way back to WWI, to the League of Nations vote to dedicate this chunk of the Ottoman Empire as a Jewish homeland again.

Not to kick anyone out of it. Just to have both the Arab and Jewish communities self-govern, and share in the overarching state government. Just to have one fucking place on this earth where Jews weren't being massacred and excited regularly because they had a say in shit.

In the land they came from, where many of them still lived, and which is still mentioned like seven times daily in Jewish prayers even in the diaspora.

Fucking start it whenever you like. The history is the same either way.

Aamer Rahman: "A colonizer’s favourite trick is to start the timeline when it's convenient for them."

[queen-zigzag]

Oh boy, you missed the Post+ fiasco!

If you haven't already gotten caught up:

Tumblr announced Post+, which is basically the same old Tumblr/Twitter/GameFAQs/whatever Gold Account joke everyone's been saying for the past ten years.

The concept is basically that you can have a regular free Tumblr account, you can have a Post+ account where free content is divided between paywalled posts, or you could just run a fully paywalled blog. My go-to analogy is that it's like if paywalled Patreon posts were sandwiched between free Tumblr posts.

People get pissed and riot because as you know, software pirating masterposts are common here and a recent meme has been "I can't believe this website's free". People don't want to be browbeat into paying subscription fees to people's blogs.

People saw the first Post+ blog out in the wild: kaijuno. They proceeded to get clusterbombed with harassment.

It turns out Tumblr approached her to be a Post+ ambassador, and (to my knowledge) made her the only Post+ blog on the entire website. They basically hung her out to dry and take all the heat for being a Post+ blog while they played the "oopsy woopsie we're just staff!" card. She recanted her support the next day and spoke with a couple of news websites about it.

Post+ edits began popping up for other blogs, with some blogs (like biggest-gaudiest-patronuses) receiving hatemail and/or revived vitriol about their existence on the platform. It basically refreshed the wider Tumblr community to the fact that they existed, and through the lens of a significant backlash at that, which led to a renewed wave of harassment due to people being duped by these memes.

People combed the TOS and found that A) Tumblr was partnering with a billing service called Stripe, meaning that Tumblr users would be beholden to their TOS as well as Tumblr's which most people don't know, B) Tumblr can basically wash their hands of any activity that breaks either TOS and leave the user hanging out to dry (which is standard, but still caused a panic), and C) since early Post+ functionality has been baked into the app and the TOS has been changed, Tumblr's almost certainly going full steam ahead whether the userbase wants it to or not.

Tumblr released a feedback form for Post+ and everybody trolled it

Someone planned a 24 hour Tumblr strike in the same vein as the (failed) 2018 Tumblr strike in protest of the NSFW ban. It's set for the 5th/6th of August.

I've heard this once or twice but idk if it's true or classic Tumblr misinformation. Allegedly, for desktop users, Tumblr would take a 5% cut of any income you made through Post+. For mobile users, they would take 30%.

So basically, Tumblr wants to get a slice of what Patreon has by rubbing the monetisation in people's faces on the main platform here, and it's alienated a huge chunk of Tumblr's userbases.

thanks, this is actually really helpful in understanding whats going on! its really funny how every paragraph somehow makes it worse. or at least it would be funny if it werent so sad

[gameting]

“If you haven’t heard of this game already then that’s okay, but if there’s room under that rock what’s the rent like?”

Minecraft Review - Perfectly crafted

Originally created by Markus Persson in 2009, published by his own company funded by the game's huge success Mojang in 2011, and bought out by Microsoft in 2014, the original Minecraft is a far cry from the most current release. Having been in constant development for a decade it's safe to say that Minecraft has only grown mightier as the years have gone by.

The charming pixelated sandbox has gained a following akin to other gargantuan franchises like Star Wars or Disney, striking a flame with the first Minecraft convention dubbed 'Minecon' in 2010. The game itself is very much a love child of the now billionaire Markus' favourite games of the time, and what started out as a passion project has since become a staple of the gaming world.

Story: As a completely open world experience the 'story' of Minecraft is entirely in the players hands; Want to spend the next three weeks farming? Go for it! Want to focus on finding that sweet spot to build your next house? Build away! Wanna murder some tall purple-black dudes who steal your stuff and then use their eyes to find and jump into a portal to then fight a massive dragon? Yeah, me too! The story of Minecraft is non-existent; it's a truly open 'sandbox' experience where the player has total freedom.

As time has gone by however there have been updates that add end goals, such as the aforementioned dragon, but there's no “Nice one for completing the game!” screen so to speak. So what is there to do in Minceraft if there's no story, no tension, no drama or purpose? Well...

Gameplay: The gameplay can be stripped down to four basic functions: kill, eat, build, sleep. At least that's what the alpha version could have been described as. Now, however, you can ride pigs, plant wheat, breed animals, fly, enchant weapons, fish, that's right I did say fly, kill under water zombie dudes, ride horses, keep cats, ride carts, and of course mine AND craft.

It isn't very telling from the list, but there is a lot to do in Minecraft that I haven't even mentioned. So much so that if you leave the game for a few months you could come back to entirely new items and features that seemed inconceivable in the past. I mean the fact that you can fly now? I don't even know how to do that I just saw a friend do it and I've already poured the last week into trying to find out how.

I mentioned that you can enchant weapons, but you can also enchant yourself, albeit temporarily, through the use of potions. Get some glass, make a bottle, and you're one step closer to being able to see better in the dark, jump really high, do more damage or even swim faster under water. The amount of stuff to do in Minecraft can be dizzying, but part of the fun is trying to figure out how to do everything as hard as you can before turning to the wiki.

There are of course baddies in the game outside of dragons and block stealing weirdos; zombies, creepers (the green thing that go boom), skeleton archers, drowned (wet zombies), slimes, blazes (hot shooty boys), spiders, baby zombies and drowned (the worst), Ghast (big white screamy memey shooty boys) and of course other players, the latter of which is one of the best ways to experience the game.

The world in which you inhabit in any video game is just as important as the baddies you slay. Some games push you down linear corridors, some games even tie you to a single path and all you can really do is aim and shoot, and while some games give you large sprawling maps for you to explore at your leisure, in Minecraft, well, the world is made of “chunks” as we pros call it, and it never ends. No, really, it never ends, the game world is procedurally generated, which means you can pick a direction and keep going until you find the perfect mountain to make your home.

There are also a variety of landscapes in the game: taiga (snowy bois), deserts, giant mushrooms, dark woods, regular woods, birch woods, mountain ranges, swamps, igloos, flat plains, and sometimes it's just a lot of water. Whatever your favourite flavour of the real world is, Minecraft has it, and with the ability to pick your seed (the combination of numbers generated when a world is made) you can customise the world you inhabit.

The following of Minecraft also came with game altering mods that can add new blocks, features, animals, bad dudes, good dudes, currency, heck you can even mod in completely different game modes which have since become easily accessible outside of the modding community.

All of this is wrapped up in an easy to learn control scheme with hit, not hit, jump, other not hit, crouch, move around and change your characters perspective between first and third person.

Graphics: Imagine really cool pixel art. Just loads of squares dude.

Sound: The sound design in Minecraft is just so good. Open a door? Mm chunky door sound. Walking on some snow? Crunchy snow sound. The sound effects for items in the game are top notch, but the game really shines with the sounds of the enemies, specifically the creepers. Casually mining and you hear that hissing sound? Well, you were mining.

The music in the game is, as it always has been, gorgeous. Subtle tones that chime in from time to time, gentle piano as the rain starts to fall, ominous noises that can only be described as “bwam” while exploring the depths of the world, all of it works together to create a cohesive sound scape that peacefully fits to whatever you're mining, crafting or slaying. Every thing sounds as it should, and the music has a mind of it's own so it never feels noisy or excessive.

Personal experience: My first real experience with Minecraft was after I 'legally' downloaded it with 'money' on 'my' computer in my own home with my 'hands' on a 'keyboard.' It was an early alpha build and I remember running away from zombies and the hissy green boys by hiding in a mountain. I figured, y'know, wait until day, hang out, then dig my way back to the real world. Only, I'd forgotten which way was out, I wasn't paying attention and ended up spending half an hour punching my way out of an endless wall of dirt.

Between then and now I'm only slightly better at building a 9x9 wooden house, and the green boys don't scare me (as much) any more. Minecraft has been a game that I've left and returned to multiple times, and now as I write this review I find myself playing online with a friend and more invested than ever; when do we fly I ask, I don't know maybe after the dragon my friend replies, and we continue to routinely murder the same bloodline of cows until we're both wearing pink boots and hats. I'd say play it with friends, but sometimes going it alone is just as fun.

Score /10: To be honest I was going into this review with a number in mind, but now that I've finished it I have to say I'm going to keep the number: it's a 10/10. From the timeless gameplay, to the addictive nature of mining and crafting, and figuring out how the hell to fly, I find myself captivated by the simplistic depth of Minecraft, the allure of dying all my sheep the same colour and making all my tools shiny. Definitely leaving my Minecraft world in my will/10.

[clashconcept]

god i feel so suffocated. i've trapped myself in another cycle of apathy and inaction and this time my fuckin spouse is along for the ride. all i have the energy to get done is my work from home job and a good chunk of that IS physical pain and exhaustion but if im being honest with myself another good chunk of it is how incredibly overwhelmed i am by everything that needs to get done, financially and around the house. it leaves no room for anything else in my life. i haven't seen my closest friends in months. a lot of them are in their own holes and i can do nothing to help. i can't find anywhere that will hire Michael here even though we tried everywhere that posted an offer from like october through january because of their fuckin record and i work from home so we're both here all the time and i'm literally never alone and i'm so introverted that the situation is starting to feel akin to drowning. they're the love of my life but we both talk in circles around the fact that we are absolutely stuck in this codependent loop because all their friends are dead or on the kind of drugs that make them kinda tough to hang out with or very very very far away and they are someone who needs people all the time and the only person they have is me. it's hard to find a compromise there. we haven't spent more than a handful of hours apart since september. we're both a combination of too depressed and in too much pain to accomplish anything most days. right now there's laundry that's been sitting in the washers in the 3rd floor's laundry room since Friday afternoon because Michael was briefly able to do things and started a load and then within half an hour it was back to neither of us being able to make it all the way across the apartment without passing out and it's been like that since. and like the incredible thing is we're still so in love??? like we don't hold it against one another bc we know we're equally to blame and also that a lot of it is out of our control entirely, and when we have energy and are both awake at the same time we're still so sweet and fun with each other and they're so fucking ridiculous and funny and wonderful and smartstupid and my favorite and our chemistry is INSANE and we're so good at communicating and i never wanna be with anyone else ever again. like i just fucking know it's gonna be worth the struggle in the end i just know it but god i'm exhausted and overwhelmed and i miss my friends

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Rebloging this because I just realized how toxic the workplace at Pixar was. According to one source:

According to one former employee, Pixar was under huge pressure to deliver Inside Out 2 in time for release. They described it to IGN as the “largest crunch in the studio’s history,” with a second source stating it was “an all-hands-on-deck studio emergency.” 

Another source says this had a damaging impact on demands placed on employees, alleging they were working long hours for months on end.

“I think for a month or two, the animators were working seven days a week,” they claimed. “Ridiculous amounts of production workers, just people being tossed into jobs they'd never really done before… It was horrendous.”

 “The internal culture of Pixar right now is really rough,” a further source said, adding that this may be prompting other employees to leave the company. “There is just an incredible amount of people who are like, ‘I can't do this anymore.’”

Other former employees claimed to IGN that the reported seven-days-a-week work schedule was further complicated by bad leadership, poor communication, inefficient management structures, and a lack of trust, damaging the company’s culture. “It was rushed work, paranoid work, paranoid leadership, mixed messaging,” one source told IGN.

The same individual even claimed that the emotional and psychological toll impacted their physical health. “You're just working 24/7. And so after a while, your body just starts breaking down.”

The article will be below if anyone wants to read it entirely:

According to another source:

“It was definitely rough,” they say. “Everybody, at least in my circles when we were talking, it was just kind of the sense of, ‘we just want to get it over with. We just want it to be finished and done and to not be looking at it anymore,’ which, I don't feel like is the best way to make a movie that everyone feels good about. There was definitely kind of a sense of ‘just push through it. We're just going to hit the finish line and get it over with.’”

The rush at the end of the production, too, was spread unevenly throughout Pixar. A couple of sources were largely unaffected; others found it unusual how long they had to wait to get their work while watching their colleagues push through grueling hours. “It was odd to see some people on fire and some people with nothing to do,” one source recalls.

It got to a point where some had to wait so long while others crunched, one source says, that visual effects artists were starting their shots when the shots weren’t even fully animated. It’s a practice that’s referred to as “working dirty” – essentially, doing a large chunk of work ahead of time that you know will likely be thrown out, on the off chance that it will be used.

The full article will below of anyone wants to read it too:

I’m very disappointed and sad about how toxic the workplace was. It seemed like no one cared. I feel especially sorry for those who were laid off.

Pixar is my favorite. Seeing them do something like this is very upsetting and makes me feel bad about liking the movies.

This is just all kinds of messed up…

Okay, so I watched Inside Out 2 at like 5 am this morning. And I have to say that the movie isn’t bad! I just expected more to happen. Like Riley having a crush on a boy from her hockey team or something? And maybe add more to the girls that were gossiping about her?

I just feel like they could’ve added a bit more to the story to develop her character even more. Makes me wonder if we’ll get an Inside Out 3 or something.

Have any of you seen Inside Out 2? If so, what did you think about it? And what stuff would you add in if you could?

I have to say, my favorite emotion is Joy. She’s a very complex character and I loved her character development in this! She seems to understand the good and the bad side of things, which is why she’s one of my favorite characters. ♥️

[ecotone99]

[TH] The Long Sleep

Trevor awoke with a lurch, first aware of the tubes in his mouth, nostrils, hands, and who knew where else. Then came the retching, his stomach discharging whatever the hell that brown goo was.

He held the bedside table and the mattress as he vomited, not really sure where he was, or if he'd have to clean up this mess later. Light was scarce in the room, signalling either the start or the end of the day.

What was this place? Did he have too much to drink again? That wouldn't be a surprise. Yes, that's gotta be it. A celebration. Bits and pieces of information followed his train of thought.

It was his birthday, and of course he'd get plastered again. Then there was the fighting, the car skidding, the screaming—Trevor looked down at his body and gave himself a good pat-down.

He still had all of his limbs, and they didn't hurt, albeit feeling a little foreign, as if he hasn't used—or seen—them in a while. They looked skinnier than he remembered too.

The memories would have to wait. Laboriously, he propped himself into a seating position, still grasping tightly at the edges of the table and bed, accidentally pressing a light switch of sorts during the action.

Then he jumped with a start as a voice called out his name.

"Trevor Jones, emergency patient number oh-one-three," said a man's voice.

He looked around, seeing nobody in the twilight. A woman's voice followed soon after.

"You're recording? So do I go now? Right, okay."

So it was a recording.

"If you're hearing this," the voice continued, "then you've waken out of your coma. You're one out of twenty-seven patients who are reliant on life support. Unfortunately, this also means that you'll be left behind, due to... a government-declared emergency."

The urge to puke came up again, though Trevor didn't know if that was due to his circumstance or from the tone of the woman's voice. He began removing the tubes from his body, waste bag and all. He yanked the IV from his wrist before it could make him queasier than he already was.

"We're being... attacked. We're not sure by who, or what. All communications have been cut, so we're not even sure if it's a global situation at the moment. Right now, we're instructed to evacuate and head north."

"Hello?" Trevor cried weakly. The world still spun around him.

"You should try and do the same. Look for bands of survivors and carry on from there. Hopefully, everything will boil over before you wake up. If not, try and avoid open-air areas, especially at night.

"We don't know much about these things. All we know is they attack from the skies, so always keep looking up. They seem to need direct line of sight, meaning that you'll be fine under cover. Move during the day, and hide at night, but they've also been known to attack when there's too much sound."

Was this a joke of some sort? Some kind of prank people play on their drunk friends? He half-expected Ben or Nicole to walk in any second now, phone-cameras in their hands, laughing at the elaborate plan they'd just pulled off.

"Again, we're—I'm—sorry that we had to leave you behind. Take care and good luck."

The room once again descended into silence with those parting words. Trevor looked around once more. He shared the room with three other beds, all dishevelled. Lived in. They were probably his roommates once, and he'd been the last to wake up.

A sudden shiver ran down his spine. What must it have been for the first person to wake up? Did they hang around, or did they make a run for it? Worse, where were they now?

With shivering muscles that could barely support him, Trevor slid his feet down to the floor, his bare feet touching the cold linoleum. There were still lights coming from the devices next to his roommates' beds. There was no blood or signs of struggle, so these people must've woken up on their own, just like him.

Staggering through the dark, Trevor walked to his bedside drawer and rummaged through it. His trusty digital watch and mobile phone were inside, the former still functional, the latter totally dead. But it might still hold some clues so he pocketed his phone.

The time on his watch read six in the morning. The date read August 26. His birthday was November 13. Had he been in a coma for almost a year? Where were his friends? How was mom and dad? Where was he? He needed to find out quick, so he dragged himself to the door.

"Hello?" he called, only as loud as he dared, the warnings on the recording still fresh in his head. Maybe there were others who were still here. He was one out of, what was it, twenty-three?

He passed a humming chunk of machinery as big as a dinner table. Wires jutted out of it, snaking their way into the room he came out of. Besides the whir from this contraption, the entire building was dead silent.

Was this a generator of some sort? Trevor had heard the beeps and gasps coming out of the life-support machines in his room, and there didn't seem to be running power readily available.

The room next door had a generator too, and Trevor rushed towards it. More survivors, he thought, and he felt his heart leap with excitement as the entered the equally dark room. The hope faded as quick as it sparked. The room was empty, just like his.

"Hello?" he yelled again, louder this time, as implored by his increasing nerves. He hurried to the next room, then the next. No luck. The entire building was abandoned.

Let's head outside, then. Maybe head home.

Trevor began finding his way out of the building, which was beginning to register itself as a hospital in his mind. ICU, the signs said. Cardiology. Pulmonology. Exit. The last one was what he was looking for.

He put one foot after the next, aware that walking was sapping every bit of energy out of him. Was there even a chance that he could make the trip—Trevor stopped in his tracks. Was that a silhouette of a body he'd just walked past?

Trying to keep his trembling legs under control, Trevor held his breath and back-stepped as quietly as he could. Sure enough, before a window that was lit by the rising sun, stood a figure hunched over a cupboard. The thing was looking directly at him.

There was the slightest of a pause. Then the figure leapt at him, screaming as it did so. Trevor let out a howl as well, and lifted his hands to protect his face. As the thing came closer, Trevor would realise that it only reached up to his chest. Was it a child?

Instead of attacking, the figure ran right past him and into the corridors behind him.

"Wait!" Trevor yelled, suddenly aware of the situation. "Don't go! You need to help me. I'm not here to hurt you!"

He gave chase, only seeing flashes of the figure before it disappeared behind another corner. Trevor ran as fast as he could, despite his failing legs, trailing far behind the little creature.

Still, through his persistence, Trevor managed to find the exit, a set of double doors framing the bright lights beyond, still slightly ajar from the person who'd just exited before him. He burst out, yelling, wheezing, blinded by the lights, then by the dark spots in his vision, and he found it weird how the ground came up to meet him, but he would soon return to the long sleep where he just came from.

This story was written for the Reddit writing prompt: You fall into a coma after an accident and wake up a few years later; you find a recorder with a voice message telling you to run.

I'd started writing this as a short story, but now I feel like this could be a longer story worth exploring. What do you think? Is this introduction interesting enough?

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