#the theory that he ends up living in some alternate reality and thats why we didnt see him at all in together again is…… dumb

[boypussydilf]

these youtube comments are NOT the only place ive seen sentiments like this WHAT are you guys talking about. “simon feels like he’s worthless without magic. so give him magic again :)” This is like putting a hello kitty bandaid on a neck wound that is nearly severing your head. that’s not going to help anything at all. that is not the solution and that is not where this is going. like, things that Happened To Him are part of the cause for why he is so fucked up, but ultimately The Problems Are Coming From Inside The Simon. as badly as he does not want to he is just going to have to learn how to exist As Simon, out-of-place human mundanity and all

[hanafubukki]

hana, correct me if this is wrong but i just rewatch the final parts of the update and it seems that Lilias dream is still ongoing. ???

The memories played before Silver was due to the ring's magic rather than Lilia's dream itself. (Like It shone when he was swallowed by the darkness right???)(my memory is fuzzy on how this started so feel free to correct me 😂😂)

I'm thinking this because I held the assumption that "Lilia didn't change anything about his dreamworld" like "he wouldve like to meet Silver and embrace the change even if it led to the loss of his first family" but even after this update—which i had high hopes that'll reveal the purpose of Lilia's dream— we still didnt get it.

Malenoa sacrificed herself, thats what we know in reality. But we saw how Lilia was forced to flee before she could die, and the last moment of this update, we're still in that bridge where we got seperated from Lilia and Baul bcs we have to take care of the blot swallowing Silver---

SO We are still on the run and and---maybe that means that the theory that Lilia wishes Levan and Malenoa were alive thats why he's having this dream still stands???

Like When he finally reaches Black Scale Castle with the egg, Meleanor shouldve arrived later as well.

Im still holding onto this because man,,,, i want more pain 😂😂😂✊✊

also this "alternate reality" is also beneficial for Silver. We know that Lilia is aware that Silver gets hurt knowing hes causing Lilia pain or him realizing that Lilia "is not his family." So maybe if this human child shouldve grown up with his original family, he wouldnt have to be suffering under him whos "incapable of love."

Maybe in the case where Meleanor is alive, the Silver Owls retreat, (maybe their ill king got cured and they stop chasing after Princess Glow lol) the wars stopped between nations then Baby Silver wouldnt have been alone waiting for someone to take care of him if his parents were there, he couldve lived a normal and happy life as the crown prince. If you consider that his original life, "its much better than Lilia could offer", didnt he also say that he shouldnt hesitate to search for his original parents?? What if this is what he meant and wish for as well???

That if only there was a world where there is no war, then Meleanor couldve lived, Levan would be found, Malleus wouldnt be alone, and Silver wouldnt torment himself from the sins of his ancestors.

Hello Lian 🌺🌷💚

Yep, we are still in Lilia’s dream still and something about how Lilia and Baul are being chased so they are going to hurry after them. I feel like next update will have Lilia waking up now that Silver has accepted himself.

Yessss!! The ring shines and omg I have thoughts and feelings on it because some said that is silvers bio dad guiding him and I’m so soft abhhh

Honestly, I think Lilia’s dreams means that despite the sacrifices and everything he went through. He was happy to have the connections and what led him to his family. He ended up with malleus and eventually with silver because of these circumstances. He also saw what kind of man the knight of dawn was too.

I am curious though, why it’s not exactly as “happy” as we assumed it would be. So I definitely see your point!! It also seems that lilia is somewhat aware?? That it’s a dream?? Because silver heard lilia was calling out to him. So I wonder maybe if lilia is somehow controlling the dream

I imagine the queen had similar powers to malleus?? And maybe we will see her UM?? And that will give a clue??

Andkdkdjsbw Lian did you have to hurt me this way?? I wonder if lilia knowing that silver is there…maybe he also wants silver to know his birth parents loved him??

I feel like if lilia believes that he didn’t provide enough for silver…I feel like silver is going to finally break and angry yell at him for such thoughts. Because doesn’t father know?? How much he’s loved??

My worry is malleus not knowing any of this. And him watching and his reaction to it all. He loves his family so much so if this is the first time he heard…then I can’t imagine the chaos of emotions he has.

[lowpolyshadow]

okok Okay the neutral endings are incredibly fucked up and insane but also theyre super not canon (bc despite shth’s attempts to be a choose your own adventure, theres a canon ending which yknow. defeats the purpose. but technically they havent Confirmed the canon route either so the more popular theories involve some of the neutral ends anyways ANYWAYS)

the actual reason for his rewrite as awkward as it is nowadays is bc in shth(2005)’s the last way it reveals that the whole point of the game was that in the end the true path shadow decides to take is “fuck it we ball” and he decides fuck black doom, the past is in the past and hes moving on from all this bullshit of being gerald’s pawn and gun’s weapon and even a little bit of maria’s hope to be Just Shadow and he will keep his promise to maria while also finally endeavoring to live life as his own self and this is why hes so superior in sonic 06 bc he

anyways so like. the neutral endings or rlly any ending that isnt the last way is more of further character study on Why Shadow Is Like This slash u know the alternate reality where he only finds out about (x) part of his creation but not (y) (which is why the theorized pathing involves multiple routes bc thats the only way he actually reaches the last way, with all the pieces of his past and all the acceptance of himself and with that acceptance, the means to let himself let go of it) AND THIS IS WHY HES SO SUPERIOR IN 06 BECAUSE H

[olde-scratch]

So I watched LUCIDS 1-4 without any prior knowledge...

and here were my thoughts. I didn’t watch any backstory or anything so enjoy my suffering.

PART 1

“So what happens when the people inside of their dreams go to sleep?” They die

“What happens when we wake up? Do they go on living while we’re not there?” THEY DIE-

“Who are they anyway?” they’re faces that our brain catalogs and stores for later use, although it’s also arguable that every time we dream we go to an alternate reality and inhabit the body of another version of ourselves. Now, were you in a car accident and trapped underwater or-

Are they twins?

(Me tuning out to do something)

“-the squirrel in spongebob was your soulmate, making you a Sandy simp-”

Me, snapping back to the video: hold up-

[missed the part about the worksheet, realized it when i rewatched 10 mins later to make this post]

yall speakin gibberish idk what youre saying-

“I’m gonna go to bed.” bro it literally looks like morning-

“You should get some sleep you look terrible.” i get six hours of sleep a night minimum and i look worse than him shut up bro-

“jump into someone else’s dream” ah i know this con-

why they all got the same face-

haha funni meme

“--an interruptiion can create feedback and tear them apart.” Death. I long for thee.

Is that Karl Jacob’s jacket?

“a second grader” makes me think this is a different school system. [i was wrong? i think?]

“[get him to] eat your apple”

[in the dream sequence] weird dream, but ive had weirder. now, Why Pamper’s-

why does he suddenly have a knife-

“You put a filter on the Dreamscape feed?”

“Technically, you are seven years old.”

???????????

the second hand embarrassment is UGGGHHH

[reading the description] you mean like the guy who was knocked out for 2 minutes on a football field and woke to find he’d dreamt 17 years of his life? oh this shall be Fun

PART 2

[I check the description] “jasper cult” what the fu-

how many camp camp references can i make during this

Is the apple a reference to religion or does the creator just really ilke apples?

“meal.”

“meal?”

meal????

Wait why couldn’t that guy eat the apple? If he wanted it in the fruit bowl, wouldn’t there be a chance of the guy eating it anyways?? Why can’t the guy who brought the apple eat it?

well he’s Dead

[debating if I should read the backstory}

n a h h h h h -

Was he gonna feed the dead guy the apple or something? Why is he upset about the apple in this scene???

oooo the grownups are fightinnnngggg

Is he an antagonist?

HE WROTE A BOOK???

oh now i want food

ESTABLISH JUSTICE ENSURE DOMESTIC TRANQUILITYYYYYYYYYYYYY

“I watched all those aforementioned shows” what shows did i miss something what-

man why you gotta hate on her jane austen fanfic let her live bro

string theory! i can get behind that! sorta-

o no he found the memes-

BOY GOT KNOCKED OUT-

kim there’s people that are dying-

is SHE an antagonist?

quinn? calling himself jasper? u sure hes not just nonbinary? is this just a metaphor for transphobic parenting?

“He died... but somewhere, he grew up.” So is your plan to take a Quinn from a different universe and make him your own, thereby robbing another version of yourself from happiness? When does this ever go well?

Yknow most people, when they lose a kid,,,, kinda,,,,,,, dont go on a ceaseless quest to find another version of their kid that grew up without knowing that another version of his mother was invading other peoples’ dreams to find and kidnap him,,,,,,,, like aint u got a therapist-

“Once you get past the point of not knowing what’s real anymore, you realize it doesn’t matter.” Well, I Got Called Out-

PART 3

“you’re real, oliver.”

aRe yOu sUrE aBoUt tHaT-

“you’ve been infected by the anti-love parasite of Mandadon” the amatonormativity is strong

so anyways ive been infected since birth hbu-

“James Jasperson, creator of Japple” did you mean to Fancy Well-Educated Man in a Black Turtleneck? cause the only FWEMBT i allow near me is prof. hidgens

“are you winning?” says the capitalist

why did you rewind to see his face?? you have the same face????? is this just bc the creator doesnt like working with other people cause in that case same but???????

“it’s a bad idea. i’m not gonna do it.” we’ve all been there. and we’ve all done it.

looks like me trying to study. (i say, a person who has studied a total of five minutes throughout their entire life.)

your “Spartan trial” looks like a bunch of guys standing on a hill pretending to be something they’re not. Let The Man Bring His Snacks.

eat the apple.

is this your first existential crisis or something what a loser lets all point and laugh

“One of you should be spared, the other shall’nt.” did you mean shant or was that a choice-

yall gonna get called out for talking shut UP

“sorry if this is too personal, btw. are you okay?”

me, confused and half understanding what’s going on and also needing to sleep cause its almost one in the morning but wanting to finish what i can find of lucids which i only starting watching cause i saw an animatic of ranboo and dream w audio from it: i don’t know anymore

“i just want my life back... i was gonna get married-” AREN’T YOU LIKE SEVEN-

ay man if this is a sacrificial cult yall gotta get daniel-

UPDATE: I  H A V E  N O T  F O U N D  I T -

“oliver”

I  F O U N D   I  T -

WHICH ONE IS QUINN?? WHO’S JASPER???? WHICH ONE IS BENJAMIN???? I THOUGH BENJAMIN WAS SEVEN BUT I THOUGHT HE WAS THE ONE GETTING MARRIED WHAT-

oliver. eat the apple.

“Can you still have memories even when you’re dreaming?” One time I woke up to my alarm and fell back asleep and in my dream I remembered that I had class in a few minutes and my dream self woke my real self up so fast I thought I was gonna get whiplash. Anyways, I was late to class bc of my computer but that doesn’t matter.

NOPE I FOUND IT. HERE’S THE AUDIO. THE ANIMATIC ONE. FINALLY.

im thinking car crash. but also maybe murder. but also maybe both? is it raining or was he drowning? is he in a coma? hmmmmmm?

wait olivers the one with the apple does that mean he’s the one dreaming? is the ending gonna be him and jasper (quinn? idk) fighting against ben and mrs hills about jasper eating the apple to save oliver from the dream? hmmmmmmmmmm-

waitwaitwait i thought oliver was 7 how is benjamin 7 years younger than him if they look the same age what what what explain america explain what you mean arkansaw-

are the cuts on his nose plot-relevant or

“What if you hadn’t been driving?” So I was right about the car accident but Mrs. Hills still said he was seven so did i mishear her say that BENJAMIN was seven? but even then oliver would be 14 and that would still be illegal-

“How are you feeling?”

“Like you’re a pretty bad therapist.”

mood

“--it makes it all bearable to have power over the stories we write in our heads” that’s why i write fanfiction

HE’S GOT THE NOTEBOOK HE’S GONNA WRITE SOMETHING ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US

WHAT YOU MEAN AN EXPERIMENT THAT’S HIS NAME-

[upon reading the description] so i was right.

wait was that supposed to be the twist in part 2 about the apple in his pocket is that what the existential crisis was about i thought it was because he was introduced to the multiple worlds theory-

PART 4

wait wasnt the other one january 2018 why we going back to 2017-

appol

“--the future and the past all already exist” mhm yep figured this out long ago

there was simultaneously a point in time in which i hadn’t known about this, had been looking it up, had been watching it, and had been writing an ending to this post, and had been posting it the next morning before class. that time is both now and not now. Welcome To The Multiverse Theory or whatever its called-

“--my favorite scene of the movie is waking up next to you.” Mine is eating fast food as I listen to AJJ and play Minecraft. We are not the same.

Now I’m hungry but it’s 1 in the morning and i already put my retainer in god fu-

[reading description] what do you mean previously??? she did that in the first episode????????

[still on description] WHAT DO YOU MEAN WILL QUINN BITE THE APPLE AND GO TO BENJAMINS REALITY ISNT THIS OLIVERS REALITY AND HE HAS TO GET BEN TO BITE THE APPLE WHY IS APPLE CAPITALIZED IS THIS THE DOING OF THE FWEMBT

i should have watched the backstory i should have watched the backstory i should have watched the backstory i should have wa-

[description] oh ive been spelling quinn right the whole time nice

i hope she rejects you /j

WAIT BENJAMIN WAS THE ONE GETTING MARRIED TO ISABELLE

ISNT HE IN SECOND GRADE-

HE IS SEVEN YEARS OLD HOW IS HE GETTING MARRIED ARE THERE TWO BENJAMINS THAT WE’RE FOCUSING ON-

bro get out of the road ull get hit

how do you knOW WHICH ONE IS QUINN THEY ARE THE SAME PERSON-

so

wait

hills wants ben to feed quinn the apple bc in his mind, that will give hills and quinn a happy ending and she doesnt want ben to see the apple bc thats gonna mean ben will know that his reality isnt reality at all. so then oliver has to,,,, not let anyone eat his apple? he just has to wake up?

IS HILLS THE VILLAIN AFTER ALL ORRRRR

wait but if ben sees the apple wont he realize that his reality is wrong and his reality will change, making it so that hills doesnt get her son? or is there some time-based rule that says they’re only transported to the reality that the person believes at that moment? or is this another stab at the multiverse thing where an infinite amount of hills gets their happy endings while an infinite amount of hills doesnt and etc etc?

i should have watched the ba-

oooo dramatique

they’re in a time loop?

nope thats a new powerpoint

wait so theyre,,,, no-

wait-

nvm-

IS THE BEN WE KNOW AN ADULT GETTING MARRIED TO ISABELLE OR NOT-

“they were actually pretty nice” didnt they throw someone off a cliff-

oh so it got confusing THEN??? NOT BEFORE?????

“it all seemed so real.” is that Not the point of vivid REM sleep hallucinations-

is oliver gonna show ben the apple and ruin hills’ whole operation

WHO ARE ALEX AND RYAN-

“what’s 25-8″ bro dont do this to me-

yep hes gonna show the apple

ayyy the guy who stole karl jacobs jacket it back

the second hand embarrassment is back and I Hate It

all that happens in episode ONE??? bro get some better writers that is bad pacing

“it’s the best!” wait until season eight. no show has a good season eight.

quinn knows about the apple thing w the dreams and multiverse and realities dont he

YOU KILLED HIM

NOT KARL JACOBS NOOOOO HES ALREADY DIED ONCE

oliver is v relatable

wHaT iN tArNaTiOn-

lemme hear that explanaton again-

is bill cipher gonna show up? i hope bill cipher shows up. i miss gravity falls

“ah! a tree! ah! a tree! ah a tree!” moooooooood

did hills murder quinn

is your family the jasper cult

TOXXIICCCCCC get that lady out of your life quinn that is so toxic

“ ah! a tree! ah! a tree! ah a tree!  ah! a tree! ah! a tree! ah a tree!” mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood

WHAT DO YOU MEAN THAT’S THE END NO WHAT WHY NO

The Adventures of Benjamin and Oliver

he is Not Good

ope-

wait so ben is equal parts an adult AND a child?? okay that clears a lot up

I MEAN HE WAS RIGHT THO BEN U CAN’T REALLY ARGUE ON THAT-

ew get off the floor

butterfly effect, multiverse theory, memory decay, and your imagination ALL exist yall gonna ignore that cause you wanna be famous?

“We already know what the future looks like!”

aRe yOu sUrE aBoUt tHaT-

to add to the list of bad things: Cats (2019)

YA BOI THINKS IT’S NOT ALREADY FIFTY YEARS TOO LATE TO START FIGHTING CLIMATE CHANGE FFFFF

BINGO BABYYYY

get what what

what mapped-

awwwww he thinks THEY’RE creating the multiverse

you gonna dismiss the multiverse theory bc of something you created in your current reality? loooserrrrrr

ABUSE YOUR GODLIKE POWERS

she draggin that seven year old

a lot makes sense now why didnt i do this first-

Jasper

the food shortages-

bro that calculators like 90 bucks at walmart

imagine meeting a stranger and they know Everything about your life like that’s gotta be so weird

what’s even weirder is them telling you you’re the deity of a cult that sacrifices animals

THAT FOURTH WALL BREAK WAS-

KARL JACOBS IS DEAD NOOOOOO

ooohhh there’s context for that

OOOOHHHH THERE’S CONTEXT FOR THIS TOOOO

w h a t -

w  h  a  t  -

W   H   A   T   -

Conclusion:

it’s 2 in the morning and i need sleep but hOOOOO MY GODS THAT WAS GOOD IS IT OVER OR NOT IDK ANYMORE IM TIRED THAT WAS CRAZY I HOPE QUINN AND JASPER GO ON TO BE VERY GOOD FRIENDS, AND I HOPE BENJAMIN AND OLIVER STAY VERY GOOD FRIENDS AND I HOPE HILLS FINDS A THERAPIST WAS A LITTLE CONFUSING BUT I ENJOYED IT

if i dream about apples im suing /j /lh

[star-mum]

LIVE REACTION TO NIGHTMARE TIME EP 1

Idk if anyone would even be interested in reading this but as I was watching the show last night I kept writing down my reactions on my notes so here we are

*this is all in caps idk why just roll with it*

THE OPENING SONG IS SUCH A BOP OMG NICK LANG HIMSELF ?????? MONSTER FUCKER RIGHTS ???? HIDGENS ENTRANCE HOW ICONIC "LUCY IS HAVING NONE OF IT" I LOVE THAT OMG JOEY PLAYING KONK (?) IS SUCH A POWER MOVE I LOVE THAT THE BEGGINING IS JUST TARZAN FANFIC SKSKSKSKS MARIAH IS TEXTING JOHN (?) AND HES LAUGHING SM WE LOVE A COMEDY QUEEN I LOVE THEM USING THE ZOOM BACKGROUNDS SKSKSKS KONK IS AWFULLY CLOSE TO COCK AND I THINK ITS ON PURPOSE ?? SPECIALLY WITH THE LAG I HAD TO DO A DOUBLE TAKE SOMETIMES SKSKSKS SOMEONE JUST SAID "TED'S ORIGIN STORY" ON CHAT AND I LOST IT !!!!! COULD YOU IMAGINE ???? HANDSOME LADY ? I MEAN SURE TIGHT JOHN IS LOSING IT FUCK MAN, SAME CURT OMG THAT ACCENT OOOOOOOOHHHH BOY I KNEW IT WAS HER FIANCEE SHIIIIT WE CANNOT TRUST HIM I KNOW THIS !!! "ENTAGLED" SKSKS WHAT SIR HES GAY CHILL OUT WHATS THE YEAR, IT FEELS SO OLD TIMEY "I'D SAY YOU HAD FEELINGS FOR THIS APEMAN" OOOOOOOHHHH DONT U SAY JONATHAN IS A PUSSY BITCH I CAN TELL LUCY JUST DROP IT OH SHE ACTUALLY DID ????? FUCK IT UP BABE

(I JUST ACIDENTALY DELETE HALF OF WHAT I WROTE SHIT, ILL HAVE TO REWRITE IT FROM MEMORY) WHAT THE FUCK THEY WERE TRICKING US??? THEY CALLED IT, WHAAAAAAAAT WDYM "PLAY THE PROFESSOR" IS HE NOT A PROFESSOR WHAT ALTERNATE REALITY IS THIS I NEED TO KNOW

ARE THEY GONNA FUCKING KILL HIM WHAT??? SINGING LONDON BRIDGE WHILE CHASING SOMEONE IS MY FAV SCARY TROP HAHAHHA YEEEEESSS "TOOK OFF WDYM" GIRL HE IS HOLDING A GUN WHAT DO YOU THINK "WDYM" WHY DID HE KEEP THE KONK ACT AFTER LUCY LEFT SKSKSKSKS TED WTF SKSKSKS "I DO SOME OF MY BEST THINKING WHEN IM ERECT" HAHAHAHA TED LIKES TO BE A HIMBO THATS GREAT IS HE GOING TO KILL TED ?? AAAAAAAHHHHHH TED HE HAS A GUN PLZ DONT TEST HIM HE HAS ALREADY KILLED A MAN OOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH FUUUUUUUUCK RECAST???? WHO IS TAKING TED'S ROLE ????? OH SO ITS NOT OLD TIMEY AFTER ALL RED SOMETHING???? OH TED'S GONNA PROPOSE IS SHE GONNA SAY NO? SHES GONNA SAY NO RIGHT ? FUUUUUUUUCK HAHAHHAHA WHY IS HE NAKED ??? JAHAHHAHA WHAT WHAT IS HAPPENING TED WHAT ? "PROFESSOR SHOULD GO FUCK HIMSELF" HAHAHAHA PORNHUB PREMIUM ACCOUNT HAHAHAH "OOOoooOOoOoOoOoOohhHhhHh BUT IT IS" FUCK NO DONT KILL HER OOOOOOOOOHHHH TED'S DEAD SHIT OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH ROBERT'S ACTING IS *CHEF'S KISS* DAMN OH SHIT TED *NOW* TED IS DEAD FUCK HIDGENS IS HERE NOOOOOOOOOOO IS HE GONNA KILL HER ??? OH SHIT OH FUCK LUCY'S CAUGHT IN  A BEAR TRAP WHY ARE PPL SAYING WORKING BOYS IN THE CHAT ??? OH THATS WHY !!!!!! YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHH MINE IS A LITTLE BEHIND IS SHE BROKE ??????? OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHH HAHAHAHAHA I KNEW IT HIDGENS GOT PLAYED THATS ON YOU BUDDY OH FUCK HIM UP LUCY ! BECKY BARNES ????? HATCHFIELD LORE ???? WAS SHE RUNNING AWAY FROM HIS HUSBAND IS THAT WHY SHE CLIMBED A TREE APE MAN SHOW UP PLZ WHO IS IT THO ?????? JEFF HELL YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH FUUUUUUUUUUUUCK JESUS CHRIST APE MAN YEEEEAAAHHH WOOLY FOOT ?????? IS IT CHUMBY???? OOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH HAHAHA YEEEEAAHHH HOW DID HIDGENS KNOW ????? OH IS IT OVER ?????? NOOOOOOOOOOOO I WANTED MORE ;-----; THIS WAS SO GOOD THO OOOHHH FUCK ANOTHER MUSIC NUMBER JAMIE YOU LOOK AMAZING !!!!!!!!!! I CANT WAIT FOR THESE SONGS TO BE AVAILABLR FOR US (IN LIKE 3 YEARS CAUSE IM BROKE SKSKSKSK) HE DANCES THE CAN CAN ?????? OKAY I SKIPPED A BIT TO BE ON TIME WITH EVERYBODY "ARE YOU FUCKKING HIGH????" YEEEEEEEEEAH PART 2 BABEY !!!!! NICK'S HAIR LOOKS AMAZING OMG OH ???????? BILL AND ALICE !!!!!!!!!!!!!! GOD I MISSED THEM !!!!!!!!! OH THE TEEN ANGST I LOVE BILL SM HE'S SUCH A GOOD DAD DEB ????WHY WOULD U HURT BABY ALICE LIKE THIS ???? "I MIGHT NEVER SEE DEB AGAIN" GOD ALICE CHILL OUT LET HER BE A PLAY WRITER BILL CMON "MY BUDDY PAUL" AAAAAAHHHHHHHHH BLINKY ??? I DONT TRUST THAT AT ALL FUCK NO JOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHNNNN I DONT TRUST HES CHARACTER THO OOOOHHH LOVE DISCOUNTS I DIDNT LIKE THE WORKER CALLING HER PRINCESS THO, SHES BILL'S DAUGHTER NOT YOURS OOOOOOHHHHHH NO OH NONONONOONO BILL IS GOING TO DIE I JUST KNOW IT BLINKY IS EVIL I CAN FEEL IT ALICE NO NO LITTERING WHORE JAMES !!!!!!!!!! ALICE IS ALSO GOING TO DIE MAYBE RIGHT NOW WHO KNOWS BLNKY WTF SHE IS A MINOR WTF AAAAAH I DONT LIKE IT HERE JAMES ILY BUT THIS CHARACTER IS CREEPY AS SHIT I DONT LIKE IT HAHAHAH TIGHT LOVE THEME PARK STUPID SHIRTS "I DIDNT KNOW YOU WERE FUNNY" HAHAHAHAH DROWSY TOWN ? THE CHAT PULLED MY ATTENTION TO THAT BUT I DONT GET WHY ? IS THIS BAD "I'D FOLLOW YOU ANYWHERE" THIS IS SUCH A DAD THING TO SAY OH ALICE CMON DONT SAY THAT BILL CUT IT OUT WITH DECIDING YOUR KIDS FUTURE THATS NOT FUN OH GOD I DONT TRUST THAT NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO NO NO NO NO "AHOY BOYS AND GIRLS" NO NONONONONO UNCLE WILEY FUCK OFF THE SNIGGLES NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO FUUUUUUUUUCK NOOOOO AHHHHHHHHHHHHH "WE'RE THE SNIGGLES DONT BE SCARED" YOU KNOW WHAT SNIGGLES I AM SCARED BUT HELL YEAH SONG TIME OOOOOOOHHH FUCK IT UP JAMES OH ARE THEY GONNA LIKE GIVE THE AUDIENCE A SLEEP INDUCING DRUG OR SOMETHING ??????? "DONT BLINK" AHAHAHA I DONT TRUST THAT AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH "GREAT WE'RE DEAD" HAHAHAH THE SONG WAS A BOP THO "WHAT ARE THE SNIGGLES?" GREAT QUESTION ALICE "NOW U KNOW HOW I FELT WHEN I HAD TO SEAT THROUGH DEH" HAHHAHAHA "SEE U IN A SNIG" HAHAHA SNIGGLETTE ???U OKAY BBY??? OOOOOOOOHHH MORE SONGS HELL YEAH I LOVE ANGELA'S VOICE SM THE SNIGGLE PUNS ARE KINDA CONFUSING ME NGL WHY WAS THAT SO SAD OMG OOOOOOOH SHIT OH FUCK THEYRE GONNA KILL HER I JUST KNOW IT OMG "PRAISE THE WATCHER" OH MY GOD PLZ DONT KILL HER "UNTIL HE'S SEEN EVERYTHING" W H A T LAUREN'S VOICE SKSKSK SO CUTE PAPA SNIGGLE I DO NOT TRUST YOU THOSE ARE ALIVE ARENT THEY ????? OH FUCK SNIGGLETTE IS SHE OKAY ????????? "ANGELA R U ALRIGYT" WHAT "SHUT UP JEFF" OH MY GOD I DONT LIKE WHEN THEYRE SELF AWARE SKSKSKSK " U CAN SHUT THE HELL UP LAUREN" HAHAHAHA BILL OMG HE'S SUCH A DAD HAHAHAHAH ALICE IS SO NICE DO THEY NOT KNOW "ARON AROOON" HAHHAHA OH CHURROS I LOVE THOSE THE GIRL SHE DOESNT LIKE ?????? OH NON BINARY RIGHTS LOVE IT "IS THIS A FRIEND OF ZIGS" OH LOVE RESPECTFUL DAD DEB NOT COOL OH ALICE SHIT ALICE BBY IF SHES CHEATING ON YOU THATS NOT ON UR DAD STOP SHITTING ON HIM LIKE THIS "ITS UR MOTHERS FAULT" OH MY GOD HAHAHHAHA GREG AND ALISON ? AND BETH ?? DOES BETH LIKE HER ????OH NOOOOOO GREG NO U SHITTY SON OF A BITCH GOD FUCKING PUNCH HIM OH  NO HAHAHA FUCK NO THEYRE ALL POSESSED ARENT THEY THATS THE TEEN FROM THE MOVIE THEATER HAHAHHA "it lagged ;-; now we wait" A MAN IN A HURRY HAHAHAHHA OH SHIT BILL IS MAD IS HE POSESSED TOO ??????? OH SHIT WHATS HAPPENING BLINKY ????????? OH NO OH NO SHES GONNA HAVE A PANIC ATTACK THEYRE GONNA BE FINE RIGTH ??????? RIGHT ???? BREATHING EXERCISES BABY CMON OH NO PLZ DONT DO ANYTHING STUPID BILL NOOOOOOOOOOO BILL PLZ DONT DIE AGAIN I LOVE YOU SM PUT UR SEATBELT BACK ON PLZ NOOOOOOOOO OH THEYRE BOTH GOING TO FALL ARENT THEY OH NO OH MY GOD OH SHIT PHONE IS BROKEN OOPS AWN IM GONNA CRY PLZ LET THEM SURVIVE I BEG YOU NICK LANG OOOOOOOOH TWILIGHT BUT GAY I AM *HERE* FOR IT OOOOOH THANK GOD THEYRE SAFE THANK YOU NICK LANG BILL YOURE SUCH A GOOD DAD OH GOD SHIT ALICE CHILL OUT ITS JUST A PHONE BABE "SHE KNOWS IM WATCHING HER" I DONT TRUST THAT IS *SHE* POSESSED OR IS THIS JUST TEEN ANGST ALICE UR DAD IS TRYING HIS BEST PLZ CUT HIM SOME SLACK OH MARIAH TURNED HER CAMERA OFF OH DEAR GOD WHAT DOES THAT MEAN HAHAH I LOVE LIVE BLOOPS OH MY GOD BLINKY IS TERRIFYING FUCK NO DO NOT GET THAT WIGGLY JUNIOR BILL DONT HOW ??????? OH MARIAH IS BACK WHAT DOES THIS MEAN ??????? WHY CANT BILL GET THE MALLET THING DONT TAKE IT YES SMART LAUREN ? SKSKKSS WHAT MADAM IRIS I DO NOT TRUST YOU WHAT ?????? IS THAT ALICE'S PHONE ???? BILL DONT GET SCAMMED OH ITS AN ALL SEEING IPHONE ALICE CHILL PLZ IS HE GONNA DIE ????? PLZ NICK DONT DO THAT ALICE DONT DONT KILL UR DAD 49.95 AGAIN BILL PLZ TRY ANOTHER GAME JAMES DAMN THATS RUTHLESS BILL WHAT AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH IS THAT REAL ???????? IT CANT BE ??????? OH ITS NOT REAL ARE THEY MAKING THEM HATE THEIR FAMILIES AND KILL EACH OTHER ?? A TENDER KISS ON THE CHEEK FROM A DEMON HOW NICE GUYS PLZ JUST GO TO THERAPY I BEG U WHAT ARE U GONNA DO BILL? KICK HER HEAD ??????? (SORRY I HAD TO) BLINKY'S FUNHOUSE THAT SOUNDS WARM AND COMFORTING THIS IS LIKE THE OPPOSITE OF NOT UR SEED FIGHTING IN THE MIRROR PART OF A FUN HOUSE IS ALWAYS A GOOD HORROR MOVIE TROPE OH FUCK ARE THEY GONNA WAKE UP OH FUCK PLZ WAKE UP ESCAPE THIS ALIVE YEEEEAAAAAAHHHHH OH SHES GONNA SHOOT HIM ISNT SHE ????? SHES GONNA SHOOT HIM I JUST KNOW IT HES AWAKE SHES NOT IS BLINKY GONNA KILL THEM ?? OOOOOOOOHHHHHH FUCK I KNEW IT OH HELL YEAH ALICE FUCK IT UP ARE THEY GONNA DROW ?? OH NO OKAY DID THEY SURVIVE ???? IS SHARED TRAUMA GONNA SAVE THEIR RELATIONSHIP SKSKSKKS THEY SURVIVED !!!!!!!!! THANK YOU NICK LANG (AGAIN) WAIT HOW DID SHE GET HER PHONE BACK ? OH MADAM IRIS DID GIVE HER PHONE BACK AWWNNNNNNNN ALICE THIS ONE HAD A HAPPY ENDING YAY WELL IG THE OTHER DID TOO BUT NOT FOR THE CHARACTERS WE KNEW

THIS WAS SO GOOD I LOVER STAKID !!!!!!!!!!! I JUST WISHED I WASNT BROKE SO I COULD PAY FOR THE NEXT ONES KSKSKSKSK WILL BE WAITING FOR YOU GUYS TO DO YOUR REACTIONS FOR THE NEXT ONES !!!

I HEARD GREG AND IT WAS CRAIG SKSKKSSK OOPS

*from this part on is reactions from after the show when starkid was answering questions from the chat*

YEEAAH VOTE FOR BIDEN HELL YEAH STARKID

"THE WITCH IN THE WEB" WEBBY ???????? DO WE GET TO SEE HANNAH AGAIN ?????

A THEORY ON TUMBLR FROM REDDIT ON A INSTAGRAM ACC ON YT OH MY GOD SKSKSKSKKS

THE STORIES ARE CANON !!!!!!!!! THEORIES LETS GO GANG

STARKID FANS WHO CAN DONATE TO STARKID PLZ DO I WISH I COULD DONATE TO THESE TALENTED PPL G O D

I WAS CORRECT IT WAS KONK WITH A K

NERDY PRUDES MUST DIE YES!!!!!! WORKING BOYS !!!!

"NICK LANG IS A BOSS"

MARIAH: SAYS FUCK AS ALICE ALSO MARIAH: GEEKED THE *FREAKED* OUT

TIP JAR HAS BEEN OUT FOR 11 YEARS HELL YEAH

HOW TF DO YOU SPELL ZIGGS BTW

OOOHHH THEYRE FAKE THAT MAKES SENSE OK NOT FAKE COMFIRMED BUT PROBABLY FAKE LETS HOPE DEB DIDNT ACTUALLY CHEAT

"WELL I WAS BORN IN 1989" HAHAHAHA

BECKY CLIMBED WHILE RUNNING FROM HER HUSBAND I FEEL LIKE THATS WHAT THATS ABOUT

OH GOODIE I GET TO WATCH THEM LATER IDK WHEN BUT AT LEAST IK SOMEDAY

BLINKY VS WIGGLY

OH CMON NICK I WANTED TO KNOW ;-;

THIS WAS SO NICE I MISSED THEM ;-;

[scatterpatter]

Some expanded thoughts on FF7R under the cut [SPOILERS]

So! Overall I freaking LOVED the remake and I can’t wait to see the rest! Midgar feels so alive and expanded, you really feel attached to everyone, it’s... muah! Honestly a lot of the points I’m gonna make are more nitpicks than anything. I won’t make any commentary on the gameplay because I watched a let’s play instead of playing by myself(im broke and cant afford a PS4 and $60 game >_>)

So the designs are GORGEOUS... no, the entire GAME is gorgeous. Midgar looks so good and detailed, there’s so much great implementation of color theory! Cloud is sooooo good looking!!! Barret and Aerith and Sephiroth are all GORGEOUS! Reno Rude Tseng and Rufus.. AAAA!!! The only slight complain I have is that- okay so Tifa looks AWESOME, but I honestly wish she wasn’t so skinny. Like she’s a melee fighter, but her waist and arms are so thin! I wish they gave her a bit more tone and muscle, but, oh well. I honestly can’t stop staring at the character models they look SO good

Plot-wise, I really like most of the changes/additions they made! Especially with Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. They’re wonderful and I love them and did I mention that I love them because they’re just so dorky!!! And good!!!

Honestly, I like that Aerith is actually written to be likeable. I know that doesn’t seem like much but a lot of games fall into the trap of telling you that you’re supposed to like the female protag(looking at you, Breath of the Wild) or tell you that she’s a strong character, but they fail to show that, so the player feels like they’re just being told to get attached. Aerith, though, is actually really likeable in this game!!! She’s cute and down-to-earth, really dorky and even snarky, easily seeing past Cloud’s tough-guy act, and she can fight! It’s just so nice to see a game that shows a strong female protag instead of just telling you.

Legit everyone is horny for Cloud and I’m so here for it

Okay so like. I love Roche. I didn’t at first but he quickly grew on me. He’s so awfully chaotic and I just- I love him. I’m mad that he was just kinda forgotten, though. Like! He could’ve shown up at the ending chase!!!

THEY REALLY WROTE HOJO TO BE AS CREEPY AS POSSIBLE HUH. Like I’m not complaining because like he’s basically the reason why everything happened, but! Ahhhh he makes me squirm he’s a creep with a gross science fetish and I wanna stab himmmmm

Okay so. President Shinra is a little bit TOO stereotypically evil? Like having a gold statue of himself and not even caring about sabotaging one of his own reactors when one little console gets destroyed??? Like it’s almost comical how evil he’s written to be. Though, I do like the scene where he calls Barret out on his ideals, that was neat!

Nowww, Heidegger Scarlet Palmer and Reeve? MUAH. Heidegger and Scarlet are written so sadistically but like in such a likeable way, especially Heidegger. God I hate them both but you just love to hate them!!! Palmer is HILARIOUS- I love how he’s written to be the spoiled kid whose parents forced the other kids to include him so he’s just there even though he doesn’t do anything. And Reeve? Well...

SO REEVE IS MY FAVORITE ATM SINCE WE DON’T HAVE VINCENT YET, AND REEVE IS JUST... <3 <3 <3 Okay so first off, his design is perfect. He doesn’t really stand out in the same way that Heidegger Scarlet and Palmer do. He just has a normal build, normal suit, normal hair slicked back- he just looks like a normal employee, totally inconspicuous... which is very fitting considering how he ends up being undercover and needs to look inconspicuous ;)

Though Reeve shows clear signs of overworking himself and being emotionally abused by his coworkers which... sucks. I mean it’s good writing but I feel so awful for him- Like you know it’s bad when someone just has to hold up a hand to get you to shut up and sit down. I like that he tries to do good things but steps down when he’s told to, that he’s empathetic but cowardly. It does a great job at setting up his character arc in future chapters <3

Okay so one thing- I thought the build-up for the plate dropping was amazing, but honestly... the plate itself falling was slightly underwhelming, to be completely honest. Like- I just didn’t feel the impact that a plate falling would have! Mainly because, you don’t see a single death which is interesting. Like you see people running from falling debris, but legit not a single death is implied. Honestly? I thought the scene would have been far more impactful if they showed:

Seventh Heaven actually being destroyed

The people topside reacting to the ground beneath them collapsing and them falling to their deaths(They only tried to evacuate Sector 7 slums! Not the topside!!!)

More people actually being implied to have been crushed(No, Im not counting Wedge). Like in the original FF7 there’s a scene where someone’s watching tv and you see the plate falling from outside the window- and there’s a reporter just doing his normal shit before he suddenly looks up and things go to static- like- thats an intense scene and I wish the remake did more stuff like that!

They do great showing people REACTING to the plate falling which is why its so appalling to me that they dont show much of the actual devastation DURING plate fall

I LOVE that Cait Sith shows up at the plate falling! It shows that Reeve actually tried to warn people(something he asked to do and was denied earlier), even if he was too late. The only problem I have is that new players who dont know who Cait Sith is will be horribly confused as to who and why he’s there???

Also, when the crew goes back to Sector 7, you don’t really... feel the impact right away. Keep in mind, an entire section of city just fell onto another section of city WITH the supports holding it up, there should have been way more rubble. Yet, the area where Seventh Heaven is just... looks like it was hit with a major earthquake. There should be way more rubble, like mountains of it. It’s weird since the opening cinematic really captures the scope of how huge Midgar is, but the plate falling just doesn’t really show the scope of how much devastation there was to losing an entire plate.

The scope of it is done a bit better when climbing up Sector 7, but I still feel like the weight and scope of destruction isn’t lived up to its full potential.

Okay so- Wedge and Biggs. ... Yeah, it takes away from the impact of their deaths to have them not die. I mean, I can’t make a total opinion on this just yet, because the other parts haven’t come out yet, but... if FF7R is gonna keep them alive, they better have a good reason for it tbh.

They might have done a little bit too much foreshadowing with Cloud and Aerith? Like I like Cloud having memory issues, it’s kept pretty vague... but him going “Mother?” with Jenova is a little bit too spoiler-y. Like yeah you gotta tease his whole thing but like- don’t give it away this soon!!!

I also don’t mind Seph showing up as much as he does. Like, in the original, you don’t even hear about him until close to the end of the Midgar arc. Obvi since the remake ONLY covers the Midgar arc so far, I totally understand bringing him in sooner. Again, having the clones existing might be a little too spoilery for the big twists later on, but I can let it slide since it’s still treated as very “wtf” and I’m sure anyone new to the story hasn’t put it together yet.

Did I mention how much I love Seph he’s so creepy and his eyes are gorgeous and he’s so intimidating by just being there

And the Whispers... I honestly didn’t like them. I kept forgetting that they existed honestly. They just feel so... detached from the plot. I don’t mind adding new content/story, but the Whispers just... didn’t feel well-implemented. They also felt really campy towards the end. Like, the fact that they could un-stab Barret and shield Avalanche from car accidents while they were escaping? They were legit like “no you can’t die even if you tried because fate” and takes away any tension of the scene because... well, they know they cant die.

That being said, the ending was interesting. I uh. It was interesting! So they actually defeat fate itself in order to change... who knows what. The future, maybe even the past??? I’ve got many thoughts on this

If the future is changed, that can be exciting since people who know the original’s plot won’t know what’s gonna happen next so like- okay!

If the past was changed... y’all know I’m talking about Zack. Was fate changed so that he could live? Keep in mind, we see Whispers surrounding Midgar before they dissipate and Zack’s like “ohey did I get all of em?”, implying that fate would have forbade Zack from ever getting to Midgar. Having the team defeat fate means... Zack may have now reached Midgar. 

Is alternate reality/timeline stuff going to happen now???

Cloud’s character revolves around Zack dying. What’ll happen to Cloud now???

I feel so bad for people new to the plot who don’t know who Zack is.

Nomura... you madman.

So with the ending... Nomura and Squenix is setting something up. They’re going for something huge. I uh. I fear, honestly! Because this could very likely get WAY too ambitious and WAY too confusing(Think Dream Drop Distance’s bullshit plot), and could totally fall on its face and end up being Squenix’s biggest flop of all time. But... if this succeeds and they actually pull off whatever they’re trying to pull... holy shit. I would be floored.

I honestly am a bit afraid that the plot will be too confusing for new players. Like- no one would know whats going on with Zack unless they knew the original plot, so like while this would be a great game for FF7 fans, I’m really worried that it won’t be a good game for people new to the series.

Cloud in a dress is the greatest thing and I’m so happy they kept that scene I love him so much the entire scene is so queer <3

But overall, despite some nitpicks, it was a SUPER SOLID game and I’m soooo hype to see where they go with it! I wanna see Cait and Yuffie and Cid and Vincent!!!!!!!!!

[somnilogical]

modular "ethics":

a wrong and two rights make a right

<<I've been known to cause outrage by suggesting that people who really care about something shouldn't have romantic relationships. Think what would happen if I dared to suggest that those people should also seriously consider getting castrated. That would be crazy! And who am I to suggest that basically everyone claiming to be doing good is faking it? Then people would feel bad about themselves. We can't have that!>>

https://squirrelinhell.blogspot.com/2018/02/men-have-women-are.html

previously i talked about an infohazard about altruism that seemed to fuck with grognor. it feels useful to pass by the dead and look at their lives and choices.

i dont think that castrating yourself is a good intervention for doing stuff you care about, like this is patchwork constraints for an unaligned optimizer. if you arent altruistically aligned from core values, castrating yourself wont make you more aligned.

the "altruists" having babies thing is actual insane and pasek is right about that. pretty much all of society will try and gaslight you about this the way sometimes people are gaslit about "i need to have sex with lots of attractive fems to keep up my moral so i can do super good stuff afterwards.". like if people want to do good for the world it will flow out as a continuous expression of value not some brent dill kind of deal that institutions like CFAR accepted until there was too much social pressure for them to maintain this facade.

the entire premise that morality is this modular thing and you can help set the utility function of an FAI while being a terrible person, is wrong. yet organizations like CFAR keep thinking it will work out for them:

<<We believe that Brent is fundamentally oriented towards helping people grow to be the best versions of themselves. In this way he is aligned with CFAR’s goals and strategy and should be seen as an ally.

  In particular, Brent is quite good at breaking out of standard social frames and making use of unconventional techniques and strategies. This includes things that have Chesterton’s fences attached, such as drug use, weird storytelling, etc. A lot of his aesthetic is dark, and this sometimes makes him come across as evil or machiavellian.

  Brent also embodies a rare kind of agency and sense of heroic responsibility. This has caused him to take the lead in certain events and be an important community hub and driver. The flip side of this is that because Brent is deeply insecure, he has to constantly fight urges to seize power and protect himself. It often takes costly signalling for him to trust that someone is an ally, and even then it’s shaky.

  Brent is a controversial figure, and disliked by many. This has led to him being attacked by many and held to a higher standard than most. In these ways his feelings of insecurity are justified. He also has had a hard life, including a traumatic childhood. Much of the reason people don’t like him comes from a kind of intuition or aesthetic feeling, rather than his actions per se.

  Brent’s attraction to women (in the opinion of the council) sometimes interferes with his good judgement. Brent knows that his judgement is sometimes flawed, and has often sought the help of others to check his actions. Whether or not this kind of social binding is successful is not obvious.>>

https://pastebin.com/fzwYfDNq

<<AnnaSalamon 2/6/09, 5:54 AM

Aleksei, I don’t know what you think about the current existential risks situation, but that situation changed me in the direction of your comment. I used to think that to have a good impact on the world, you had to be an intrinsically good person. I used to think that the day to day manner in which I treated the people around me, the details of my motives and self-knowledge, etc. just naturally served as an indicator for the positive impact I did or didn’t have on global goodness.

(It was a dumb thing to think, maintained by an elaborate network of rationalizations that I thought of as virtuous, much the way many people think of their political “beliefs”/clothes as virtuous. My beliefs were also maintained by not bothering to take an actually careful look either at global catastrophic risks or even at the details of e.g. global poverty. But my impression is that it’s fairly common to just suppose that our intuitive moral self-evaluations (or others’ evaluations of how good of people we are) map tolerably well onto actual good consequences.)

Anyhow: now, it looks to me as though most of those “good people”, living intrinsically worthwhile lives, aren’t contributing squat to global goodness compared to what they could contribute if they spent even a small fraction of their time/money on a serious attempt to shut up and multiply. The network of moral intuitions I grew up in is… not exactly worthless; it does help with intrinsically worthwhile lives, and, more to the point, with the details of how to actually build the kinds of reasonable human relationships that you need for parts of the “shut up and multiply”-motivated efforts to work… but, for most people, it’s basically not very connected to how much good they do or don’t do in the world. If you like, this is good news: for a ridiculously small sum of effort (e.g., a $500 donation to SIAI; the earning power of seven ten-thousandths of your life if you earn the US minimum wage), you can do more expected-good than perhaps 99.9% of Earth’s population. (You may be able to do still more expected-good by taking that time and thinking carefully about what most impacts global goodness and whether anyone’s doing it.)>>

https://www.greaterwrong.com/posts/4pov2tL6SEC23wrkq/epilogue-atonement-8-8

like opposing this isnt self-denying moral aestheticism or a signalling game of how good you can look (credibly signalling virtue is actually a good thing, i wish more people did it by for instance demonstrating how they win in a way that wouldnt work if they werent aligned. whose power seeded from their alignment.). its like... the alternative where people do things that it makes no sense for an altruist to do and then say that when they go to their day jobs they are super duper altruistic they swear; compartmentalizing in this way ...doesnt actually work.

people who want to obscure what altruism looks like will claim that this is moving around a social schelling point for who is to be ostracized. and that altruism as a characteristic of a brain isnt a cluster-in-reality that you can talk about. because it will be coopted by malicious actors as a laser to unjustly zap people with. these people are wrong.

both EA and CFAR are premised on some sort of CDT modular morality working. it is actually pretending to do CDT optimization because like with brent at each timestep they are pretending to think "how can we optimize utility moving forward?" (really i suspect they are just straight up mindcontrolled by brent, finding ways to serve their master because they used force and the people at CFAR were bad at decision theory) instead of seeking to be agents such that brent when brents plans to predate on people ran through them, he would model it as more trouble than it was worth and wouldnt do this in the first place.

CFAR and EA will do things like allowing someone to predate on women because they are "insightful" or creating a social reality where people with genetic biases who personally devote massive amounts of time and money to babies who happen to be genetically related to them and then in their day job act "altruistically". as long as it all adds up to net positive, its okay right?

but thats not how it works and structures built off of this are utterly insufficient to bring eutopia to sentient life. in just the same way that "scientists" who when they arent at their day jobs are theists are an utterly insufficient to bring eutopia to sentient life.

<<Maybe we can beat the proverb—be rational in our personal lives, not just our professional lives. We shouldn’t let a mere proverb stop us: “A witty saying proves nothing,” as Voltaire said. Maybe we can do better, if we study enough probability theory to know why the rules work, and enough experimental psychology to see how they apply in real-world cases—if we can learn to look at the water. An ambition like that lacks the comfortable modesty of being able to confess that, outside your specialty, you’re no better than anyone else. But if our theories of rationality don’t generalize to everyday life, we’re doing something wrong. It’s not a different universe inside and outside the laboratory.>>

--

to save the world it doesnt help to castrate yourself and make extra super sure not to have babies. people's values are already what they are, their choices have already been made. these sort of ad-hoc patches are what wrangling an unaligned agent looks like. and the output of an unaligned agent with a bunch of patches, isnt worth much. would you delegate important tasks to an unaligned AI that was patched up after each time it gave a bad output?

it does mean that if after they know about the world and what they can do, people still say that they specifically should have babies, i mark them as having a kind of damage and route around them.

someone not having babies doesnt automatically mark them as someone id pour optimization energy into expecting it to combine towards good ends. the metrics i use are cryptographically secure from being goodharted. so i can talk openly about traits i use to discern between people without worrying about people reading about this and using it to gum up my epistemics.

[mingyubabe]

yes need theory please :)

HI OKAY SO thank you sm for asking first of all! this is gonna be extremely rambly and incoherent, but i’ve tried my best to remember all key points in all 3 mvs to get a somewhat coherent storyline in we must love. also this is LONG bc i got 3 seperate theories that are all building on the same premise but kind of different? so buckle up lmao!

Feel free to ask me any questions about this or ask me to re-explain something that sounds off, if you can’t tell i’m really excited about this!

Backstory: ONF lives in a post-apocalypticworld where all or most other humans left the earth in search for a new home amongthe stars (shown in O/F). Onf, or at least some members, were created as robots in a lab before the humansleft and are now left there alone. This leads into Complete where not muchhappens, but it looks like theyre having a good time and exploring the worldthey live in, until the inciting incident of We must Love. 

These theories are all based of the timeline On/Off,Complete and then We Must Love in chronological order.

Theory: Only Laun and Hyojin were createdas androids, the others are regular humans. Because of this they got a specialbond because they understand each other. In WML, Hyojin is shown extremelyagonized over Laun’s disappearance, reminiscing about happy memories with him.Towards the end of the MV we’re shown Hyojin approaching Laun by a trainstation, reaching out for him, but Laun only looks at him before he turns aroundand leaves. However, this is shown in black and white, and we also see aglimpse of Hyojin’s sad expression from Laun’s perspective early in the mv whenLaun finds himself alone and confused in the woods – therefore I think this isan event that happened before Laun’s disappearance and the whole search partybegins. I feel like something happened between Hyojin and Laun that made Launwant to leave – and since he’s an android, perhaps with special powers, he “accidentally”teleported to a different dimension or time period. Or maybe he did it onpurpose to get away – only later realizing he’d made a mistake. 

The search for Launbegins as they realize he’s not in the same dimension anymore – J-us using histechnology to send the others (Wyatt and E-tion specifically) to otherdimensions to look for him. (you can see the two of them “glitching” in theirlocations – as if they don’t belong there. They’re projections of their actualself, which lets them explore and technically “be” in the other dimensions butthey’re not… actually they’re? like holograms) However, Hyojin’s got a devicethat lets him freely travel without the help of J-us it seems like? E-tioncomes across Laun at the train-station, but since they’re technically not inthe same dimension, one side always “slips out” before they can properlyreunite. In E-tions case, he’s projecting into the universe Laun disappeared to.In the case where they find him in the lab, I think they’re in ONF’s original dimensions(since all of them are present?) but Laun is tinkering with thedimension-skipping tool and has already set a new destination when he sees theothers. 

It seems like it’s impossible for ONF and Laun to meet up again – whichis devastating for Hyojin who never got to make up with Laun before he disappeared.

I like this theory, however there are someloose ends: Why is J-us seemingly arrested for searching for Laun? Is itillegal to time travel?? Who the heck is arresting him?? Why and where isHyojin riding the train? My inclination is that he’s riding it after Launrejected him by the train station, but I’m not completely sure. What is MK and Yuto’srole in all of this? What are the doomsday like comets raining down in thebeginning like for real???

Theory variant 1: Laun plugging in the battery ofthe machine in O/F leads to him short-circuiting and accidentally teleportingto the alternative dimension in WML. Everything else is pretty much the same asin Theory 1, except Laun and Hyojin never had a falling out, and the trainstation scene is rather another instant of them meeting across dimensions butthe connection not being strong enough to last/properly let them communicate. Thisalso makes sense but the only thing that bothers me is the fact that Launclearly sees Hyojin at the train station but decides to turn around and leaveanyway. The problem with this theory is it makes Complete falling in between O/F and WML impossible, so Complete must happen after WML, which is possible but not something i can 100% back up.

Theory variant 2: building on the premise oftheory 2, but this time, Laun’s actually from another dimension to begin withand doesn’t actually belong in ONF’s world. He’s the comet that we see crashingto earth in the clips in O/F, and he was brought to the lab for researchpurposes (that’s why he’s kept in a cell). He then of course befriends theother ONF members, until he’s suddenly forced back to his original dimension,perhaps by the initial researchers to do more research? Like he’s reporting backto them or something? This explains why J-us is stopped in his attempt to trackdown Laun, because the researchers want Laun to stay in his own dimension sothey can gather more data. (for this theory to work, we have to disregard my backstory theory about all humans leaving earth LMAO) He’s initially heart broken about being separated fromhis friends, but eventually adapt. This would be kind of sad because it impliesthat the train station scene with Hyojin and Laun means that Laun no longerwants to go back to the ONF dimension – he is satisfied being “home”. (thisalso explains why he looks so damn happy at the train station where E-tionfinds him lol)

Side note: Theory variant 2 COULD explain theapocalyptic meteor rain in the beginning. Perhaps the universe has realizedthat Laun belongs with ONF, and when he’s sent back to his original dimension,the universe gets unbalanced and ONF’s reality gets the consequences of it.Perhaps the comet rain is the universe sending more alternative Launs into morealternative universes so that the balance may be restored??? Omg this isgetting crazy pls ignore

Side note 2: Yuto’s scene might me indicatingtheir time in the lab (so pre-O/F and connects to the backstory). He’s in what seemslike a classroom and we can see “flashbacks” of all 7 of them being there,fooling around and looking happy, before they all fade away and Yuto’s leftalone. I don’t know why they’d all be in a classroom together unless they wereall created androids in the lab and had to be taught stuff about being human or whatever, but it seems pretty apparent to me that only Laun andHyojin are androids. However I don’t understand him setting the timer to 3:14 and then cuttingto E-tions face…. Maybe Yuto’s in on helping J-us project the others intodifferent dimensions and show them how much time they got to search for Laun?

LIKE I SAID this is long but i hope this was somewhat coherent and interesting!! i know i didnt explain everything super detailed so sth might be unclear. as you can see all my theories have some holes and issues but thats whats interesting and im gonna keep looking at it bc what else would i do? school work? socializing? HAH. anyways lol feel free to come with your own theories i would literally LOVE to hear them even if theyre completely unrelated to mine

[abundantchewtoys]

HS Epi: Meat p12 reaction

Back to Earth C presumably.

I gotta say, I'm curious to find out the final page count of Meat. The way we liveblog, the experience is stretched out, so with theories surfacing and such, we might be caught off guard when things are really over. There's only so far that things will be taken, though I guess we're still in for those "original Male/Female characters", I guess. :P That shouldn't refer to the new Reload timeline John created, I think, with copies of all the people mentioned in the rest of the character list. So, uh, yeah, guess the reason Arquiusprite wasn't mentioned in there was because he remained unseen, voided out if you will. And I guess we shouldn't expect an alternate Equius to have a talking role, either?

---

==>

Well! Talk about jumping straight into the action, this page opens with a dialoguelog! Back to Dave, Karkat and if my eyes didn't deceive me, we'll get some lines for Jade, too! Supportive Jade will be supportive.

"hit jane right in her neoliberal austerity measures" ... Hah. Well, I didn't think that would get referenced again at all, but it seems after all these years since John's 18th birthday Dave still has issues with the ol' N.A.M. So, Jane's a neoliberal AND a fascist now, Dave? Is that... even feasible?

"DAVE: now shes gonna spin some shit about supply side economics but we cant let her control the narrative on that one cause the first thing thats gonna happen once she begins deregulating the baking industry is that some sweet dumb crocodile down in consort land is gonna start putting sparkle glue in the cupcake mix which isnt even the real issue thats just surface issues KARKAT: RIGHT. JADE: definitely" ... Like, Dave I admire you're getting so into this, but you realize they aren't following, right? Also, why would Jane want to deregulate the baking industry if she's the leader of the foremost power in said industry, as well as running for president? Plus, Jane can't control the narrative because Caliborn is already controlling it! :mspa:

"DAVE: i mean earth c has just been play acting capitalism the last five thousand years while we timeskipped ahead to live rad lives as gods without bothering with any of the boring shit that goes into making a civilization DAVE: which is fine i mean you cant really expect a bunch of teens who didnt finish middle school to set up a sustainable form of social democracy that isnt just blatantly ripped off whatever we incorrectly thought obama god rest his soul was doing back in the day" ... Gee, Dave's given this a real lot of thought. Props to him, but I hope that aside from becoming 'an activist' he's also got some legitimite action points to improve Earth C's situation.

Guess Sburb really does a number on players, huh? "Congrats, you won, you're all gods now, and also, here's this whole civilization on the brink of collapse, have fun with that. Don't mess this up, I need those people to start the apocalypse in say, 2000 years, k thx bye." (The fact that this civilization, being outside of the Green Sun's influence, may never implement Sburb, is a bit besides the point since I think the trolls would have had the same issue tossed onto them had they actually gone through the victory door.)

Right, but the trolls had their home planet already effectively run by children, I wonder if that will come again? Even though they had carpenter droids at their disposal to run some things for them, they might actually be a bit more self-reliant than the humans!

"DAVE: but janes got this old school mentality you just know she wants to restrict grist alchemy for the sake of “growth” and when that goes down itll take three seconds flat for some nobody in new dersetown to drop the earth c communist manifesto" ... New Dersetown, I like the ring of that. Would call it New Dersey for short, though. :P Again, valid points there, Dave! If any revolt started, it doesn't have to be in the troll community, it could just as much be an angry carapace uprising! They're only docile if there's no one to rally behind.

Blaperile has this idea that the new society in a universe is not supposed to be seeded with the remains of the session nor the universe that came before it. That's actually a valid point; the only reason this society got kickstarted was through the cloning apparatus that was on the meteor! The consorts and carapaces seem like they would be able to reproduce biologically though, so I'm not sure how Sburb normally ensures the planet is a clean slate for a new species to emerge. ... Okay, so the planet itself doesn't really need to be the place where a new Sburb-playing species rises, true. There's a whole new universe out there.

Maybe through "importing" old Sburb technology, the "alpha" planet designation went to Earth C automatically, though.

Or maybe First Guardians are expected to 'cleanse' the planet from outside influence normally, but since this society's outside of the Green Sun's influence, that ain't happening. And Jade won't be going Thanos on Earth C.

"KARKAT: OH YEAH. JADE: of course DAVE: are you two even listening or are you just making noises with your mouths" Dave realizing he's monologuing? What character development is this. :O

"KARKAT: I CAN’T BELIEVE I’M BEING ACCUSED BY DAVE STRIDER, REIGNING EMPEROR OF SPEWING ENDLESS VERBAL DIARRHEA DIRECTLY INTO MY INNOCENT HEAR DUCTS EVERY DAY OF MY FUCKING LIFE, OF MAKING THOUGHTLESS MOUTH NOISES. KARKAT: JADE, ARE YOU HEARING THIS? JADE: im scandalized JADE: especially when JADE: there are much better things we could all be doing with our mouths....." ... Jade, your animes are showing again. ... I think that maybe Jade doesn't want this relation to be going where Dave and Karkat want it to go.

"It’s been a really nice day they’ve been having, and then Jade had to go say something like that. The air in the hive changes in a way that is palpable, in a way that she can’t seem to accurately gauge despite having both superhuman and superdog senses." ... Ah. So I guess maybe Jade just can't get a lid on some of her more... canine inclinations, at time. Welp!

"Elements of her outfit resemble her god tier jammies: peasant skirt, sparkly flats, and a bold choice in striped tights." Nice! That's only the third person who created an outfit based on her god tier outfit that we know, aside from Meenah and Rose.

"the couch where she crashed last night, and the night before that, and the better part of the seven years before that." It would seem Jade has the wanderlust then, she's more like the vagrant dog that comes visiting from time to time? More GCAT in demeanor than Becquerel, in practice. Heheh. Good for her, after being isolated on an island and then a battleship for so long, she's finally going out & seeing things!

"There are other personal effects of hers in the living room too: plants on the windowstill, her bass guitar sitting in a corner" Cool, so when she comes over, she typically lounges here then. Guess the flute never made it over, though. :p

"a horrific-looking periodic table that Dave made her for her seventeenth birthday pinned above the stairwell. He typed it in Comic Sans, and then deep-fried it to oblivion with JPEG artifacts." ... Next up, on For Fans By Fans...

"And Dave, with his preternaturally perfect timing, sweeps a hand over his tablet to bring up a new PowerPoint slide on the TV. He returns to his Comic Sans-written political presentation, gruesome artifacts and all" Dave, Dave that isn't professional at all!

", with the grace and proficiency of a man who has diffused an awkward situation in his own household many times per day, every day, for many years." Well, okay, that is really mature. But when Dave is the adult in a situation, the situation is very awkward per definition.

"DAVE: alternia: brutal eugenics based space dictatorship KARKAT: NOT UNTRUE." Succinct, brutal, but not dishonest.

"DAVE: troll homeworld: lord of the flies nightmare scenario where kids murder each other just to get the chance to get to grow up and murder other aliens instead KARKAT: IT WASN’T THAT BAD." Karkat. Karkat that isn't a valid rebuke.

"KARKAT: YOU MADE THAT LAST ONE UP. KARKAT: ALSO, IT WAS DISGUSTING?? KARKAT: GROW THE FUCK UP, YOU UTTERLY CONTEMPTIBLE, POTTY MOUTHED *CUNT*." ... The irony is stark.

"JADE: also you know trolls dont actually have two dicks dave thats an offensive stereotype" Are we really doing troll anatomy? Well, I guess it's good to know that the fan theory about Sollux at least isn't applicable to the entire species.

"DAVE: trolls: literally ate babies KARKAT: ONLY THE DEFECTIVE ONES. DAVE: like you my dude KARKAT: ...YEAH. DAVE: so thats why our campaign can work" Yeah, Karkat ate grubs, though they weren't troll babies. Also, yeah, Karkat was a mutant, but I wonder if that would really help his case here.

"DAVE: btw im gonna be giving a long form exam at the end of this to make sure youre retaining info because this is only like the most important thing weve ever done collectively" Well he ain't wrong.

"KARKAT: ARE YOU ASKING ME WHETHER I’VE HEARD THIS EXACT SPEECH ALMOST WORD FOR WORD, INCLUDING REHEARSED VERSIONS OF BOTH THE COLORFUL METAPHORS AND “JOKES,” TEN OR TWENTY TIMES ALREADY? KARKAT: BECAUSE THE ANSWER WOULD BE KARKAT: YES, OF COURSE I FUCKING HAVE." Poor, poor Karkat.

"Karkat elbows Dave in the thigh, a move that is obviously meant to be an action of pure, brotherly jest. But instead it comes off as affectionate and overly intimate. Jade’s clever eyes don’t miss this. Her pupils follow the motion of Karkat’s arm, and then they follow the movement of Dave’s mouth as he smiles in what he probably thinks is a totally neutral expression that reveals exactly 0% of his true feelings toward Karkat Vantas. In reality, his veneer is as thin and transparent as cellophane. He is the only person who can’t see through it.

Jade does some calculations in her head. Two kinds of calculations, in fact: mathematical ones and personal ones." So, is Jade reading too much into their relationship, or are the dudes just... Both too shy?

"JADE: soooooo JADE: do you want a projection of her first years hit on the economy down to the decimal with a 0.3% margin of error JADE: because thats a thing i can do if itll make you stop talking about this stupid election for ten minutes" I didn't know that were First Guardian powers! :p I suppose it might be her natural intellect though, but we've only known her as the hands-on science type until now.

"She proceeds to dazzle the two boys with explications on complex math utilizing taxation rates, GDP figures, and some damned thing called the “Laffer curve,”" Dang, Jade is as much committed to this as Dave! (Or maybe she learned all this because it means so much to him, that could be it too!)

"The thing about Jade Harley is that she’s not as good at personal things as she is at other things. Like science, or mastering fraymotifs, or kissing, the last of which she has definitely put a lot of levels into over the past few years because, well, what else are you supposed to do with immortal godhood once you hit the age where the dog hormones start kicking into overdrive?" Guess for dogs, kissing isn't that personal. :p And well, I guess Jade's only now learning the real consequences of turning into a real-life furry. At least she won't have had lack of candidates to practice kissing with. She might even have become the Witch of Spacing Out Young Adults.

"Her high-prescription lenses make her eyes look anime-huge. They might literally be glittering, she’s so completely serious about the issue she is trying to stress." And the fan artists rejoiced for all the new descriptions they have to work with!

" JADE: im about to lay out some cold hard evidence so pay attention! KARKAT: OH, HANG ON, LET ME GET A PEN." You can't live together with Dave for years without learning when it's time to start taking notes and grab a fucking pen.

"JADE: evidence about..... JADE: our relationship! KARKAT: FUCK" Pfff, okay, never mind. I think Jade might have hit a wall several times over before, trying to either define their relationship or take it to the next level. These dudes are really sensitive about their feelings, after all.

But it would be interesting, learning Jade wants to know where they stand just as much as the outside world does.

"JADE: you let me live in your hive when im in town KARKAT: I CAN’T BELIEVE... JADE: im preeeetty intimately entwined in both your lives KARKAT: THAT YOU’RE JUST TALKING ABOUT THIS? JADE: AND you dont disengage from about 86.234% of my flirtations KARKAT: WAIT, WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU KEEP TRACK OF SOMETHING LIKE THAT? JADE: so....... are we doing this or not?" So, just like with taking on Lord English and acknowledging the lit fuse that is Earth C society, I guess the coming around of April 13th 2019 is when Jade had enough of all this silly business and wants to know what's what. (Also, I suppose the level of intimacy they shared on beforehand will be left to speculation.)

"KARKAT: DOING WHAT?! JADE: dating dummy!!!!!!!! KARKAT: OH. KARKAT: THAT IS KARKAT: THAT IS... A COMPLICATED TOPIC IN MY CULTURE THAT I’M NOT SURE HUMANS ARE EQUIPPED TO TALK ABOUT." Smooth, Karkat, real smooth. Maybe Karkat fears commitment will lead to some of their relationships shifting into other quadrants. And he wouldn't like to be moirails or auspistices with either of them.

"DAVE: also totally unrelated to the economy" ... Nice try Dave, but I think this can't be steered back into that track.

"DAVE: which not gonna lie is the only thing i want to talk about for uh DAVE: for however long it takes for this other conversation to stop happening JADE: so say no!!! DAVE: well KARKAT: UHHHHH JADE: im not just forcing this conversation for my sake! its for you two as well JADE: i mean after all this time have you two even kissed yet?????? DAVE: wha" I think Dave and Karkat might actually have been both content to stay uncommitted and fearful to put a label on it. Also Jade's question will presumably remain unanswered, it's already surprising it's confirmed she hasn't seen them kissing. And that is ignoring the matter of whether either Dave or Karkat kissed Jade before. I guess it's only fortunate for this situation that this instance of Jade never dated Davesprite, it would only complicate things further.

"DAVE: wha KARKAT: WH-WHY WOULD DAVE: uhh KARKAT: WHY WOULD WE KISS?? DAVE: thats KARKAT: THAT’S... YOU... I MEAN, HE’S... HE’S DAVE. DAVE: we KARKAT: AND I’M KARKAT." PFffffffff, hilarious! I can just see them blushing like tomatoes right now. Can't keep staying in denial bros!

"JADE: yes hes dave and youre karkat and everyone we know always calls you that JADE: “dave and karkat”" Hah! Yeah, but they also think you're part of the item, Jade. Care to shed some thoughts on the subject?

"JADE: i cant remember the last time i heard anyone mention one of you without the other JADE: the two of you have basically been together since your days on the meteor its SO obvious" Jade has turned this from a personal matter into a fandom matter. "Everyone and their dog knows you're dating, guys! Stop pretending otherwise!" It's interesting to note the different ways Dave has been seen handling relationships. When he dated Terezi in the GO timeline, it went south due her troubles in the black quadrant. When Davesprite dated Jade, it went south due to unresolved Dave issues, presumably having to do with his bros. With Karkat, Dave's been in a stable-ish thing for the longest time, though.

" KARKAT: VERY CLOSE FRIENDS WHO UNDERSTAND AND SUPPORT EACH OTHER ON A DEEP AND EMPATHETIC LEVEL THAT GOES BEYOND HATE OR PITY. YOU COULD EVEN SAY THAT OUR RELATIONSHIP... KARKAT: ...TRANSCENDS QUADRANTS." ... PFfffffff, so this could have been what it was like for the Sufferer and the Disciple, then! They were just never ready to commit? That would actually be funnier than it being this deep and fulfilling relationship. It would also make Doc Scratch' misgivings on the relationship even more hilarious.

"JADE: yeaaaaaah not gonna lie karkat but that sounds totally kinda gay KARKAT: UGH YOU HUMANS AND YOUR UNFATHOMABLE GENDER BASED QUADRANTS." ... Heh. Actually. Too trolls, the whole gender-based romance thing we have going must indeed be as unfathomable as leprechaun romance.

"Jade faceplams." Well that's a new verb. ;) What part of the body is the 'plam', exactly?

" KARKAT: ANYWAY WEREN’T YOU... DATING THAT CARAPACIAN COUPLE? LAST TIME WE CHECKED?" Lolwut. Jade. Jade are you... are you being a Ms. Casanova, a paramour or two in every city you frequent? If WV and PM turn out to be alive for the sole purpose of dating Jade, I'll choke on my drink.

" DAVE: wait you saying we arent fun JADE: whens the last time either of you left the house??????" I know Jade means it as in, she'd like to date them for keeps. But I also fulheartedly believe Dave and Karkat can sustain themselves on delivery pizza and chinese chow.

"In her other hand, she tries to grab Dave’s wrist, but he flash-steps to the other side of the couch." Well that's a new use of the power, guess Dave must really have felt alarmed. :p

"JADE: i wanna try dating for real KARKAT: HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED KARKAT: SORRY IF WHAT I’M ABOUT TO SAY TOTALLY BLOWS YOUR MIND KARKAT: DATING A SINGLE PERSON, FOR MORE THAN HALF A SWEEP, FOR REASONS OTHER THAN INITIATING THE CONCUPISCENT EXCHANGE OF FLUIDS?" Karkat is trying to throw the issue back into Jade's face by saying she should try dating for a longer period of time. But that's exactly what she's trying to do here! She knows who she wants that with! That poor little troll, he's not getting out from under this.

"JADE: third of all karkat arent you from a culture where people are expected to engage in romantic relationships with up to like five people at a time?? KARKAT: THAT’S NOT KARKAT: THAT’S NOT THE SAME THING AT ALL." If he's trying to avoid getting dragged into quadrants with people, he should stop upholding the validity of the quadrants to hold people off. :p

"DAVE: ok jade i think theres a flaw in your approach here cause you seem to think winning an argument on super clever logical grounds is gonna get a couple dudes to break down and fling themselves at you in like, a sexual way JADE: wellll it usually does ;B DAVE: oh my fucking god" So she swoons people by way of her big brain. Jade's got CLASS.

"This earns Dave a look. A long, sad one that has Jade messing with her glasses again so that she can peer right at him and apply some more of that faulty personal math to his facial expression." Just confirmation here that Jade isn't necessarily correct in all her assessments due to not being objective.

"JADE: dave are you in love with obama? DAVE: jade jesus where do you get this shit from JADE: is it about jesus then??????" Aaaaaand this has been derailed again.

"DAVE: no! DAVE: jesus wasnt even real JADE: i know he wasnt real! JADE: wait... JADE: are you saying JADE: obama was real? DAVE: ... DAVE: yes" Wut. Wai- I- Jade. Honey. Please. Guess for all her involvement in politics since, those isolated years on the island sheltered her WAY too much.

"DAVE: obama was real DAVE: he was the president KARKAT: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA JADE: all this time i thought obama was like JADE: an aspirational fictional character that you modeled your life after KARKAT: AHAHAHAHA I CAN’T AHAHA BREATHE... JADE: like snoop dog or nicolas cage" ... Jade. Jade no. You're just making this worse on yourself. For Jade, there would have been almost nothing in Homestuck she'd have seen as a reference to 'real life', would there?

"senary numeral systems that allow me to do complex equations in my head" ... Why is Base 6 good for complex equations? I'm probably not good enough at math to know.

"KARKAT: WHY IS IT LIKE SOME SORT OF *TRAGEDY* HOW SHE WAS RAISED? KARKAT: BECAUSE SHE WAS RAISED ALONE BY AN ANIMAL?? KARKAT: *I* WAS RAISED ALONE BY AN ANIMAL!" There! It's getting acknowledged again, how Jade's upbringing more resembles a troll than a human's! Becquerel the lusus.

"There’s a ripple in the room that makes it clear their god tier powers have just clashed against each other. He shifts his arm through time and Jade warps the space around them so that she’s the one holding the tablet. This is not the first time that they have rearranged the fabric of reality for a petty reason like this. Karkat has permanently sworn off playing board games with them." ... Lol. First real use of the god tier powers in Earth C, and it goes like this! Wait, couldn't Jade have snapped... Right, no, she actually wouldn't have First Guardian powers anymore now, I forgot. Still, what did Dave try to do, move the tablet to another point in the timeline?

"The moment Jade brings the paint program up on the television, Karkat stops laughing. KARKAT: NO!" Oh boy. Time for the Penis Quadrant scene, this time with three people. ... This would actually fall under both definitions of a "sketch", actually.

"He tries to grab the tablet from her, but she’s hovering well above the ground and he simply is not tall enough to reach. With a shit-eating grin and deliberate care, Jade begins to draw a grid." He's going to jump up to grab her leg, to disturb the drawing, isn't he?

"She gives Karkat a pair of fuzzy, angry eyebrows" Now I'm starting to think of the Karkat expressions in that one Paradox Space.

"all he accomplishes is turning the redrom trajectory between her and Dave into a redrom loop-de-loop." This is all I could want from a reprise of this scene.

"JADE: see me and karkat have great black chemistry! KARKAT: IT IS NOT BLACK CHEMISTRY YOU HORRID NON-CHITINOUS WINDBAG!" A+ denial there, Karkat, props on the response.

"JADE: and now that daves all chill hed make a great auspistice" Jade just wants all Karkat's quadrants filled by the three of them, somehow.

"JADE: because you and karkat are kind of like moirails DAVE: no JADE: and you and i JADE: well yknow its always been pretty flirty DAVE: jade JADE: EXCEPT!

Jade finishes drawing a shaky heart directly into the paint program. It’s so big and bright on the TV that it fills the entire room with red light." She's putting all these names and symbols to the relationship, it might just be too much for these poor boys to handle. :p

"JADE: i call this political arrangement: JADE: fully automated luxury polyamorous space-time communism!!!!!!!" That is not the shipping name I would've chosen, but it's the shipping name we deserve. And hey, communism! Get it? Cause Karkat had a sickle.

I wonder what Karkat's take on polyamory outside of the ashen quadrant is, actually.

"Jade rolls her eyes and tosses both the tablet and pen over her shoulder. Dave flashes across the living room to catch his very expensive computing device in both arms. The pen bounces off his forehead." This. Entire. Scene.

"JADE: i have to go talk to roxy and callie about the election anyway" Well, she's going to let them stew on this for a while. But I'm eager to find out who Roxy & Calliope would back. You might think Jane's a given, but if she's been busy maybe they have grown closer to Jade & Dave!

"Jade clicks her heels together to propel herself back into the air and actually winks at them before absconding through an open window." Think happy thoughts! Also, I just realized becoming a god sadly never gave Karkat the powers of flight.

"Dave and Karkat both stare after her, silently caught in their own private rationalization spirals.

Karkat needs to verbalize part of his out loud." Ah, but can they stay in that spiral or will they have no choice but to break out of it?

"KARKAT: WANNA PLAY SOME TROLL TONY HAWK? DAVE: hell DAVE: yeah" Yyyyyeaah, they are not going to have changed when Jade comes back, will they?

So even Karkat calls it "Troll Tony Hawk", not whatever absurdly wrong name it'd have on Alternia, and not whatever Tony Hawk's duodecimal name in Alternian would be. :P

[sea-bea]

I said I was gonna probably talk abt Deltarune, I’m talking abt Deltarune

ALSO. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS FOR THE END OF THE GAME. LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS

theres a whole lot to unpack from the ending, and I have a few headcannons in mind. I’m also going to focus on Kris, Frisk, Chara, Asriel, and Ralsei and the connections between them. It’s a lot of word barf too, so be warned.

(also I haven’t seen any theories from the deltarune fandom, this is all what I got from deltarune. I’ve kept it blacklisted bc I’m not going to have it tainted like undertale was.)

as we know, this universe is one where monsters never went underground. and as we know, everyone (keep this in mind) from the previous game is alive but living very similar, but different lives. And then there’s us. Kris. A new character presumably not from the last game Here’s what I think so far:

Chara was most definitely the voice talking to us in the beginning. They have the same kind of speech patterns and the same kind of thinking. “Its kill or be killed” “You can’t choose who you are in this world.” Both Chara and the voice have a very pessimistic view of the world, mostly about how people are naturally very cruel and will hurt you any chance they get. (and honestly, considering Kris’ life in the upper world, it would make sense that they too would have the same thought process).

As for the end, what happened in the end scene has happened before, multiple times before. It wasn’t because Kris went to the dark world. The birdcage they (or Chara) throws their soul in the cage is significantly damaged and the cage shakes with the force of it. It would explain why Kris always wakes up late for school, because they go out and do, whatever it is they do at night, and their body gets very tired. The ending scene also suggests that Kris isn’t pulling their soul out willingly, or even getting out of bed willingly. And since that’s supposed to be Kris’ soul, that means their soul isn’t in their body anymore, which suggests something else. 

also, I think the “incident”, whatever it was, that tore the family apart and outcasted Asgore has something do with Kris’ specifically. The first time there was an incident in the family it was when the Chara and Asriel fusion died, and the second time Asgore killed a bunch of kids. It doesn’t seem like Asgore killed some kids because he’s not in jail or anything, but it was definitely something that upset both Tori and Asgore significantly, so it might have had to do with the kids. That was also the turning point for both Asriel and Chara to become flowey and murder child so this universe’s kids must have changed significantly too.

Remember how I said everyone is living similar yet very different lives? In the last game, we played two characters: Frisk in pacifist and Chara in fight, but Kris is new, presumably one of them. Initially it seems like Kris is in Frisk’s place If Asriel is cannonly around the same age as Chara and is in college, I’d pit him around his early 20’s, maybe still 18. Considering the school looks like it was made for younger students and there are already stereotypes in the school (Susie, obviously) I’d pit Kris somewhere in middleschool, in sixth grade at the very least and eighth or ninth grade at the very most. Probably 12, or 13? 15 at most (which was around the age Frisk probably was when they fell). So they’d be more than four years apart, and that's a conservative estimate.

At the same time though, both Chara and Kris (other than share the same sweater) also share a personality as the weird kid that doesn’t talk that much. They naturally do very weird things that frighten other people, but they seem like pranks at worst. And they’re also naturally very aloof and don’t talk a lot and likes to keep to themselves (but will make an exception for Asriel). What Kris does with Asriel is also similar to what Chara did with him (Asriel’s final form was referenced by one of the characters, where they say that Chara and Asriel were too busy focusing on the wings). Then again, Frisk doesn't talk a lot either.

But then it came down to the name. I was originally confused why Kris had such a normal name, but if Ralsei is just a rewording of the name “Asriel” and is supposed to represent a version of Asriel, then “Kris” may be “Frisk” without the “F” (it also may be a stretch but I think there is no F because you probably shouldn't fight. Either that, or putting an F in that name is kinda hard to do). Thats what I initially thought that was. But If you pronounce Chara the same way you pronounce the first part of the word “Character”, then the name sounds like “Kara.” Add the K of Kara and the ris from “Frisk” and you get “Kris”. Not only that, but the regular spelling of Kris is Chris, “Ch” from Chara, “ris" from Frisk, and the “Ch” is disguised as a K from Frisk (also to make it more gender neutral, I think)

So maybe Kris isn’t just Chara or isn’t just Frisk, they’re both, a mixture of the two angels that fell down to free the monsters from the underground. But then why is the Chara part of them so prevalent here? 

I think that’s because Chara’s possessing Kris. Since characters like Chara can break the fourth wall and don’t follow the laws of reality, as well as know of alternate universes and endings, Chara could have crossed from the Undertale Universe into the Deltarune Universe, and then influenced their “Chara” side more.

Here’s what I think happened: An incident occurred where Kris and Asriel were put in danger that almost killed them. They lived, obviously, but Kris became very vulnerable. Because Kris was very vulnerable at the time and is also the version of Chara here, it was easy for Chara to possess them.

It may be very easy for Kris to be possessed frequently. When we first meet sans and he greets you, you have the opportunity to say “good to see you again” or something like that, to which sans replies that he’s never met you before. Either Kris was joking around or that was actually Chara saying hi to him. Plus the phase “It’s only you.” when you look in the mirror is a bit....ominous, and can imply there can be another person there sometimes.

Kris isn’t possessed all the time though, they still wake up late, and it’s implied they still have control of themselves sometimes —when you visit Rudy, there’s a card on the table that “you” have never seen before, even though you wrote it.  And Chara has to store the soul in the birdcage frequently, implying that Kris can fight them, to some degree.

So if Chara has been here the whole time, and has been possessing Kris frequently, what exactly are they doing? Honestly, I really don’t know. As Undyne says, the town is really boring. Of course, considering the shit that went down at the end of the game, that's probably going to change. Still though, I have no idea what they were doing before the whole “dark world” business.

I’m not going to go into much detail into Ralsei but I do want to point out one thing that stood out to me. He seems like a pretty cut n dry character, and his purpose as Asriel’s reverse is pretty obvious. He is the dark opposite of Asriel, he’s the dark prince living in the castle, while everyone in his universe is alive except for him, all of his subjects are gone and he’s the only one left. His name is literally a respelling of the world Asriel, plus he’s a goat. A goat. 

But if there’s one thing that concerned me the most was how insistent he was on making sure you “acted” instead of “fought”. what stood out to me the most was when he was talking about the consequences of fighting, he said something alone the lines of “You may not like the outcome/ending you get.” Which makes me wonder what exactly happened to him and his entire kingdom. And since he’s technically a version of Asriel (who is still Flowey in the undertale universe), maybe he knows about the old resets from the Undertale universe. 

The other theory is he went through his own fight route which honestly sounds pretty intense. Really intense. Considering that flowey too did many routes, especially fight routes, the idea that Ralsei here could have done a kill route too can be very possible. also, the way Ralsei tells Kris to act sounds less like “dont do this because I saw someone else do it”, and more like “don’t do this because I did it and now I live with the consequences”. 

finally, to tobias fox

im not forgiving you for what you’ve done to mettaton

that is all

[oswednesday]

gamer theory the essay

right now im thinking like about the characters in three/four different catagories (four might make the most sense too since deltarune is that basis for a lot more world building than we’ve seen so far) like “aware” “conditionally aware” “unawares” “goners”

we have chara, flowey, gaster who are aware theyre in a game, gaster most notably for the twitter and living within the code and walking the player through set up, flowey for acknowledge its a game and being open to the game mechanics enough to control them and chara who seems to exist within the boundaries of a vessel but outside of the players control and can even leave the control of the narration to ultimately destroy the game and seems more aware than flowey of a long term goal they both share

theres conditionally aware characters who are aware something is fuck’d up but dont seem to be able to grasp it beyond a limited range, there’s asgore who recalls saves and retains the memory of the previous world, there’s sans who has an almost sci-fi like understanding of the world that doesn’t mesh with anything we’ve experienced and some like residue memory of each reset similar to asgore and ends up playing a strange role within ut itself that is not replicated within dr (yet), papyrus who tho not shown as overtly does drop mentions of things like that in some dialog so i doubt he is actually much different than sans in that regard he just Deals with it differently, alphys who has researched alternate realities and has somehow worked with sans and recalls this lucidly enough to bring it up in casual conversation (is this why she’s like WAY TOO over familiar with you in deltarune? there’s nothing else to indicate however that she remembers or recalls anything but a huge character trait is being like, a huge self serving coward so) and some shop keepers, like that turtle dude (WHO IS NOW DEAD IN DR) that cat guy, and rk i believe have similar conditional awareness but not on the level of a sans or an alphys but almost more so than asgore, and finishing off with jevil who knows he’s in a coded world but is like too mentally unstable i guess??? to understand what to do with it like went cRazY with power? or maybe like, thinking small with his abilities like he Can do anything with this awareness and for a little card guy thats shooting hearts AND diamonds (cute)

then like all the other npcs are unaware characters with scripts and roles existing in their world without knowledge of the mechanics or real memory retention of events, tutorial monsters are conditionally aware like boss monsters however they dont seem to retain memories like boss monsters i feel like thats a very important distinction to make (i have a theory about ral but sticking with whats right in front of us in text) is that tori doesnt remember the past events in anyway that supports her having like a tribute of them in her home and she treats you with a shocking kind of roughness/engulfing that isnt like, seen in undertale outright

then finally goner characters, goners are aware of the game theyre in to the point where they can see secrets within the coding, they have no seen movements but can only be accessed through manipuation of the coding and can be effected by, as it seems, gaster, punished for giving out spoilers and the goners both fear and worship gaster in some way

[patriotsnet]

Why Dont Republicans Want To Impeach Trump

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-dont-republicans-want-to-impeach-trump/

Why Dont Republicans Want To Impeach Trump

The Reluctant Trump Critics

Geraldo: Why GOP want new witnesses in Trump impeachment probe

Shelley Moore Capito, West VirginiaI think the president does own this, Capito told reporters. I did support the president, and I did support the policies, and I think the policies were good for West Virginia. But this is inexcusable. The president was convincing people all along that it was stolen, Capito said today. The facts didnt bear that out. He was using his power to convince them of a result that was never going to happen, which was to overturn the election and to force us into accepting that, into breaking our constitutional duties. She also said that on a personal level, the experience that day had been horrifying.

Richard Burr, North CarolinaToday, Americas core principles were threatened by those seeking to forcibly stop our electoral process and overturn the results of a presidential election with which they disagreed, Burr said in a statement after the riot. The President bears responsibility for todays events by promoting the unfounded conspiracy theories that have led to this point. Burr will not seek reelection in 2022.

Mike Lee, UtahIts unlike anything Ive seen in 10 years in the Senate, Lee said. He called the rioters an angry, lawless mob who should rot in prison for the rest of your lives. He also said he was not pleased by the presidents words.

They’ll Stand By Their Man Even When Doing So Is Bad For Democracy

Former President Trump will once again make the kind of history you do not want your name associated with on Tuesday when his second impeachment trial commences in the U.S. Senate. As with Trump’s first trial , the outcome is not in doubt. But just because we know how it will end doesn’t mean the trial won’t be gripping. Members of Congress narrating their terrifying Insurrection Day ordeals will be a riveting spectacle. And just as we did in the House last month, Americans will get a quick and dirty head count of how many Republicans value democracy itself more than their own political fates.

Don’t get your hopes up on that score. While the political and evidentiary cases for GOP senators to convict Trump and bar him from ever holding federal office again are straightforward, the path to 67 votes is not. Instead, viewers should brace themselves for torturous arguments about how it is unconstitutional to impeach a former president, and some extremely “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is” galaxy logic about how Trump did not incite the crowd to insurrection because he did not literally say the words “please go and lay violent siege to our national legislature.” Gathering more than one Republican in a room these days is a plain invitation to this kind of sophistry.

That they still refuse to do so says more about them than it does about Trump.

Opinionwe Want To Hear What You Think Please Submit A Letter To The Editor

Boebert live-tweeted about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location during the Capitol insurrection Jan. 6 as Pelosi, second in line to the presidency, was being rushed to a secure location. Greene, among other offenses, made in 2018 and 2019 suggesting that she supported executing prominent Democrats.

Some of the senators who endorsed Paul’s motion Tuesday might be tempted to think they can simply move on from Trump and therefore want to avoid an impeachment trial so his entire shameful presidency can be forgotten as quickly as possible.

But they’ve helped to create a disaster much bigger than Trump. By giving in to him at every turn, Republicans helped create the epidemic of conspiracy theories and alternative facts rampant in the Republican Party.

Perhaps most consequentially, they endorsed his Big Lie about the election. It wasn’t just Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri who propagated fantasies about widespread voter fraud, irregularities and a “steal.” Fourteen Senate Republicans announced before the attack on the Capitol that they planned to object to counting at least one state’s electoral votes, even though Trump had won none of his more than 60 lawsuits trying to overturn the results and even though no evidence of widespread voter fraud was found by election officials in any state regardless of party.

Recommended Reading: What Is Republicanism And What Does It Value

The Situation In Wisconsin Looks A Bit Different Than The National Polls

A of Wisconsin released yesterday is a reminder that the national poll results were seeing are a bit different than the attitudes in top battleground states for 2020.

In the poll, 46 percent of registered voters in Wisconsin say there is enough cause for Congress to hold impeachment hearings on Trump, versus 49 percent who disagree. That 46 percent is lower than the majorities weve seen in most national polls supporting the impeachment inquiry.

The poll also finds 44 percent of Wisconsin supporting Trumps impeachment/removal from office, versus 51 percent who oppose it.

Trumps job rating in Wisconsin is 46 percent in the poll slightly higher than his national average in the low 40s.

And in hypothetical general-election matchups, Biden leads Trump by 6 points in the state, 50 percent to 44 percent. Thats compared with Bernie Sanders 2-point lead , Elizabeth Warrens 1-point lead , and Pete Buttigiegs 2-point deficit .

Most national polling shows all of these Democrats ahead of Trump by double digits or high-single digits.

Senate Trial To Restart At Noon Wednesday

Donald Trump’s impeachment trial will reconvene at noon ET on Wednesday after a day of arguments about the constitutionality of trying a former president for high crimes and misdemeanors.

The Senate voted by a 56-44 margin that the proceedings are constitutional, as only six Republicans joined with all Democrats.

On Wednesday, the nine House impeachment managers prosecuting the case against Trump and the former president’s defense team will start arguments about whether Trump incited an insurrection when a mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. Each side will have up to 16 hours over no more than two days to make their case.

The House managers are expected to start Wednesday by rebutting the arguments Trump’s lawyers made before the constitutionality vote. Jacob Pramuk

You May Like: What Color Are Democrats And Republicans

Republican Rep Offers Two Good Reasons Why Joe Biden Should Be Impeached

Joe Biden should be impeached, and Texas Republican Rep. Chip Roy has offered two excellent reasons why it should happen.

Remember the flimsy reasons Democrats used to impeach Trump? This is nothing like that. This is real.

If Republicans take the House and Senate in 2022, they should make Chip Roy the point man on making this a reality.

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GOP Rep Says Biden Comment on Constitutionality of Eviction Moratorium Is Impeachable

President Joe Biden is under fire for comments about the constitutionality of the eviction moratorium, after he bucked the Supreme Courts deadline of July 31. Biden caved to progressives who asked him to extend the moratorium after Congress failed to legislate an extension.

I cant guarantee you the court wont rule that we dont have that authority but at least well have the ability to, if we have to appeal, to keep this going for a month-at least. I hope longer, Biden said in response to a question about the moratoriums constitutionality:

Why is the eviction moratorium constitutional, I asked the president. Biden told me I cant guarantee you the court wont rule that we dont have that authority but at least well have the ability to, if we have to appeal, to keep this going for a month-at least. I hope longer.

Philip Melanchthon Wegmann

Mollie

The Senate Had No Business Voting On Whether A Former President Could Be Impeached Its Only Role Is To Determine If An Impeached Person Is Guilty

Forty-five Republican senators;voted this week to dismiss former President Donald Trumps impeachment trial before it even started. Although their maneuver failed, it focused the spotlight on a question of constitutional procedure the Senates ability to try a former official. Senate Republicans wishing to duck their constitutional obligation and avoid giving offense to Trump and his loyal supporters;would like nothing more than to engage in debates about process. That way they can avoid talking about the actual insurrection Trump incited;and the damage and death it caused. But like so many legal arguments Trump intimidates GOP officials;into making, the question isnt a close one.

The Senate concluded long ago that it had jurisdiction to try a former officer, expressly voting on the question after the House of Representatives impeached former Secretary of War William Belknap in 1876.;They did so because the Constitution makes clear that impeachment serves two important goals removing a bad actor from office and forever disqualifying him or her from holding or enjoying any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States. That is clear not only from the plain text of the Constitution, but also from the precedents the framers drew upon, such as the 18th century trial of Warren Hastings;in England. He left office in 1785, was impeached in 1787, and was acquitted in 1795 after a seven-year trial.;

Recommended Reading: Who Are Democrats And Republicans In Us

Trump Impeachment Lawyer Castor’s Drawn

Political watchers covering the impeachment trial on social media quickly lost patience with Bruce Castor Jr., the first lawyer on former President Donald Trump’s legal team to deliver arguments in the Senate.

Castor, a former district attorney in Pennsylvania, took the chamber floor to argue that the impeachment trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president.

But viewers quickly got lost trying to follow Castor’s rhetoric and took to Twitter to mock the speech as confusing, rambling and at times incoherent.

Even some of Trump’s supporters gave Castor’s performance dismal reviews.

“There is no argument. I have no idea what he’s doing. I have no idea why he’s saying what he’s saying,” said Alan Dershowitz, who previously said he would be willing to defend Trump in the trial.

Kevin Breuninger

Donald Trumps Second Impeachment Trial Rests In The Hands Of Republican Senators

Impeachment defence slams Dems who ‘don’t want to face Trump as a future political rival’

With a two-thirds majority of senators required to convict the former president, 17 GOP lawmakers would have to join the Democrats

Democratic control of the US Senate could create problems for Donald Trump in the weeks ahead when the former president likely faces his second impeachment trial but not because Democrats by themselves would be able to convict Trump on the charge at hand: incitement of insurrection.

A two-thirds majority of voting senators 67 if all 100 members vote is still required to convict the president, and the Democratic caucus will number only 50 senators. Thus they would need 17 Republicans to join them to convict Trump.

If convicted, Trump could be banned from ever again holding public office. If not, Trump, who won the votes of 74 million Americans just two months ago, might simply run for president again in 2024.

Late Thursday it emerged that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell is proposing to push back the start of the Senate trial to give Trump time to prepare. He said he is suggesting the impeachment charge be presented to the Senate on 28 January and the trial to start two weeks after that.

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he was negotiating on timing but added make no mistake about it. There will be a trial, there will be a vote, up or down or whether to convict the president.

I suspect this is the kind of thing that the Senate parliamentarian is hunkered down with somebody figuring out, Bowman said.

Recommended Reading: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

The Latest From California

Theres been a sharp decline in support for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Melanie Mason reported. The latest UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll finds 35% of voters in the state approve of Feinsteins work. Thats the first time that her job approval has turned negative. The poll also gives early readings on Harris and newly appointed Sen. Alex Padilla.

For the record: Wednesdays newsletter said Fox Business had filled Lou Dobbs slot on the network with former Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow. The new program with Kudlow is not taking Dobbs time slot.

And a quick programming note: Essential Politics will take Monday off for the holiday. Well be back in your inbox on Wednesday, Feb. 17.

Stay in touch

Trump Attorney Schoen Accuses Lawmakers Of ‘insatiable Lust For Impeachment’

Trump’s second defense attorney to speak on Tuesday, David Schoen, delivered a scathing critique of the impeachment process in a speech that accused Democrats of seeking to go after the ex-president in any way they could.

“The denial of due process in this case of course starts with the House of Representatives,” Schoen, a former lawyer to Trump ally Roger Stone, said from the Senate floor.

Schoen’s remarks, which he at times read from prepared notes, were more direct than those made by Castor, who assumed a folksy persona and appeared to ramble.

“In this unprecedented snap impeachment process, the House of Representatives denied every attribute of fundamental constitutional due process that Americans have correctly come to believe is what makes this country so great,” Schoen said. “How and why did that happen? It is a function of the insatiable lust for impeachment in the House for the last four years.”

Schoen played a video montage of Democrats, including the lead impeachment manager Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., calling for Trump’s impeachment as far back as 2017.

Other Democrats shown in the video included Keith Ellison, the former Minnesota congressman who now serves as that state’s attorney general, Rep. Maxine Waters of California, Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Read Also: How Many Republicans Are In The Senate Currently

The Republican Senators Who Are Being Asked To Judge Trump Are Guilty Of The Very Same High Crime For Which The Former President Has Been Impeached

Senator Lindsey Graham speaks at his press conference on Capitol Hill a day after Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington on January 7, 2021.

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To Lindsey Graham, who said Donald Trump could count me out after the Capitol attack on January 6 but has spent the last month scurrying back to him, is apparently offended by the impeachment case presented by the House managers. I think most Republicans found the presentation by the House Managers offensive and absurd, he tweeted. And hes probably right: Reporters in the Senate chamber are saying that some Republicans are engaging in performative disinterest, reading books or refusing to look at the videos of the violence, like theyre a bunch of Judd Nelsons who are too cool for school. Some are even refusing to sit in the chamber, as they are required to do.

Why Would They Do This

We know the Democrats and most of the Republicans hate President Trump.; He stood for the average American.; ;He stood up for Americans and didnt go to Washington to enrich himself but to enrich the average American and bring pride back to America.

President Trump hoped to drain the swamp but he and America never knew how corrupt the cesspool in Washington really was.; Now after doing all he can to help America protect its citizens, increase the economy, allow Americans to keep more of their own money, protect its borders, create peace deals and bring its soldiers home, the globalists and deep state scum despise him.; He was successful and too popular for standing up to the corruption and for Americans.

TRENDING: Trump Campaign Banned From EMAILING Supporters After Being Suspended By Mail Service Provider

So they are going to impeach him with 11 days left in his Presidency:

Democrats Release Latest Draft of Articles of Impeachment Will Formally Introduce Documents on Monday Via Bannon War Room

Why would they do this?

The President just won the 2020 election with the most legitimate votes of any US president in history.; More than 74 million Americans voted for President Trump.; But the Democrats and the Biden campaign stole it.; Weve pointed out millions of votes that were fraudulent and when addressed would easily give the election to President Trump.; The fraud in three states alone when properly if ever addressed would give the win to President Trump:

Read Also: How Did Republicans Do In The Primaries

Senate Republicans Don’t Want Trump To Testify In Impeachment Trial

Senate Republicans on Thursday said they don’t want former President TrumpDonald TrumpIran president: Country ready to resume nuclear talks without Western ‘pressure’ Trump in advanced talks to sell DC hotel: reportMORE to testify as part of a second impeachment trial after House impeachment managers formally requested the former president;testify under oath next week.

The public pushback comes as his legal team appears to be shooting down the request from the House impeachment managers, dismissing it as a “publicity stunt.”

GOP senators say there’s no reason for Trump to testify after the House impeached him for a historic second time without calling any witnesses,;a move that was different than the 2019 impeachment effort.;

House;Democrats argued they could move more quickly this time because lawmakers experienced the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol firsthand and had witnessed Trump’s speech;just prior;to the riot, where he urged supporters;to march to the Capitol building.

Lindsey Olin GrahamMcConnell: Biden ‘is not going to be removed from office’Biden’s Afghanistan exit: A decision for the long termHeavy fighting reported in last Afghanistan province not under Taliban controlMORE , a close Trump ally who said he spoke to the former president “a couple of days ago,” dismissed the House impeachment managers’ request as a “political ploy.”

[shirlleycoyle]

What Alternate Reality Games Teach Us About the Dangerous Appeal of QAnon

This story was originally published on mssv.net by Adrian Hon (@adrianhon)

The far-right QAnon conspiracy theory is so sprawling, it’s hard to know where people join. Last week, it was 5G cell towers, this week it’s Wayfair; who knows what next week will bring? But QAnon’s followers always seem to begin their journey with the same refrain: “I’ve done my research.”

I’d heard that line before. In early 2001, the marketing for Steven Spielberg’s latest movie, A.I., had just begun. YouTube wouldn’t launch for another four years, so you had to be eagle-eyed to spot the unusual credit next to Haley Joel Osment, Jude Law, and Frances O’Connor: Jeanine Salla, the movie’s “Sentient Machine Therapist.”

Close-up of the A.I. movie poster

Soon after, Ain’t It Cool News (AICN) posted a tip from a reader:

“Type her name in the Google.com search engine, and see what sites pop up…pretty cool stuff! Keep up the good work, Harry!! –ClaviusBase”

(Yes, in 2001 Google was so new you had to spell out its web address.)

The Google results began with Jeanine Salla’s homepage but led to a whole network of fictional sites. Some were futuristic versions of police websites or lifestyle magazines; others were inscrutable online stores and hacked blogs. A couple were in German and Japanese. In all, over twenty sites and phone numbers were listed.

By the end of the day, the websites racked up 25 million hits, all from a single AICN article suggesting readers ‘do their research’. It later emerged they were part of one of the first-ever alternate reality games (ARG), The Beast, developed by Microsoft to promote Spielberg’s movie.

The way I’ve described it here, The Beast sounds like enormous fun. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by a doorway into 2142 filled with websites and phone numbers and puzzles, with runaway robots who need your help and even live events around the world? But consider how much work it required to understand the story and it begins to sound less like “watching TV” fun and more like “painstaking research” fun. Along with tracking dozens of websites that updated in real time, you had to solve lute tablature puzzles, decode base 64 messages, reconstruct 3D models of island chains that spelt out messages, and gather clues from newspaper and TV adverts across the US.

This purposeful yet bewildering complexity is the complete opposite of what many associate with conventional popular entertainment, where every bump in your road to enjoyment has been smoothed away in the pursuit of instant engagement and maximal profit. But there’s always been another kind of entertainment that appeals to different people at different times, one that rewards active discovery, the drawing of connections between clues, the delicious sensation of a hunch that pays off after hours or days of work. Puzzle books, murder mysteries, adventure games, escape rooms, even scientific research—they all aim for the same spot.

What was new in The Beast and the ARGs that followed it was less the specific puzzles and stories they incorporated, but the sheer scale of the worlds they realised—so vast and fast-moving that no individual could hope to comprehend them. Instead, players were forced to cooperate, sharing discoveries and solutions, exchanging ideas, and creating resources for others to follow. I’d know: I wrote a novel-length walkthrough of The Beast when I was meant to be studying for my degree at Cambridge.

QAnon is not an ARG. It’s a dangerous conspiracy theory, and there are lots of ways of understanding conspiracy theories without ARGs. But QAnon pushes the same buttons that ARGs do, whether by intention or by coincidence. In both cases, “do your research” leads curious onlookers to a cornucopia of brain-tingling information.

In other words, maybe QAnon is… fun?

ARGs never made it big. They came too early and It’s hard to charge for a game that you stumble into through a Google search. But maybe their purposely-fragmented, internet-native, community-based form of storytelling and puzzle-solving was just biding its time…

This blog post expands on the ideas in my Twitter thread about QAnon and ARGs, and incorporates many of the valuable replies. Please note, however, that I’m not a QAnon expert and I’m not a scholar of conspiracy theories. I’m not even the first to compare QAnon to LARPs and ARGs.

But my experience as lead designer of Perplex City, one of the world’s most popular and longest-running ARGs, gives me a special perspective on QAnon’s game-like nature. My background as a neuroscientist and experimental psychologist also gives me insight into what motivates people.

Today, I run Six to Start, best known for Zombies, Run!, an audio-based augmented reality game with half a million active players, and I’m writing a book about the perils and promise of gamification.

It’s Like We Did It On Purpose

Perplex City “Ascendancy Point” Story Arc

When I was designing Perplex City, I loved sketching out new story arcs. I’d create intricate chains of information and clues for players to uncover, colour-coding for different websites and characters. There was a knack to having enough parallel strands of investigation going on so that players didn’t feel railroaded, but not so many that they were overwhelmed. It was a particular pleasure to have seemingly unconnected arcs intersect after weeks or months.

Merely half of the “Q-web“

No-one would mistake the clean lines of my flowcharts for the snarl of links that makes up a QAnon theory, but the principles are similar: one discovery leading to the next. Of course, these two flowcharts are very different beasts. The QAnon one is an imaginary, retrospective description of supposedly-connected data, while mine is a prescriptive network of events I would design.

Except that’s not quite true. In reality, Perplex City players didn’t always solve our puzzles as quickly as we intended them to, or they became convinced their incorrect solution was correct, or embarrassingly, our puzzles were broken and had no solution at all. In those cases we had to rewrite the story on the fly.

When this happens in most media, you just hold up your hands and say you made a mistake. In video games, you can issue an online update and hope no-one’s the wiser. But in ARGs, a public correction would shatter the uniquely-prolonged collective suspension of disbelief in the story. This was thought to be so integral to the appeal of ARGs, it was termed TINAG, or “This is Not a Game.”

So when we messed up in Perplex City, we tried mightily to avoid editing websites, a sure sign this was, in fact, a game. Instead, we’d fix it by adding new storylines and writing through the problem (it helped to have a crack team of writers and designers, including Naomi Alderman, Andrea Phillips, David Varela, Dan Hon, Jey Biddulph, Fi Silk, Eric Harshbarger, and many many others).

We had a saying when these diversions worked out especially well: “It’s like we did it on purpose.”

Every ARG designer can tell a similar war story. Here’s Josh Fialkov, writer for the Lonelygirl15 ARG/show:

“Our fans/viewers would build elaborate (and pretty neat) theories and stories around the stories we’d already put together and then we’d merge them into our narrative, which would then engage them more. The one I think about the most is we were shooting something on location and we’re run and gunning. We fucked up and our local set PA ended up in the background of a long selfie shot. We had no idea. It was 100% a screw up. The fans became convinced the character was in danger. And then later when that character revealed herself as part of the evil conspiracy — that footage was part of the audiences proof that she was working with the bad guys all along — “THATS why he was in the background!” They literally found a mistake – made it a story point. And used it as evidence of their own foresight into the ending — despite it being, again, us totally being exhausted and sloppy. And at the time hundreds of thousands of people were participating and contributing to a fictional universe and creating strands upon strands.”

Conspiracy theories and cults evince the same insouciance when confronted with inconsistencies or falsified predictions; they can always explain away errors with new stories and theories. What’s special about QAnon and ARGs is that these errors can be fixed almost instantly, before doubt or ridicule can set in. And what’s really special about QAnon is how it’s absorbed all other conspiracy theories to become a kind of ur-conspiracy theory such that seems pointless to call out inconsistencies. In any case, who would you even be calling out when so many QAnon theories come from followers rather than “Q”?

Yet the line between creator and player in ARGs has also long been blurry. That tip from “ClaviusBase” to AICN that catapulted The Beast to massive mainstream coverage? The designers more or less admitted it came from them. Indeed, there’s a grand tradition of ARG “puppetmasters” (an actual term used by devotees) sneaking out from “behind the curtain” (ditto) to create “sockpuppet accounts” in community forums to seed clues, provide solutions, and generally chivvy players along the paths they so carefully designed.

As an ARG designer, I used to take a hard line against this kind of cheating but in the years since, I’ve mellowed somewhat, mostly because it can make the game more fun, and ultimately, because everyone expects it these days. That’s not the case with QAnon.

Yes, anyone who uses 4chan and 8chan understands that anonymity is baked into the system such that posters frequently create entire threads where they argue against themselves in the guise of anonymous users who are impossible to distinguish or trace back to a single individual – but do the more casual QAnon followers know that?

Local Fame

A Beautiful Mind

Pop culture’s conspiracy theorist sits in a dark basement stringing together photos and newspaper clippings on their "crazy wall." On the few occasions this leads to useful results, it’s an unenviable pursuit. Anyone choosing such an existence tends to be shunned by society.

But this ignores one gaping fact: piecing together theories is really satisfying. Writing my walkthrough for The Beast was rewarding and meaningful, appreciated by an enthusiastic community in a way that my molecular biology essays most certainly were not. Online communities have long been dismissed as inferior in every way to “real” friendships, an attenuated version that’s better than nothing, but not something that anyone should choose. Yet ARGs and QAnon (and games and fandom and so many other things) demonstrate there’s an immediacy and scale and relevance to online communities that can be more potent and rewarding than a neighbourhood bake sale. This won’t be news to most of you, but I think it’s still news to decision-makers in traditional media and politics.

Good ARGs are deliberately designed with puzzles and challenges that require unusual talents—I designed one puzzle that required a good understanding of ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs—with problems so large that they require crowdsourcing to solve, such that all players feel like welcome and valued contributors.

Needless to say, that feeling is missing from many people’s lives:

“ARGs are generally a showcase for special talent that often goes unrecognized elsewhere. I have met so many wildly talented people with weird knowledge through them.”

If you’re first to solve a puzzle or make a connection, you can attain local fame in ARG communities, as Dan Hon, COO at Mind Candy (makers of the Perplex City ARG), notes. The vast online communities for TV shows like Lost and Westworld, with their purposefully convoluted mystery box plots, also reward those who guess twists early, or produce helpful explainer videos. Yes, the reward is “just” internet points in the form of Reddit upvotes, but the feeling of being appreciated is very real. It’s no coincidence that Lost and Westworld both used ARGs to promote their shows.

Wherever you have depth in storytelling or content or mechanics, you’ll find the same kind of online communities. Games like Bloodborne, Minecraft, Stardew Valley, Dwarf Fortress, Animal Crossing, Eve Online, and Elite Dangerous, they all share the same race for discovery. These discoveries eventually become processed into explainer videos and Reddit posts that are more accessible for wider audiences.

The same has happened with modern ARGs, where explainer videos have become so compelling they rack up more views than the ARGs have players (not unlike Twitch). Michael Andersen, owner of the Alternate Reality Gaming Network news site, is a fan of this trend, but wonders about its downside—with reference to conspiracy theorists:

“[W]hen you’re reading (or watching) a summary of an ARG? All of the assumptions and logical leaps have been wrapped up and packaged for you, tied up with a nice little bow. Everything makes sense, and you can see how it all flows together. Living it, though? Sheer chaos. Wild conjectures and theories flying left and right, with circumstantial evidence and speculation ruling the day. Things exist in a fugue state of being simultaneously true-and-not-true, and it’s only the accumulation of evidence that resolves it. And acquiring a “knack” for sifting through theories to surface what’s believable is an extremely valuable skill—both for actively playing ARGs, and for life in general.And sometimes, I worry that when people consume these neatly packaged theories that show all the pieces coming together, they miss out on all those false starts and coincidences that help develop critical thinking skills. …because yes, conspiracy theories try and offer up those same neat packages that attempt to explain the seemingly unexplained. And it’s pretty damn important to learn how groups can be led astray in search of those neatly wrapped packages.”

“SPEC”

I’m a big fan of the SCP Foundation, a creative writing website set within a shared universe not unlike The X-Files. Its top-rated stories rank among the best science fiction and horror I’ve read. A few years ago, I wrote my own (very silly) story, SCP-3993, where New York’s ubiquitous LinkNYC internet kiosks are cover for a mysterious reality-altering invasion.

CITYBRIDGE/NYC

Like the rest of SCP, this was all in good fun, but I recently discovered LinkNYC is tangled up in QAnon conspiracy theories. To be fair, you can say the same thing about pretty much every modern technology, but it’s not surprising their monolith-like presence caught conspiracy theorists’ attention as it did mine.

It’s not unreasonable to be creeped out by LinkNYC. In 2016, the New York Civil Liberties Union wrote to the mayor about “the vast amount of private information retained by the LinkNYC system and the lack of robust language in the privacy policy protecting users against unwarranted government surveillance.” Two years later, kiosks along Third Avenue in Midtown mysteriously blasted out a slowed-down version of the Mister Softee theme song. So there’s at least some cause for speculation. The problem is when speculation hardens into reality.

Not long after the AICN post, The Beast’s players set up a Yahoo Group mailing list called Cloudmakers, named after a boat in the story. As the number of posts rose to dozens and then hundreds per day, it became obvious to list moderators (including me) that some form of organisation was in order. One rule we established was that posts should include a prefix in their subject so members could easily distinguish website updates from puzzle solutions.

My favourite prefix was “SPEC,” a catch-all for any kind of unfounded speculation, most of which was fun nonsense but some of which ended up being true. There were no limits on what or how much you could post, but you always had to use the prefix so people could ignore it. Other moderated communities have similar guidelines, with rationalists using their typically long-winded “epistemic status” metadata.

Absent this kind of moderation, speculation ends up overwhelming communities since it’s far easier and more fun to bullshit than do actual research. And if speculation is repeated enough times, if it’s finessed enough, it can harden into accepted fact, leading to devastating and even fatal consequences.

I’ve personally been the subject of this process thanks to my work in ARGs—not just once, but twice.

The first occasion was fairly innocent. One of our more famous Perplex City puzzles, Billion to One, was a photo of a man. That’s it. The challenge was to find him. Obviously, we were riffing on the whole “six degrees of separation” concept. Some thought it’d be easy, but I was less convinced. Sure enough, fourteen years on, the puzzle is still unsolved, but not for lack of trying. Every so often, the internet rediscovers the puzzle amid a flurry of YouTube videos and podcasts; I can tell whenever this happens because people start DMing me on Twitter and Instagram.

This literally came a few days ago

A clue in the puzzle is the man’s name, Satoshi. It is not a rare name, and it happens to be same as the presumed pseudonymous person or persons who developed bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. So of course people think Perplex City’s Satoshi created bitcoin. Not a lot of people, to be fair, but enough that I get DMs about it every week. But it’s all pretty innocent, like I said.

More concerning is my presumed connection to Cicada 3301, a mysterious group that recruited codebreakers through very difficult online puzzles. Back in 2011, my company developed a pseudo-ARG for the BBC Two factual series, The Code, all about mathematics. This involved planting clues into the show itself, along with online educational games and a treasure hunt.

To illustrate the concept of prime numbers, The Code explored the gestation period of cicadas. We had no hand in the writing of the show; we got the script and developed our ARG around it. But this was enough to create a brand new conspiracy theory, featuring yours truly:

My bit starts around 20 minutes in:

Interviewer: Why [did you make a puzzle about] cicadas?

Me: Cicadas are known for having a gestation period which is linked to prime numbers. Prime numbers are at the heart of nature and the heart of mathematics.

Interviewer: That puzzle comes out in June 2011.

Me: Yeah.

Interviewer: Six months later, Cicada 3301 makes its international debut.

Me: It's a big coincidence.

Interviewer: There are some people who have brought up the fact that whoever's behind Cicada 3301 would have to be a very accomplished game maker.

Me: Sure.

Interviewer: You would be a candidate to be that person.

Me: That's true, I mean, Cicada 3301 has a lot in common with the games we've made. I think that one big difference (chuckles) is that normally when we make alternate reality games, we do it for money. And it's not so clear to understand where the funding for Cicada 3301 is coming from.

Clearly this was all just in fun – I knew it and the interviewer knew it. That’s why I agreed to take part. But does everyone watching this understand that? There’s no “SPEC” tag on the video. At least a few commenters are taking it seriously:

I am the “ARG guy” in question

I’m not worried, but I’d be lying if I wasn’t a touch concerned that Cicada 3301 now lies squarely in the QAnon vortex and in the “Q-web“:

Here’s a good interview with the creator of the “Q-web”

My defence that the cicada puzzle in The Code was “a big coincidence” (albeit delivered with an unfortunate shit-eating grin) didn’t hold water. In the conspiracy theorest mindset, no such thing exists:

“According to Michael Barkun, emeritus professor of political science at Syracuse University, three core principles characterize most conspiracy theories. Firstly, the belief that nothing happens by accident or coincidence. Secondly, that nothing is as it seems: The “appearance of innocence” is to be suspected. Finally, the belief that everything is connected through a hidden pattern.”

These are helpful beliefs when playing an ARG or watching a TV show designed with twists and turns. It’s fun to speculate and to join seemingly disparate ideas, especially when the creators encourage and reward this behaviour. It’s less helpful when conspiracy theorists “yes, and…” each other into shooting up a pizza parlour or burning down 5G cell towers.

Because there is no coherent QAnon community in the same sense as the Cloudmakers, there’s no convention of “SPEC” tags. In their absence, YouTube has added annotated QAnon videos with links to its Wikipedia article, and Twitter has banned 7,000 accounts and restricted 150,000 more, among other actions. Supposedly, Facebook is planning to do the same.

These are useful steps but will not stop QAnon from spreading in social media comments or private chat groups or unmoderated forums. It’s not something we can reasonably hope for, and I don’t think there’s any technological solution (e.g. browser extensions) either. The only way to stop people from mistaking speculation from fact is for them to want to stop.

Cryptic

It’s always nice to have a few mysteries for players to speculate on in an ARG, if only because it helps them pass the time while the poor puppetmasters scramble to sate their insatiable demand for more website updates and puzzles. A good mystery can keep a community guessing for, as Lost did with its numbers or Game of Thrones with Jon Snow’s parentage. But these mysteries always have to be balanced against specifics, lest the whole story dissolve into a puddle of mush; for as much we derided Lost for the underwhelming conclusion to its mysteries, no-one would’ve watched in the first place if the episode-to-episode storytelling wasn’t so strong.

The downside of being too mysterious in Perplex City is that cryptic messages often led players on wild goose chases such that they completely ignored entire story arcs in favour of pursuing their own theories. This was bad for us because we had a pretty strict timetable that we needed our story to play out on, pinned against the release of our physical puzzle cards that funded the entire enterprise. If players took too long to find the $200,000 treasure at the conclusion of the story, we might run out of money.

QAnon can favour cryptic messages because, as far as I know, they don’t have a specific timeline or goal in mind, let alone a production budget or paid staff. Not only is there no harm in followers misinterpreting messages, but it’s a strength: followers can occupy themselves with their own spin-off theories far better than “Q” can. Dan Hon notes:

“For every ARG I’ve been involved in and ones my friends have been involved in, communities always consume/complete/burn through content faster than you can make it, when you’re doing a narrative-based game. This content generation/consumption/playing asymmetry is, I think, just a fact. But QAnon “solved” it by being able to co-opt all content that already exists and … encourages and allows you to create new content that counts and is fair play in-the-game.”

But even QAnon needs some specificity, hence their frequent references to actual people, places, events, and so on.

A brief aside on designing very hard puzzles

It was useful to be cryptic when I needed to control the speed at which players solved especially consequential puzzles, like the one revealing where our $200,000 treasure was buried. For story and marketing purposes, we wanted players to be able to find it as soon as they had access to all 256 puzzle cards, which we released in three waves. We also wanted players to feel like they were making progress before they had all the cards and we didn’t want them to find the location the minute they had the last card.

My answer was to represent the location as the solution to multiple cryptic puzzles. One puzzle referred to the Jurassic strata in the UK, which I split across the background of 14 cards. Another began with a microdot revealing which order to arrange triple letters I’d hidden on a bunch of cards. By performing mod arithmetic on the letter/number values, you would arrive at 1, 2, 3 or 4, corresponding to the four DNA nucleotides. If you understood the triplets as codons for amino acids, they became letters. These letters led you to the phrase “Duke of Burgundy”, the name of a butterfly whose location, when combined with the Jurassic strata, would help you narrow down the location of the treasure.

The nice thing about this convoluted sequence is that we could provide additional online clues to help the players community when they got stuck. The point being, you can’t make an easy puzzle harder, but you can make a hard puzzle easier.

Beyond ARGs

It can feel crass to compare ARGs to a conspiracy theory that’s caused so much harm. But this reveals the crucial difference between them: in QAnon, the stakes so high, any action is justified. If you truly believe an online store or a pizza parlour is engaging in child trafficking and the authorities are complicit, extreme behaviour is justified.

Gabriel Roth, editorial director for audio at Slate, extends this idea:

“What QAnon has that ARGs didn’t have is the claim of factual truth; in that sense it reminds me of the Bullshit Anecdotal Memoir wave of the 90s and early 00s. If you have a story based on real life, but you want to make it more interesting, the correct thing to do is change the names of the people and make it as interesting as you like and call it fiction. The insight of the Bullshit Anecdotal Memoirists (I’m thinking of James Frey and Augusten Burroughs and David Sedaris) was that you could call it nonfiction and readers would like it much better because it would have the claim of actual factual truth, wowee!! And it worked! How much more engaging and addictive is an immersive, participatory ARG when it adds that unique frisson you can only get with the claim of factual truth? And bear in mind that ARG-scale stories aren’t about mere personal experiences—they operate on a world-historical scale.”

ARGs’ playfulness with the truth and their sometimes-imperceptible winking of This Is Not A Game (accusations Lonelygirl15 was a hoax) is only the most modern incarnation of epistolary storytelling. In that context, immersive and realistic stories have long elicited extreme reactions, like the panic incited by Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds (often exaggerated, to be fair).

We don’t have to wonder what happens when an ARG community meets a matter of life and death. Not long after The Beast concluded, the 9/11 attacks happened. A small number of posters in the Cloudmakers mailing list suggested the community use its skills to “solve” the question of who was behind the attack.

The brief but intense discussion that ensued has become a cautionary tale of ARG communities getting carried away and being unable to distinguish fiction from reality. In reality, the community and the moderators quickly shut down the idea as being impractical, insensitive, and very dangerous. “Cloudmakers tried to solve 9/11” is a great story, but it’s completely false.

Unfortunately, the same isn’t true for the poster child for online sleuthing gone wrong, the r/findbostonbombers subreddit. There’s a parallel between the essentially unmoderated, anonymous theorists of r/findbostonbombers and those in QAnon: neither feel any responsibility for spreading unsupported speculation as fact. What they do feel is that anything should be solvable, as Laura Hall, immersive environment and narrative designer, describes:

“There’s a general sense of, ‘This should be solveable/findable/etc’ that you see in lots of reddit communities for unsolved mysteries and so on. The feeling that all information is available online, that reality and truth must be captured/in evidence somewhere”

There’s truth in that feeling. There is a vast amount of information online, and sometimes it is possible to solve “mysteries”, which makes it hard to criticise people for trying, especially when it comes to stopping perceived injustices. But it’s the sheer volume of information online that makes it so easy and so tempting and so fun to draw spurious connections.

That joy of solving and connecting and sharing and communication can do great things, and it can do awful things. As Josh Fialkov, writer for Lonelygirl15, says:

That brain power negatively focused on what [conspiracy theorists] perceive as life and death (but is actually crassly manipulated paranoia) scares the living shit out of me.

What ARGs Can Teach Us

Can we make “good ARGs”? Could ARGs inoculate people against conspiracy theories like QAnon?

The short answer is: No. When it comes to games that are educational and fun, you usually have to pick one, not both—and I say that as someone who thinks he’s done a decent job at making “serious games” over the years. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but it’s really hard, and I doubt any such ARG would get played by the right audience anyway.

The long answer: I’m writing a book about the perils and promise of gamification. Come back in a year or two.

For now, here’s a medium-sized answer. No ARG can heal the deep mistrust and fear and economic and spiritual malaise that underlies QAnon and other dangerous conspiracy theories, any more than a book or a movie can solve racism. There are hints at ARG-like things that could work, though—not in directly combatting QAnon’s appeal, but in channeling people’s energy and zeal of community-based problem-solving toward better causes.

Take The COVID Tracking Project, an attempt to compile the most complete data available about COVID-19 in the U.S. Every day, volunteers collect the latest numbers on tests, cases, hospitalizations, and patient outcomes from every state and territory. In the absence of reliable governmental figures, it’s become one of the best sources not just in the U.S., but in the world.

It’s also incredibly transparent. You can drill down into the raw data volunteers have collected on Google Sheets, view every line of code written on Github, and ask them questions on Slack. Errors and ambiguities in the data are quickly disclosed and explained rather than hidden or ignored. There’s something game-like in the daily quest to collect the best-quality data and to continually expand and improve the metrics being tracked. And like in the best ARGs, volunteers of all backgrounds and skills are welcomed. It’s one of the most impressive and well-organising reporting projects I’ve ever seen; “crowdsourcing” doesn’t even come close to describing its scale.

If you applied ARG skills to investigative journalism, you’d get something like Bellingcat, an an open-source intelligence group that discovered how Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) was shot down over Ukraine in 2014. Bellingcat’s volunteers painstakingly pieced together publicly-available information to determine MH17 was downed by a Buk missile launcher originating from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Rocket Brigade in Kursk, Russia. The Dutch-led international joint investigation team later came to the same conclusion.

Conspiracy theories thrive in the absence of trust. Today, people don’t trust authorities because authorities have repeatedly shown themselves to be unworthy of trust – misreporting or manipulating COVID-19 testing figures, delaying the publication of government investigations, burning records of past atrocities, and deploying unmarked federal forces. Perhaps authorities were just as untrustworthy twenty or fifty or a hundred years ago, but today we rightly expect more.

Mattathias Schwartz, contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine, believes it’s that lack of trust that leads people to QAnon:

“Q’s [followers] … are starving for information. Their willingness to chase bread crumbs is a symptom of ignorance and powerlessness. There may be something to their belief that the machinery of the state is inaccessible to the people. It’s hard to blame them for resorting to fantasy and esotericism, after all, when accurate information about the government’s current activities is so easily concealed and so woefully incomplete.”

So the goal cannot be to simply restore trust in existing authorities. Rather, I think it’s to restore faith in truth and knowledge itself. The COVID Tracking Project and Bellingcat help reveal truth by crowdsourcing information. They show their work via hypertext and open data, creating a structure upon which higher-level analysis and journalism can be built. And if they can’t find the truth, they’re willing to say so.

QAnon seems just as open. Everything is online. Every discussion, every idea, every theory is all joined together in a warped edifice where speculation becomes fact and fact leads to action. It’s thrilling to discover, and as you find new terms to Google and new threads to pull upon, you can feel just like a real researcher. And you can never get bored. There’s always new information to make sense of, always a new puzzle to solve, always a new enemy to take down.

QAnon fills the void of information that states have created—not with facts, but with fantasy. If we don’t want QAnon to fill that void, someone else has to. Government institutions can’t be relied upon to do this sustainably, given how underfunded and politicised they’ve become in recent years. Traditional journalism has also struggled against its own challenges of opacity and lack of resources. So maybe that someone is… us.

ARGs teach us that the search for knowledge and truth can be immensely rewarding, not in spite of their deliberately-fractured stories and near-impossible puzzles, but because of them. They teach us that communities can self-organise and self-moderate to take on immense challenges in a responsible way. And they teach us that people are ready and willing to volunteer to work if they’re welcomed, no matter their talent.

It’s hard to create these communities. They rely on software and tools that aren’t always free or easy to use. They need volunteers who have spare time to give and moderators who can be supported, financially and emotionally, through the struggles that always come. These communities already exist. They just need more help.

Despite the growing shadow of QAnon, I’m hopeful for the future. The beauty of ARGs and ARG-like communities isn’t their power to discover truth. It’s how they make the process of discovery so deeply rewarding.

What Alternate Reality Games Teach Us About the Dangerous Appeal of QAnon syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[shesthesmartone-blog]

BTS Blood Sweat & Tears: Still Not a Fan Theory

TL;DR: What if I told you there is no fallen angel?? o_O

yeaa…this video is honestly a lot less impressive once you start trying to interpret it…

BUT FIIIIRST, some Important Observations™:

G: Ok so all I’m seeing is wow pretty ooh look pieta and w o w kookie really grew up *—*

H: lol i just realised the opening of the mv is jimin getting smacked upside the head and then suga looking drop-dead pretty

G: Ahaha and rapkook (kookiemonster??) impromptu tutoring session. Why does jhope have opera glasses tho?? Do they really hand them out at fancy museums ? I would think only at the opera or like an auction or something :/

H: Um…I’m more concerned about the bike XD

G: That too

H: idk but I’m kinda intrigued by the black and white decor(?) of the place. Like do you see? black door, white door, black door, white door. Also there is only one black statue in there…and its got horns and holding a severed head

G: Ok Yea I see the Alternating b&w archways. Random black statue? Check. Mysterious purple room. Also what’s with purple? Like the overlays and stuff?All the pink purple :/

H: ambience? no idea. But i especially like the shot where Jin is mesmerised by the ugly painting and it zooms out to where he has a black door to the left and white door to the right. Thats a very symbolic image isn’t it?

…but the weird pieta tho. like u notice jesus looks all wonky? idk. i feel like there is a point to having a weird cubist jesus

G: speaking of cubist jesus, is it just me or are there biblical references? like the whole table ‘Last Supper’ thing, pretty sure hobi mentioned the holy grail at some point. And that shot with jimin with the apple vs suga with a blindfold and then V jumps ship (literally) My god so much happening in this video man x.x

H:like it has the Pieta, and the idea of a mourning mother, so this theme of vulnerability. But then the Jesus figure is a geometric pile of surfaces…like i’m sure that means something but idk what :/ Then theres the supper scene and chalices and green drinks…yea I’m a bit not sure how it all strings together…

G: actually the pieta part was interesting cuz it was Mary’s face that exploded. The pieta is the form of the mourning mother and mourning a child = mourning childhood so i.e, stop mourning your youth and move on?

Also clearly there’s this overarching theme of temptation. And they look and sound kinda defeated? In the sense that they’re not really trying to fight it. Which is that good or bad? :/

G: V tho. The whole wings bit. I thought fallen angel when I first saw it. Now I’m not so sure…

H: i immediately went with icarus cuz ,ok kookie is doing the whole icarus floaty thing but then V jumps and the scenery in the background is the ‘Fall of Icarus’ by this one german/dutch/i cant remember painter. Peter Bruegens? was it? idk. Anyway, i didn’t think fallen angel i thought “icarus after he flew too close to the sun, got his wax wings ruined, and wised up”

G: Yea Icarus makes sense now. Both icarus. That explains rapmon with the wax I suppose…

H: I think the imagery of wings becomes desire. and not just desire but youthful desire, the one that makes you dumb and do stupid things; and its associated temptation

G: I guess then fallen angel works too, cuz fallen angels are the angels who gave in to temptation, but Icarus seems more appropriate to me. JK’s short film did heavily allude to Icarus in greek mythology.

G: when i first watched the MV, and saw the whole theme of covering up eyes and not looking, I thought it was about ignorance. Like wilfully turning away from the truth, the reality that you have to grow up, and I thought the bonds and blindfold were what was holding them back. Looking at it in terms of Icarus’ fall and growing up from that temptation now tho, I see it more like the blindfolds and bonds are there to stop you going back to youthful temptation

H:…but Icarus died

G: true, apparently bts version was too pretty so he lived XD

G: So jin’s face at the end could be shattered illusions? And the pink/purple could represent rose-tinted glasses of childhood.

H: i think the scene in the end is cool cuz everyone else leaves the whackadoodle museum except Jin, he turns back and thats why V covered his eyes. V = Icarus post-fall. But Jin this fool came back and straight up embraced this symbol of temptation and I think that’s why the crack.

H: that scene with jimin and suga I really like. jimin sitting there with an apple, the very icon of temptation, and suga going “nope, not gonna look at it” which then switches to suga, mr old and wise, giving the blindfold to jimin essentially going “here, just dont look at it. you’ll let it go”

G: That one part makes more sense than the whole damn mv, the wannabe narrative + the close ups + dance scenes is all too much

H: this MV was all over the place honestly

G: like just go vixx style and do lip dance version and a narrative version. I just feel like the short films were much better thought out in comparison.

H: i think there’s a turning point

G: Yea the quote scene. The whole letting go of the balloon seems to speak to the whole growing up choice we were talking about with Jin’s short film Awake. Tho the whole MV seems to give off a vibe where it more like some transcending than growing up. Like it just makes it seem so elevated

H: ikr. More than the teasers. All sublime like. So ‘Demian’ was all about this idea of duality right, and I’m sensing that theme here as well just in a very chaotic way. So here the duality comes down to the part of you that wants to hold on to youth and that temptation for desire, and the part that smacks you upside the head for being a moron. Is that it?

G: Lol pretty much. So basically you have to grow up at some point its inevitable, so you must have that internal duality struggle to…idk…like earn that wisdom?

H: makes sense

G: I just feel like they could’ve done w/o all the references so we didn’t have to jump through all these hoops to get there.

[internetdetectives]

11/13/19 - Chat with BUP

mfgreth 9:53 PM: "A glitch e day”

BUP 9:58 PM: "BUP”

BUP 9:58 PM: "Was i pinged”

Xenquility 9:59 PM: "Probably not”

BUP 9:59 PM: "Ok then”

BUP 9:59 PM: "Xenquility”

Xenquility 10:00 PM: "?”

BUP 10:01 PM: "Its a nice moon out”

BUP 10:01 PM: "What is your season?”

Xenquility 10:01 PM: "Winter?”

BUP 10:01 PM: "You were born in winter?”

Xenquility 10:01 PM: "Indeed”

BUP 10:01 PM: "Ah hah”

BUP 10:01 PM: "Interesting”

Xenquility 10:02 PM: "Why is that interesting?”

BUP 10:02 PM: "Depends on what you believe in I guess”

Xenquility 10:03 PM: "How so”

BUP 10:03 PM: "Just making small talk”

BUP 10:03 PM: "Ancient beliefs would dictate that your strongest positive aura is in winter”

BUP 10:03 PM: "and your strongest negative energy is in summer”

Wolfcat 10:05 PM: "whose this guy”

otherLiam 10:05 PM: "actually you were pinged”

otherLiam 10:05 PM: "i pinged you”

otherLiam 10:05 PM: "hi”

Xenquility 10:05 PM: "This guy took over babel”

Wolfcat 10:05 PM: "oh nvm”

otherLiam 10:05 PM: "I was asking about your game proposal.”

Wolfcat 10:06 PM: "sup bup”

Xenquility 10:06 PM: "Auras? Sounds like something a certain celestial body of fire was talking about”

BUP 10:06 PM: "Okay well I legit dont know what you mean”

BUP 10:06 PM: "Anyways if you care about that sort of thing it means you would gain most beneficially from acts of kindness in winter and acts of self interest in summer”

Xenquility 10:07 PM: "What season were you born in?”

BUP 10:07 PM: "Spring”

otherLiam 10:07 PM: "you wanted to do some kinda speedrun challenge or something, and if we won we get information. but w/e if it wasn't serious”

Xenquility 10:07 PM: "Spring?”

Xenquility 10:07 PM: "Ah. So acts of self interest in the fall”

BUP 10:08 PM: "Oh the right the game”

BUP 10:08 PM: "If you can even manage to pull it together.”

BUP 10:08 PM: "I wasnt TOO worried about that”

BUP 10:08 PM: "I thought it would be fun :wink:”

otherLiam 10:09 PM: "I mean, we like knowing shit.”

otherLiam 10:09 PM: "We know so little shit.”

BUP 10:10 PM: "You know a lot of shit”

BUP 10:10 PM: "But not all the shit”

otherLiam 10:10 PM: "We know enough to get ourselves in trouble, I guess.”

BUP 10:10 PM: "I know all the shit”

otherLiam 10:11 PM: "And the way to know your shit is to... speedrun Breath of the Wild? or are there other options?”

BUP 10:11 PM: "Didn't have to be that”

BUP 10:11 PM: "What shit again specifically? I don't remember.”

BUP 10:11 PM: "Like i said i know it all”

BUP 10:11 PM: "Well almost.”

Xenquility 10:12 PM: "Stuff bout ghosty”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:13 PM: "the way bup talks is awfully familiar”

otherLiam 10:13 PM: "What you said before was you'd spill all of GhostBabel's dirt, although if you really know everything there's probably some things we'd rather know.”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:13 PM: "is it? “

BUP 10:14 PM: "Is it”

BUP 10:14 PM: "???”

otherLiam 10:15 PM: "I wouldn't know.”

BUP 10:16 PM: "Lost in his theories”

BUP 10:16 PM: "Last accusation was that I was SKM”

Xenquility 10:17 PM: "He's actually simple fucking flips”

BUP 10:17 PM: "Squaddie Kids Meals”

BUP 10:17 PM: "SKM true lore unlocked confirmed”

BUP 10:17 PM: "Just kidding”

otherLiam 10:19 PM: "Why "BUP"?”

BUP 10:19 PM: "Its funny”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:19 PM: ":BUP:”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:19 PM: "bup”

otherLiam 10:19 PM: "Man I'm gonna be sad if SimpleFlips is a cultist.”

BUP 10:19 PM: "But im a jevil”

BUP 10:19 PM: "Apparently”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:20 PM: ":Jefault:”

Xenquility 10:20 PM: "Jumbo Jevil”

BUP 10:20 PM: "I mean honestly its not a bad analysis based on how im handling this antagonist role”

otherLiam 10:21 PM: "I mean thus far you aren't much of an antagonist. You locked us out of talking to GhostBabel, whose been dark for months anyway.”

BUP 10:21 PM: "Wait i forgot the creepy meme line”

BUP 10:21 PM: "I'm a bad guy :wink:”

BUP 10:21 PM: "Ok ocd fixed”

BUP 10:21 PM: "I mean thats true”

BUP 10:21 PM: "Then maybe i should threaten something more drastic”

otherLiam 10:21 PM: "Sounds fun.”

Xenquility 10:21 PM: "Not really”

otherLiam 10:21 PM: "But then to keep your jevil status”

otherLiam 10:21 PM: "you have to offer a larger reward, too.”

BUP 10:22 PM: "Do i?”

Xenquility 10:22 PM: "That's a terrible idea”

otherLiam 10:22 PM: "Gotta keep your game fair and balanced.”

Xenquility 10:22 PM: "We dont need a bigger threat”

otherLiam 10:22 PM: "See, Xen's freaking out already.”

BUP 10:22 PM: "Or wouldn't it be more evil to just”

BUP 10:22 PM: "Alter the deal”

otherLiam 10:22 PM: "pray i do not alter it further” 

ADULT_LINK△ 10:22 PM: "jevils whole thing is that he's like. aware of reality on a layer higher than the player characters”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:22 PM: "and he's chaotic”

BUP 10:22 PM: "I mean”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:22 PM: "not neccicerrily evil”

BUP 10:22 PM: "Thats accurate”

Xenquility 10:23 PM: "Bupgm”

otherLiam 10:23 PM: "nah if you really want antagonist status you gotta be like Jigsaw or some shit”

BUP 10:23 PM: "Okay then”

Xenquility 10:23 PM: "No you don't”

otherLiam 10:23 PM: "otherwise you're just like any of these other clowns we gotta roll our eyes at”

Xenquility 10:23 PM: "Liam shut the hell up”

otherLiam 10:24 PM: "Jigsaw's classy, he's got rules and clear rewards and consequences”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:24 PM: "caliborn was based off shitty jigsaw memer from mspaint forums”

otherLiam 10:24 PM: "he's so good his franchise is still living off his rep despite his canon death”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:24 PM: "i say bup seems more gamzee-like, pretty chill so far but likely to go apeshit later on”

BUP 10:25 PM: "I'm only here because someone has been swatting the chessboard”

BUP 10:25 PM: "And it's pissing off the other pieces”

otherLiam 10:26 PM: "Who's that?”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:26 PM: ":hylotl_eyes:”

Xenquility 10:26 PM: "Some guy named wolf maybe”

Xenquility 10:26 PM: "Or ghost”

Xenquility 10:26 PM: "Someone messing up others plans”

BUP 10:26 PM: "Gost is smalltiem”

BUP 10:26 PM: "This is big brain hours”

Xenquility 10:27 PM: "Ay bup I got a question”

BUP 10:27 PM: "I have answer but i might not share”

BUP 10:27 PM: ":wink:”

Xenquility 10:27 PM: "Are you actually working with the bad guys, or are you just  messing with us for fun?”

otherLiam 10:27 PM: "lol which bad guys”

Wolfcat 10:27 PM: "Hey guys”

Wolfcat 10:27 PM: "Whoa, lotta new people”

Wolfcat 10:27 PM: "Why aren't we on Skype again?”

otherLiam 10:28 PM: "...”

otherLiam 10:28 PM: "shut up, wolf.”

Xenquility 10:28 PM: "Fighting words”

BUP 10:28 PM: "@otherLiam correct”

BUP 10:28 PM: "Or i mean”

BUP 10:28 PM: "That is the right question”

Wolfcat 10:28 PM: "OI”

otherLiam 10:28 PM: "Any way I can get a straight answer?”

Xenquility 10:28 PM: "Alright, which bad guys?”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:28 PM: "im just shitpostin lmao”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:29 PM: "unless....?”

BUP 10:29 PM: "Well the answer is both”

BUP 10:29 PM: "I am bad and also trolling”

BUP 10:29 PM: "But only cause i want to be”

BUP 10:29 PM: "This is an active decision I'm making”

otherLiam 10:29 PM: "I meant, a straight answer to "Which bad guys are you with"?”

BUP 10:30 PM: "The ones i assembled”

Xenquility 10:30 PM: "Which ones did you assemble?”

otherLiam 10:30 PM: "Oh man, we got a leader.”

otherLiam 10:30 PM: "This really is big brain hours.”

BUP 10:31 PM: ".img big brain hours”

BUP 10:32 PM: "Ok well”

BUP 10:32 PM: "I wont tell you because that spoils my whole game”

BUP 10:32 PM: "Not the little ones right now i mean the like big shebang”

Xenquility 10:32 PM: "Do you plan on ending the world?”

BUP 10:33 PM: "No”

otherLiam 10:33 PM: "Wow what a question.”

Xenquility 10:33 PM: "Cool”

Xenquility 10:33 PM: "So no Luna bullshit?”

BUP 10:33 PM: "Of course there is”

Xenquility 10:33 PM: "Damnit”

BUP 10:33 PM: "Its just not my personal goal”

otherLiam 10:33 PM: "Man that's refreshing, a villain with a plan beyond "Im gonna drop the moon".”

Xenquility 10:33 PM: "I know. I love this guy”

otherLiam 10:34 PM: "Can we fight you forever?”

BUP 10:34 PM: "You already have”

BUP 10:34 PM: "So to speak”

BUP 10:34 PM: "Well not 'forever'”

BUP 10:34 PM: "Ok well”

otherLiam 10:35 PM: "What you're saying is we've met before.”

BUP 10:35 PM: "I'll give you this then”

Wolfcat 10:35 PM: "Why why why why I don't fight you a lot forever?”

Xenquility 10:35 PM: "Sounds tenebris-esque”

BUP 10:35 PM: "I killed Yuuki”

BUP 10:35 PM: "Not directly”

BUP 10:35 PM: "I mean I didn't strangle her myself”

BUP 10:35 PM: "But i mqde the decision that led to it happening”

Xenquility 10:36 PM: "Oh my”

BUP 10:36 PM: "*made”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:36 PM: "haha oof”

otherLiam 10:36 PM: "Well that does narrow it down.”

BUP 10:36 PM: "Does it?”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:36 PM: "does it?”

Xenquility 10:36 PM: "Why did you decide to kill her?”

otherLiam 10:37 PM: "Kinda. Puts you in one of the two universes.”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:37 PM: "*four”

Xenquility 10:37 PM: "circle pizz off”

BUP 10:37 PM: "Now you're questioning where and who i am based upon a timeline theory”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:37 PM: ":angerymista:”

Wolfcat 10:37 PM: "She won't die.”

Xenquility 10:37 PM: "This guy could transcend timelines for all we know”

Wolfcat 10:37 PM: "Not if I can stop it.”

otherLiam 10:37 PM: "Wolf she's already dead.”

otherLiam 10:37 PM: "Bad news.”

otherLiam 10:37 PM: "We didn't stop it.”

BUP 10:38 PM: "@Wolfcat cry more”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:38 PM: "this is the wolfcat from the alternate universe where he has alzheimer's”

Xenquility 10:38 PM: "LMAO”

Wolfcat 10:38 PM: "You'll be the one crying at the end of this”

BUP 10:38 PM: "Good luck”

otherLiam 10:38 PM: "There's no need to be rude to BUP.”

Xenquility 10:38 PM: "Wolf don't be sad you still have Erika”

otherLiam 10:38 PM: "Just because he's our enemy doesn't mean we can't be friends.”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:38 PM: "would explain the skype avatar and asking why we arent on skype”

BUP 10:38 PM: "Hooe it goes better than last time wolf”

BUP 10:38 PM: "Hope*”

otherLiam 10:38 PM: "he's just wolfposting”

BUP 10:38 PM: "Man i am a typomaniac”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:38 PM: ":ZoomEyes:”

Wolfcat 10:39 PM: "I am preparing a place for her”

Xenquility 10:39 PM: "Can we stop trying to fit each person into a damn timeline and just accept we hardly have any clue if any of our theories are correct”

Wolfcat 10:39 PM: "A nice little home for us to live in”

Wolfcat 10:39 PM: "Forever”

BUP 10:39 PM: "Gross”

BUP 10:39 PM: "Hey wolf”

Wolfcat 10:39 PM: "Me, me, him, and her”

Wolfcat 10:39 PM: "yea”

otherLiam 10:39 PM: "yikes.”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:40 PM: "literally how do you think i wasn't shitposting last night”

Xenquility 10:40 PM: "I've lost so much faith in humanity I can't tell the difference anymore”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:40 PM: "i have lost the ability to tell who's being serious and who's fucking around in this server”

Xenquility 10:40 PM: "^”

otherLiam 10:40 PM: "I’m always serious.”

otherLiam 10:40 PM: ":wink:”

otherLiam 10:40 PM: "Oh wait”

otherLiam 10:40 PM: "“Cus I’m a good guy :wink: “”

Xenquility 10:41 PM: "i vote song of time lets go save yuuki guys hurray hurrah”

Xenquility 10:41 PM: ":BUP:”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:42 PM: ":BUP:”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:42 PM: "when the fuck did emojis get so big”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:42 PM: "why is my bup emoji so scuffed”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:42 PM: "one of the recent updates”

Xenquility 10:42 PM: "my bup can beat your bup”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:42 PM: "the update i got today broke my bandadged betterdiscord :c”

Xenquility 10:42 PM: "You got your bup on my bup!”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:42 PM: "i dont have any of my plugins”

Xenquility 10:42 PM: "No, you got your bup on my bup!”

Xenquility 10:42 PM: "Buput bupper bups”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:43 PM: "where did you get your bup”

Xenquility 10:43 PM: ":BUP: me baby”

Xenquility 10:43 PM: "hey @BUP do you own the M channel now?”

BUP 10:44 PM: "no”

Xenquility 10:44 PM: "cool”

BUP 10:45 PM: "Hey wolf”

Wolfcat 10:45 PM: "yes”

Xenquility 10:45 PM: "△”

Xenquility 10:45 PM: "-BUP”

Wolfcat 10:45 PM: "I'm already here”

Xenquility 10:45 PM: "Hey Greth posted that in the premiere chat”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:45 PM: "?”

Xenquility 10:46 PM: "Greth posted △ in the premiere chat for The End”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:46 PM: "ready for an outlandish alternate timeline theory that i wholeheartedly believe?”

Xenquility 10:46 PM: "(The Start Life video)”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:46 PM: "YES”

BUP 10:46 PM: "I'm ready”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:46 PM: "bup is AO helper”

Xenquility 10:46 PM: "of course”

Xenquility 10:46 PM: "genius”

BUP 10:46 PM: "god you wish”

Wolfcat 10:46 PM: "wholefartedly”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:46 PM: "lmao”

Xenquility 10:46 PM: "wholefeetedly”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:46 PM: "except he's not helpful at all”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:46 PM: "and is evil”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:46 PM: "but like”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:46 PM: "otherwise literally the same person”

Xenquility 10:46 PM: "bup is au luna”

BUP 10:46 PM: "oh!”

Xenquility 10:47 PM: "Wait”

BUP 10:47 PM: "guess what!”

BUP 10:47 PM: "that's super wrong”

Xenquility 10:47 PM: "https://images.homedepot-static.com/productImages/930c2484-4b61-4b34-9e86-d8d4858cf565/svn/backyard-x-scapes-fake-rocks-hdd-rof-rocsb-64_1000.jpg”

Xenquility 10:47 PM: “die fool”

Xenquility 10:47 PM: “bup is au Alex Hall”

Wolfcat 10:47 PM: "Helper is an ancient primordial being”

Xenquility 10:47 PM: "His master plan of evil was stealing our money”

Xenquility 10:47 PM: "Digital Fireside is his way of kidnapping celebrities to rule the world”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:47 PM: "bup is actually alex hall shitposting in ID and tyler is going to be very angery”

BUP 10:48 PM: "Tyler is angry anyways”

Xenquility 10:48 PM: "BUP is actually au BEN”

Xenquility 10:48 PM: "My evidence?”

Xenquility 10:48 PM: "Bup is three letters”

Xenquility 10:48 PM: "Ben is three letters”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:48 PM: "clearly bup is me but evil”

Wolfcat 10:48 PM: "BUP Soteetos”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:48 PM: "and uses capitals”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:48 PM: "the face from soteetos needs to be an emoji”

BUP 10:48 PM: "Wow i love how this entire dialogue is just speculating on who i am

and nothing that could actually hold my interest”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:49 PM: "bup is literally a toad”

BUP 10:49 PM: "you all are shart”

Wolfcat 10:49 PM: "They always ask who you are”

Wolfcat 10:49 PM: "But not how you are”

Xenquility 10:49 PM: "Specishiting”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:49 PM: "im not actuallu speculating i'm just fucking around”

Wolfcat 10:49 PM: "How are you tonight Bup”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:49 PM: "they always ask who you are”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:49 PM: "but never why you are”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:49 PM: "why are you bup?”

BUP 10:49 PM: "that's like asking for all the answers at once”

BUP 10:49 PM: "and you dont even know it”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:49 PM: ":sBup:”

Wolfcat 10:50 PM: "When are you Bup?”

BUP 10:50 PM: "now”

Xenquility 10:50 PM: "Do you want us dead?”

BUP 10:50 PM: "no”

Xenquility 10:50 PM: "Do you want Tyler dead?”

BUP 10:50 PM: "me personally?”

BUP 10:50 PM: "no”

BUP 10:50 PM: "actually not at all even”

BUP 10:50 PM: "well kinda but not really”

BUP 10:50 PM: "this is difficult to explain”

Xenquility 10:51 PM: "Are you worried about the fact the lc/ao people could very well end the world and all the fun in it if they succeed in calling down Luna?”

/Mr. Circle\ 10:51 PM: "this conversation is the ID equivalent of the extended version of that scene where weasel tells deadpool what his face looks like”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:51 PM: "lmao circo”

BUP 10:51 PM: "how many layers are you even on bro”

otherLiam 10:52 PM: "bro i leave to eat and suddenly yall are just throwin weird shit”

otherLiam 10:52 PM: "what does hold your interest, BUP?”

BUP 10:52 PM: "because that could all happen and me and my squad would go”

BUP 10:52 PM: "'ok well that was one way of our game ending'”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:52 PM: ":heckasmug:”

BUP 10:52 PM: "well game is putting it lightly”

Xenquility 10:52 PM: "Other than you, have we previously encountered anyone in your Squad?”

otherLiam 10:53 PM: "squaaaaaad”

BUP 10:53 PM: "literally everyone you've ever met”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:53 PM: "are you from the other ID”

BUP 10:53 PM: "is part of someone's squad”

BUP 10:53 PM: "and you dont even know it”

otherLiam 10:53 PM: "calling on the power of an ancient moon goddess #squadgoals”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:53 PM: "squadfam”

Xenquility 10:53 PM: "Is that eoeoeoeoeo guy affiliated with you?”

BUP 10:53 PM: "no”

Wolfcat 10:53 PM: "low leveled layer fools”

Xenquility 10:54 PM: "Oooo”

ARGDov 10:54 PM: "oof wow ok I missed some shit”

otherLiam 10:54 PM: "we’re just chattin with bup”

BUP 10:54 PM: "i mean there's the main squad”

BUP 10:54 PM: "and the we each separately have our own squaddies”

BUP 10:54 PM: "to play our games”

ARGDov 10:55 PM: "huh”

ARGDov 10:55 PM: "whats the main squad?”

BUP 10:55 PM: "i am using analogy”

ARGDov 10:55 PM: "well, ok”

BUP 10:55 PM: "because i have to be mysterious”

ARGDov 10:55 PM: "what squaddy are you a part of?”

ARGDov 10:55 PM: "pfff”

otherLiam 10:55 PM: ":ghost: spooky”

Xenquility 10:55 PM: "Why does everyone have to be mysterious”

BUP 10:55 PM: "i am the master of my game”

Xenquility 10:55 PM: "No matter how it's presented the schtick gets a bit old”

otherLiam 10:55 PM: "one day we’ll meet someone that gives us a straight answer”

ARGDov 10:55 PM: "because the other way is no fun”

otherLiam 10:55 PM: "i have faith”

ARGDov 10:55 PM: "for them”

ARGDov 10:55 PM: "@BUP what game?”

Xenquility 10:56 PM: "WELL MAYBE THEY SHOULD THINK ABOUT OUR FELLINGS FOR ONCE ;-;”

Xenquility 10:56 PM: "(I'm kidding if that wasn't implied)”

BUP 10:56 PM: "okay do you remember kingdom hearts”

ARGDov 10:56 PM: "yes”

BUP 10:56 PM: "how those two idiot kids played chess”

Wolfcat 10:56 PM: "yes”

otherLiam 10:56 PM: "Oh no.”

ARGDov 10:56 PM: "I dont remember that but whatever”

otherLiam 10:56 PM: "It’s in the latest one.”

BUP 10:56 PM: "and then they xanatos gambited half the universe into simple and cleaning their way into death”

Wolfcat 10:56 PM: "xehanort and eraqus”

otherLiam 10:57 PM: "Yes.”

BUP 10:57 PM: "okay i am one of those guys in this situation but there are more kids with bad haircuts playing chess”

Xenquility 10:57 PM: "lmao any chance we could win the game?”

BUP 10:57 PM: "and its not actually like kingdom hearts at all”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:57 PM: "i dont know kingdom hearts”

otherLiam 10:58 PM: "I get the feeling we’re losing so badly at this point that it’s like in Mario Party when you’re in 4th but can steal a star to decide who wins.”

BUP 10:58 PM: "not really”

BUP 10:58 PM: "you saw how things are going in general”

BUP 10:58 PM: "at some point when lines blur”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:58 PM: "we just gotta hope BUP isnt Hard DK”

BUP 10:58 PM: "fun things sneak in”

Xenquility 10:59 PM: "Any chance you could tell us who eoeoeoeoeo is and/or if we've previously encountered him?”

BUP 10:59 PM: "you know fuck mario party honestly”

Xenquility 10:59 PM: "Mario party is awesome how dare you”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:59 PM: "wait you never answered”

ADULT_LINK△ 10:59 PM: "are you from the other ID”

ARGDov 10:59 PM: "wait when lines blur”

ARGDov 10:59 PM: "what do you mean lines blur”

Xenquility 10:59 PM: "Lines are pretty blurry right now and BUP is pretty fun”

ARGDov 10:59 PM: "and I thought he said he wasnt?”

BUP 10:59 PM: "i am from every ID”

Xenquility 10:59 PM: "Hey yugi”

ARGDov 10:59 PM: "EVERY ID?”

BUP 10:59 PM: "ye”

ARGDov 11:00 PM: "wait do you mean from every one of us as individuals”

BUP 11:00 PM: "no”

ARGDov 11:00 PM: "or every iteration of the group across the dimensions”

BUP 11:00 PM: "lmao”

BUP 11:00 PM: "kind of”

BUP 11:00 PM: "think broader”

BUP 11:00 PM: "but dont actually”

BUP 11:00 PM: "ive said too much”

ARGDov 11:00 PM: "ok”

BUP 11:00 PM: "my spider sense is tingling”

Xenquility 11:00 PM: "No you haven't”

ARGDov 11:00 PM: "headache forming”

ARGDov 11:00 PM: "and why is it tingling?”

Wolfcat 11:01 PM: "damn you spoiled the end of jid”

Xenquility 11:01 PM: "EPONAS SONG WE MUST STABALIZE HIM”

Xenquility 11:01 PM: "no jk”

ARGDov 11:01 PM: "lets not”

ARGDov 11:01 PM: "I guess hes gone?”

ARGDov 11:01 PM: "....ok then”

Xenquility 11:01 PM: "how did he spoil the end of jid exactly?”

BUP 11:01 PM: "what”

Wolfcat 11:01 PM: "i was talking about the roblox pic”

ARGDov 11:01 PM: "oh no you're still here”

ARGDov 11:01 PM: "shows what I know”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:01 PM: "we must become powerful”

otherLiam 11:01 PM: "wut”

ARGDov 11:01 PM: "@BUP why are your spidey senses tingling”

Wolfcat 11:01 PM: "damn”

BUP 11:01 PM: "from saying too much on that topic”

ARGDov 11:02 PM: "oh damn”

ARGDov 11:02 PM: "anyways hmm”

Xenquility 11:02 PM: "Think you could tell us about eoeoeoeoeo?”

BUP 11:02 PM: "i cant”

ARGDov 11:02 PM: "also- why are you here?”

BUP 11:02 PM: "because i dont know”

Xenquility 11:02 PM: "fuck”

Xenquility 11:02 PM: "oh”

BUP 11:02 PM: "not my purview fucko”

Wolfcat 11:02 PM: "more like purrview”

BUP 11:02 PM: "shut up furry”

Xenquility 11:02 PM: "more like purrvore”

BUP 11:03 PM: "okay goodbye”

ARGDov 11:03 PM: "still not answering my question”

Wolfcat 11:03 PM: "this guy knows whats up”

ARGDov 11:03 PM: "why are you here?”

Xenquility 11:03 PM: "something about he likes fun and games and shit”

Xenquility 11:03 PM: "Because every evil being likes to fuck with us”

Wolfcat 11:03 PM: "isnt that why we're all here?”

Xenquility 11:03 PM: "Can't blame them we're the epitome of retardation”

Wolfcat 11:04 PM: "we are homo ludens”

otherLiam 11:04 PM: "yall you gotta banter with bup”

ARGDov 11:04 PM: "we have been”

Wolfcat 11:04 PM: "no”

otherLiam 11:04 PM: "else they get bored”

Wolfcat 11:05 PM: "answer my question”

Wolfcat 11:05 PM: "answer my question now”

ARGDov 11:05 PM: "we'll Im trying to anyways”

Wolfcat 11:05 PM: "youre not answering my question”

otherLiam 11:05 PM: "no youve been interviewing him”

ARGDov 11:05 PM: "I cant just force banter”

Xenquility 11:05 PM: "Cool mr let's get bup to raise the stakes”

BUP 11:05 PM: "like CHILDREN”

BUP 11:05 PM: "ok what”

BUP 11:05 PM: "what is it”

BUP 11:05 PM: "god”

Xenquility 11:05 PM: "interviews are fun”

ARGDov 11:05 PM: "lol we are like children its true”

Wolfcat 11:05 PM: "@BUP”

Wolfcat 11:05 PM: "hi bup”

ARGDov 11:05 PM: "interviews are only fun when they're with vampires who may rip your head off if you arent careful”

otherLiam 11:05 PM: "wut”

BUP 11:06 PM: "that's true”

Xenquility 11:06 PM: "Are you assuming he's not a vampire?”

BUP 11:06 PM: "that gives me an idea for a game”

BUP 11:06 PM: "how about you interview me and if i don't like the question”

BUP 11:06 PM: "someone dies”

Wolfcat 11:06 PM: "sounds reasonable”

Xenquility 11:06 PM: "How about no?”

otherLiam 11:06 PM: "will it be someone important”

BUP 11:06 PM: "maybe”

BUP 11:06 PM: "maybe not”

otherLiam 11:06 PM: "can i call first dibs on dying”

BUP 11:06 PM: "no”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:06 PM: "can i die”

BUP 11:06 PM: "i have someone in mind”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:07 PM: "oh damn dibs got called”

Xenquility 11:07 PM: “That's ominous”

Wolfcat 11:07 PM: "damn”

Wolfcat 11:07 PM: "im starting to realize”

otherLiam 11:07 PM: "I mean I’d be down if you set rules for what you “don’t like”.”

otherLiam 11:07 PM: "Otherwise you could just say you don’t like every question.”

BUP 11:07 PM: "okay then”

BUP 11:07 PM: "1. yes and no / true false questions”

BUP 11:07 PM: "- none of these, i don't like em”

BUP 11:07 PM: "2. stop asking my identity”

BUP 11:07 PM: "3. No asking about Tyler”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:09 PM: "wait fuck thats a yes/no sorta”

Xenquility 11:09 PM: "Not really”

Xenquility 11:09 PM: "I thought it was good”

otherLiam 11:10 PM: "(please for the love of god submit these elsewhere for approval)”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:10 PM: "i mean he could literally answr with "yes" or "no" and refuse to elaborate”

otherLiam 11:10 PM: "(he’ll kill someone)”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:10 PM: "man, not asking a question that could be asnwered with a yes/no is hard”

ARGDov 11:11 PM: "ok fine, better questions than”

ARGDov 11:11 PM: "@BUP can you tell us what SKM and his brother have been up to?”

BUP 11:12 PM: "working with a group of hackers”

ARGDov 11:12 PM: "what on?”

BUP 11:12 PM: "computers”

otherLiam 11:12 PM: "pfft”

Wolfcat 11:12 PM: ":hmmm:”

ARGDov 11:12 PM: "hahhaha”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:12 PM: "do you have any suggestions for getting dried blood off a nintendo switch”

ARGDov 11:12 PM: "What are the hackers doing o nthe computers?”

otherLiam 11:12 PM: "soap and water thorin”

otherLiam 11:12 PM: "it’s hard plastic, not a fucking couch”

BUP 11:13 PM: "nail polish remover”

BUP 11:13 PM: "be careful”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:13 PM: "hm”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:13 PM: "aiight, thanks man”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:13 PM: "i'll look into getting some nail polish remover i guess”

Xenquility 11:14 PM: "What are Nocta and crew currently working on?”

BUP 11:14 PM: "try regular isopropyl rubbing alcohol first”

BUP 11:14 PM: "nail polish remover can sometime strip color from plastic”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:14 PM: "oh yikes, yeah i'll try rubbing alcohol first for sure then”

ARGDov 11:15 PM: "lmao we've lost track of the questions again”

ARGDov 11:15 PM: "that was fast”

otherLiam 11:15 PM: "I mean here’s an obvious question. Why are johnisdead.com and lunarchildren.com locked down?”

BUP 11:15 PM: "@Xenquility nocta is hiding”

ARGDov 11:15 PM: "why is he hiding?”

BUP 11:15 PM: "@ARGDov”

BUP 11:15 PM: "because of you all”

ARGDov 11:15 PM: "wait what did we do to scare him?”

otherLiam 11:15 PM: "Ooo we got him running scared.”

otherLiam 11:15 PM: "I mean we played a buncha magic songs at him and are actively trying to dig into his secret safe space”

Xenquility 11:16 PM: "What's going on with archives guy?”

ARGDov 11:16 PM: "eh, Im hoping for specifics”

BUP 11:17 PM: "archives guy is lost”

BUP 11:17 PM: "lost to me anyway”

BUP 11:17 PM: "i'm damn near omniscient but he went deep”

ARGDov 11:17 PM: "daaamn”

ARGDov 11:17 PM: "so hes still around”

ARGDov 11:17 PM: "good to know I guess”

BUP 11:17 PM: "somewhere”

ARGDov 11:18 PM: "Im still wondering what we did to scare off nocta”

BUP 11:18 PM: "well”

BUP 11:18 PM: "you didnt scare him off”

BUP 11:18 PM: "what you caused scared him off”

ARGDov 11:18 PM: "meaning....?”

Xenquility 11:18 PM: "Elegy”

BUP 11:18 PM: "that's part of it”

ARGDov 11:18 PM: "maybe let him answer before guessing lol”

ARGDov 11:18 PM: "ok, well, whats the rest of it?”

BUP 11:19 PM: "hmm”

otherLiam 11:19 PM: "If we did that, you’d be the only person asking questions.”

Xenquility 11:19 PM: "Posting the song of time or whatever on their forums probably didnt help either”

BUP 11:19 PM: "not sure that's safe to talk about here”

BUP 11:19 PM: "even for me”

ARGDov 11:19 PM: "well then y'all should ask some good ones too lol”

BUP 11:19 PM: "not that i'm scared”

ARGDov 11:19 PM: "ok,well, noted”

otherLiam 11:19 PM: "What exactly did the Elegy do?”

Xenquility 11:19 PM: "What keeps preventing people from talking about the stuff we need to know about?”

BUP 11:19 PM: "release an entity into that realm”

BUP 11:19 PM: "dont ask me what because i dont know”

BUP 11:19 PM: "rather, i dont care”

ARGDov 11:20 PM: "fair I suppose”

BUP 11:20 PM: "you can blame slinky”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:20 PM: "do you have any suggestions for our next move?”

Xenquility 11:20 PM: "Why are our two greth's in the past?”

BUP 11:21 PM: "@ADULT_LINK△ no”

BUP 11:21 PM: "@Xenquility because i thought it'd be useful”

BUP 11:21 PM: "and it was”

ARGDov 11:22 PM: "wait”

ARGDov 11:22 PM: "you did that”

Xenquility 11:22 PM: "For you, or for us?”

ARGDov 11:22 PM: "damn your powerful”

BUP 11:22 PM: "you know”

BUP 11:22 PM: "i am, and i'm really not”

ARGDov 11:23 PM: "ok, other question- should we be afraid of you?”

BUP 11:23 PM: "if only you could truly understand”

Xenquility 11:23 PM: "uh”

Xenquility 11:23 PM: "dov”

BUP 11:23 PM: "i think you should be afraid of any stranger willing to tell you what you want to hear”

ARGDov 11:23 PM: "thats true but I suppose wasnt my point lol”

BUP 11:23 PM: "it is.”

ARGDov 11:24 PM: "either way Im sure the point is moot”

ARGDov 11:24 PM: "hmmm ok other questions”

ARGDov 11:24 PM: "where is Tyler now? our universes tyler”

BUP 11:24 PM: "ding ding ding”

Xenquility 11:24 PM: ".....”

Wolfcat 11:24 PM: "welp”

Xenquility 11:24 PM: "DOV”

Xenquility 11:24 PM: "BOMB PLANS 3.0”

ARGDov 11:24 PM: "?”

Xenquility 11:25 PM: "3. No asking about Tyler”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:25 PM: "dov you dunce”

ARGDov 11:25 PM: "shit”

ARGDov 11:25 PM: "my bad sorry”

Wolfcat 11:25 PM: ":turboass:”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:25 PM: "welp you just killed someone”

ARGDov 11:25 PM: "what no I didnt”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:25 PM: ":rip:”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:25 PM: "yeah”

Xenquility 11:25 PM: "The punishment for asking a question he didn't like was someone dying”

ARGDov 11:25 PM: "FUCK”

ARGDov 11:25 PM: "IM SORRU”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:25 PM: "https://gyazo.com/a1beaf63b6873604c4424185a1835051”

Xenquility 11:25 PM: "Kill? yes”

otherLiam 11:26 PM: "Are you”

otherLiam 11:26 PM: "fucking”

ARGDov 11:26 PM: "@BUP sorry please dont kill someone :c”

otherLiam 11:26 PM: "serious.”

ARGDov 11:26 PM: "I FORGOT”

ARGDov 11:26 PM: "SORRY”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:26 PM: "dov you're like”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:26 PM: "a huge murderer now”

Wolfcat 11:26 PM: "kill dov in their place”

otherLiam 11:26 PM: "It’s THREE RULES.”

ARGDov 11:26 PM: "I WAS TRYING TO THINK OF QUESTIONS”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:26 PM: "you nearly killed people with bomb plans, you voted yes instantly on the kill vote, and now this”

Wolfcat 11:27 PM: ":hmmm:”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:27 PM: "oh shit is there more?”

ARGDov 11:27 PM: "no”

ARGDov 11:27 PM: "the runes didnt get anyone KILLED”

ARGDov 11:27 PM: "ok fine”

ARGDov 11:27 PM: "Im out of questions”

ARGDov 11:27 PM: "you fuckers think of something”

otherLiam 11:27 PM: "YOU THINK?!”

BUP 11:27 PM: "desperation makes me smile”

BUP 11:27 PM: "tbh”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:27 PM: "the bear jew strikes again”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:27 PM: "i uh. think the questions are over”

Xenquility 11:27 PM: "Who just died?”

Xenquility 11:27 PM: "lmao”

Wolfcat 11:27 PM: "you're out of questions”

Wolfcat 11:27 PM: "im out of time”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:27 PM: "unless we get to kill more people”

ARGDov 11:27 PM: "Im an otter actually.”

otherLiam 11:28 PM: "I have questions but I’m pretty sure you just game over’d us by spamming them.”

ARGDov 11:28 PM: "too skinny to be a bear”

BUP 11:28 PM: "I'll give you a choice”

BUP 11:28 PM: "how about this”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:28 PM: "you see, this is a reference to both the homosexual male lifestyle and the 2005 quentin tarantino film "inglourious basterds"”

BUP 11:28 PM: “I could kill someone you love, but is of little consequence to you now”

ARGDov 11:28 PM: "clearly you dont know your gay body types well circle”

BUP 11:28 PM: "Or i could kill someone you hate, but it would set you back far”

ARGDov 11:28 PM: "shit”

ARGDov 11:28 PM: "you mean to us as a group”

Xenquility 11:28 PM: "Alright who do we love?”

ARGDov 11:29 PM: "Im not picking this”

Xenquility 11:29 PM: "We love Tyler”

Xenquility 11:29 PM: "Moonman”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:29 PM: "the only person from the group that i like. hate”

Xenquility 11:29 PM: "Greth”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:29 PM: "kill mugen”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:29 PM: "woul dbe mugen”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:29 PM: "i swear to fuck if mugen is neccecarry”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:29 PM: "WHOM”

otherLiam 11:29 PM: "Who the fuck is this now”

Xenquility 11:29 PM: "Let's balance our options”

Xenquility 11:29 PM: "List off people we love”

otherLiam 11:29 PM: "look the choice is obvious here”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:29 PM: "whom'st dide”

Wolfcat 11:29 PM: "oh please give him some ideas”

otherLiam 11:29 PM: "we can’t afford any more setbacks.”

ARGDov 11:30 PM: "I know who we should pick”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:30 PM: "i was joking please do not kill mugen”

otherLiam 11:30 PM: "We already have tons.”

ARGDov 11:30 PM: "yeah we need to be calculating”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:30 PM: "hehe dide sounds like died”

ARGDov 11:30 PM: "

ARGDov 11:30 PM: "actually yes”

ARGDov 11:30 PM: "next time someone asks a bad question”

ARGDov 11:30 PM: "kill mugen”

otherLiam 11:30 PM: "Fuck our loved ones, necessary sacrifices.”

Xenquility 11:30 PM: "I concur”

ARGDov 11:30 PM: "im inclined to agree with Liam”

Wolfcat 11:30 PM: "kill someone we love”

ARGDov 11:30 PM: "although Im worried”

ARGDov 11:30 PM: "bloods gonna be on my hands now :c”

Xenquility 11:30 PM: "If we get set back anymore, we're fucked and all our loved ones die”

otherLiam 11:30 PM: "YEAH NO SHIT”

ARGDov 11:30 PM: "oh fuck off Liam”

BUP 11:30 PM: "well it's done”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:31 PM: "dov this is like the eighth death you're responsible for”

ARGDov 11:31 PM: "someone else wouldve fucked it up if I hadnt”

ARGDov 11:31 PM: "....”

ARGDov 11:31 PM: "name the other ones”

otherLiam 11:31 PM: "Do we get to know who’s dead?”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:31 PM: "are you sure about that”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:31 PM: "technically maybe more”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:31 PM: "i'd like to know who we just killed as well” 

ARGDov 11:31 PM: "same”

otherLiam 11:31 PM: "Yeah but like, which loved one”

BUP 11:31 PM: "you see it's funny when you can play with the rules”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:31 PM: "hold on, someone's knocking at m”

ARGDov 11:31 PM: "if its greth Im going to be extremely upset”

ARGDov 11:31 PM: "NO”

BUP 11:32 PM: "because to you”

BUP 11:32 PM: "theyre already dead”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:32 PM: "lmao fuck off circle”

ARGDov 11:32 PM: "......oh SHIT”

ARGDov 11:32 PM: "PARADOX”

Xenquility 11:32 PM: "uh”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:32 PM: "WAIT HOLY FUCK”

otherLiam 11:32 PM: "Oh ffs we just killed Yuuki.”

ARGDov 11:32 PM: "YUKI”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:32 PM: "DID WE JUST KILL YIKI AGAN”

Xenquility 11:32 PM: "LMAO”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:32 PM: "YUUKI”

otherLiam 11:32 PM: "In the past.”

ARGDov 11:32 PM: "GAAAAAAAH”

BUP 11:32 PM: "i told you before”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:32 PM: "that would explain earlier lmao”

otherLiam 11:32 PM: "@Wolfcat dov killed your waifu”

Xenquility 11:32 PM: "Well that was better than I expected”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:32 PM: "wait have we done this before”

ARGDov 11:32 PM: "SHHH LIAM”

ARGDov 11:32 PM: "SHUT UP]”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:32 PM: "jesus christ that was a masterful setup”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:32 PM: "is this some time loop shenannigans”

ARGDov 11:32 PM: "so wait”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:32 PM: "also hot damn that was really good”

otherLiam 11:33 PM: "DOV”

otherLiam 11:33 PM: "FFS”

Xenquility 11:33 PM: "(lmao what if it was john)”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:33 PM: "did bup talk about anyone we disliked earlier?”

Xenquility 11:33 PM: "The interview is over”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:33 PM: "JOHN HOLY FUCK”

otherLiam 11:33 PM: "STOP ASKING QUESTIONS DOV”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:33 PM: "thats not a question for but thats for the room”

ARGDov 11:33 PM: "what are you talking about theres nothing there”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:33 PM: "DOV KILLED JOHN”

Xenquility 11:33 PM: "big brain”

otherLiam 11:33 PM: "jesus god”

Wolfcat 11:33 PM: "god fucking damn it dov”

ARGDov 11:33 PM: "ok so fuck it”

Wolfcat 11:33 PM: "She'll △lways live”

ARGDov 11:33 PM: "we killed Yuki”

ARGDov 11:33 PM: "and thats it”

BUP 11:34 PM: "I killed Yuuki”

BUP 11:34 PM: "Not directly”

BUP 11:34 PM: "I mean I didn't strangle her myself”

BUP 11:34 PM: "But i made the decision that led to it happening”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:34 PM: "dov is the whole ass reason we're in this mess”

ARGDov 11:34 PM: "no one else”

ARGDov 11:34 PM: "no one asked any other bad questions”

ARGDov 11:34 PM: "shhhhh”

otherLiam 11:34 PM: "Alright so uh”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:34 PM: "someone shittily photoshop dovs face onto this”

otherLiam 11:34 PM: "do we get to keep asking questions?”

ARGDov 11:34 PM: "LIAM”

ARGDov 11:34 PM: "THATS A YES OR NO QUESTION”

BUP 11:34 PM: "you're lucky i didn't stomp on the mouse instead”

Xenquility 11:35 PM: "Doug?”

otherLiam 11:35 PM: "That’s not to him.”

otherLiam 11:35 PM: "Chill.”

BUP 11:35 PM: "that wouldve caused real problems waaaaay back”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:35 PM: "mouse?”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:35 PM: "wait”

Xenquility 11:35 PM: "Mouse = doug”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:35 PM: "PLEASE LEAVE HIM ALONE”

Xenquility 11:35 PM: "maybe”

ARGDov 11:35 PM: "letschasethemouse”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:35 PM: "CURSOR IS A GOOD BOI”

otherLiam 11:35 PM: "I didn’t do anything silly like ping him.”

Wolfcat 11:35 PM: "He's being a bitchass”

Xenquility 11:35 PM: "Holy shit cursor”

BUP 11:35 PM: "@Wolfcat”

BUP 11:35 PM: "gunna cry?”

ARGDov 11:35 PM: "...”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:35 PM: "i think dov could have just murdered instead of bomb plans

maybe cum a little?”

otherLiam 11:35 PM: "@BUP How can we get the login creds to johnisdead.com or lunarchildren.com?”

otherLiam 11:35 PM: "There’s a question.”

Xenquility 11:36 PM: "(I'm not asking Bup this) Does that mean that Doug will be immediately useful to us?”

otherLiam 11:36 PM: "Get this back on track.”

Xenquility 11:36 PM: "(To clarify I'm asking the group that)”

ARGDov 11:36 PM: "not necesarily”

ARGDov 11:36 PM: "he couldve picked him”

ARGDov 11:36 PM: "which means hes not useful to us atm either”

Xenquility 11:36 PM: "We don't love doug”

Xenquility 11:36 PM: "nescessarily”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:36 PM: "bup seems to not be linear in time”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:36 PM: "doug a bitch”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:36 PM: "since dov just killed yuuki in the past”

BUP 11:36 PM: "well she was ascended”

BUP 11:36 PM: "but i told them to do that”

BUP 11:36 PM: "i needed an excuse for our game”

otherLiam 11:37 PM: "REMEMBER THE RULES”

BUP 11:37 PM: "oh you think we're still playing?”

BUP 11:37 PM: "you want to risk more people?”

BUP 11:37 PM: "lmao”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:37 PM: "nah not really”

Xenquility 11:37 PM: "P sure it's over”

BUP 11:37 PM: "bloodthirsty”

otherLiam 11:37 PM: "I’ll risk it.”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:37 PM: "i figured dov murdering someone was the end”

otherLiam 11:37 PM: "It’s not a risk if you just think before sending.”

ARGDov 11:37 PM: "pffff”

Wolfcat 11:37 PM: "You're risking your own chess pieces”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:37 PM: "do we really want to risk killing another person when we've asked so many fuckin yes/no's”

ARGDov 11:37 PM: "no we dont”

otherLiam 11:38 PM: "who the fuck is we”

BUP 11:38 PM: "my army is larger”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:38 PM: "the group as a whole, duh”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:38 PM: "the hell you think i mean by we”

ARGDov 11:38 PM: "whod have thought that someone with a toad avatar would be so twisted”

Xenquility 11:38 PM: "I vote we fuck this game and go back to the No-Rule Questions But Bup Probably Won't Answer system”

otherLiam 11:38 PM: "Cus i aint asked any dumbass questions”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:39 PM: "you've asked like 2 or 3 yes/no's since dov killed yuuki”

ARGDov 11:39 PM: "lol yup”

BUP 11:39 PM: "this is fun”

ARGDov 11:39 PM: "ALSO STOP SAYING IT LIKE THAT”

otherLiam 11:39 PM: "I asked one to the group.”

BUP 11:39 PM: "i can make a simple game”

Xenquility 11:39 PM: "Can we all shut up and stop arguing?”

BUP 11:39 PM: "and turn this place into a battle royale”

BUP 11:39 PM: "you all turn on each other easily”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:39 PM: "me lmao”

Xenquility 11:39 PM: "Bup is obviously enjoying this”

otherLiam 11:39 PM: "Fuck these guys I’d like to still play.”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:39 PM: "we playin realm royale now?”

Xenquility 11:39 PM: "We fought over Erika and now we're fighting over a mistake”

Wolfcat 11:39 PM: ":jack_o_lantern:”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:39 PM: "where we droppin bois”

ARGDov 11:39 PM: "ACTUALLY FUCK”

BUP 11:40 PM: "Erika was a mistake”

ARGDov 11:40 PM: "why?”

ARGDov 11:40 PM: "why was she a mistake?”

ARGDov 11:40 PM: "where is she now anyways?”

BUP 11:40 PM: "im kidding”

BUP 11:40 PM: "i dont care”

ARGDov 11:40 PM: "fuck”

ARGDov 11:40 PM: "I just realized we couldve asked him about her”

ARGDov 11:40 PM: "oh well”

otherLiam 11:40 PM: "We could’ve asked about a lot of things.”

otherLiam 11:40 PM: "Erika was on my list.”

otherLiam 11:40 PM: "But I was waiting for you to be done.”

ARGDov 11:40 PM: "pfff”

ARGDov 11:40 PM: "well”

ARGDov 11:40 PM: "Im done now”

otherLiam 11:41 PM: "We’re ALL done now.”

Xenquility 11:41 PM: "Dwelling on the past won't help us in the future. Dov screwed up, we all realise that, and he's been made fun of. If we keep arguing, we get nowhere”

otherLiam 11:41 PM: "That’s why I want to keep playing his game.”

ARGDov 11:41 PM: "ugh ok”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:41 PM: "aiight i'm gonna be back in a few minutes, i gotta piss and getting around with crutches sucks ass”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:41 PM: "kill dov next”

ARGDov 11:41 PM: "lets hope SKM can be a bit more clear whenever he gets in contact with us”

otherLiam 11:41 PM: "Cus all we got were the answers to your followups.”

ARGDov 11:41 PM: "in fairness we got some info”

ARGDov 11:41 PM: "and Yuki was destined to die anyways”

ARGDov 11:41 PM: "so it couldve been worse”

BUP 11:42 PM: "was she?”

otherLiam 11:42 PM: "@BUP Is continuing to play still an option?”

ARGDov 11:42 PM: "I mean in our timeline, she'd already gotten killed”

otherLiam 11:42 PM: "And yeah I know, but we aren’t playing rn.”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:42 PM: "one thing we've learned is that bup does not seem to play linearly in time”

ARGDov 11:42 PM: "well, not in our timeline”

ARGDov 11:42 PM: "but anyways”

ARGDov 11:42 PM: "shed already died for us”

ARGDov 11:42 PM: "so really”

ARGDov 11:42 PM: "me askign the wrong question was destined”

BUP 11:42 PM: "gee”

ARGDov 11:42 PM: "and out of my control”

BUP 11:42 PM: "i wonder where you had heard”

BUP 11:42 PM: "of something like that before”

ARGDov 11:43 PM: "like what?”

otherLiam 11:43 PM: “Dov has a doctorate in rationalization.”

ARGDov 11:43 PM: "Im Jewish”

ARGDov 11:43 PM: "we are trained to argue”

Xenquility 11:43 PM: "Did Bup go back in time and take over Yuuki's account or something”

ARGDov 11:43 PM: "and I have just argued my way out of blame for death”

ARGDov 11:43 PM: "so yeah”

ARGDov 11:43 PM: "Im good”

otherLiam 11:43 PM: "not really no”

Xenquility 11:43 PM: "To say the whole "This is inevitable" thing”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:43 PM: "nah you still killed her”

otherLiam 11:43 PM: "we’re just ignoring you in favor of bup”

ARGDov 11:44 PM: "ok but I had no choice in it”

ARGDov 11:44 PM: "it was destiny”

ARGDov 11:44 PM: "but anyways”

ARGDov 11:44 PM: "MOVING ON”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:44 PM: "i mean”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:44 PM: "you did”

otherLiam 11:44 PM: "okay murderer”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:44 PM: "dov could have decided not to ask but that would have caused problems temporally”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:44 PM: "it coulda been any of us idiots who did it”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:44 PM: "but you ended up bein the one who did”

ARGDov 11:44 PM: "exactly,circle”

ARGDov 11:44 PM: "not my fault”

Wolfcat 11:44 PM: "You're giving bup too much credit”

Wolfcat 11:44 PM: "assuming he actually planned this from the start”

otherLiam 11:44 PM: "Hey BUP. How can we play your game again?”

BUP 11:45 PM: "honestly you all got me laughin”

BUP 11:45 PM: "plus someone died”

BUP 11:45 PM: "all in all good night”

ARGDov 11:45 PM: "so yes”

ARGDov 11:45 PM: "we should be scared of you”

ARGDov 11:45 PM: "great.”

Wolfcat 11:45 PM: "he doesnt have power over time, he has power over coincidence”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:45 PM: "since from our perspective she was already dead, it doesent really matter when we ended up getting her killed”

BUP 11:45 PM: "nah im just gonna give link a reward”

BUP 11:45 PM: "for thinkin with portals”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:45 PM: "o shit really?”

BUP 11:45 PM: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI_fltggv6E”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:45 PM: "literally why does anyone think it's a good idea to continue?”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:45 PM: ":o”

ARGDov 11:45 PM: "lmao”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:45 PM: "oh my fuck”

ARGDov 11:45 PM: "Liams the only one who thinks so”

otherLiam 11:46 PM: "I’m less pissed about Yuuki getting killed and more about the game being over and not getting any more info.”

Xenquility 11:46 PM: "bup is kaiden”

Xenquility 11:46 PM: "confirmed”

BUP 11:46 PM: "nah”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:46 PM: "imagine for a second”

BUP 11:46 PM: "kaiden was the other option”

BUP 11:46 PM: "actually you guys like him now”

ARGDov 11:47 PM: "ahahahhaha”

BUP 11:47 PM: "but you didnt then”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:47 PM: "bup being mugen”

BUP 11:47 PM: "weird how that works”

ARGDov 11:47 PM: "why do we like him”

Xenquility 11:47 PM: "We like Kaiden?”

ARGDov 11:47 PM: "we havent spoken to him much really”

otherLiam 11:47 PM: "Kaiden’s adorable”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:47 PM: "cursed idea, circle”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:47 PM: "cursed”

BUP 11:47 PM: "but i told you who i was”

BUP 11:47 PM: "just now”

BUP 11:47 PM: "sort of”

otherLiam 11:47 PM: "I don’t think he likes me very much tho”

ARGDov 11:47 PM: ".....wait”

BUP 11:47 PM: "it doesnt reveal much but”

Xenquility 11:47 PM: "are you”

Xenquility 11:47 PM: "IIII”

BUP 11:47 PM: "it also does”

BUP 11:47 PM: "no”

ARGDov 11:48 PM: "are you kaiden”

BUP 11:48 PM: "no”

Xenquility 11:48 PM: "You the dark lord from the rp or whatever?”

ARGDov 11:48 PM: "I was kidding so thats a relief”

otherLiam 11:48 PM: "man it’s a good thing we aren’t playing anymore”

BUP 11:48 PM: "”You the dark lord from the rp or whatever?””

BUP 11:48 PM: "kind of!”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:48 PM: "i know who you are and i am incredibly uncomfortable”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:48 PM: "i'm gonna go now”

otherLiam 11:48 PM: "wait wut”

ARGDov 11:48 PM: "what the hell”

ARGDov 11:48 PM: "@/Mr. Circle\ WHO IS HE”

Xenquility 11:49 PM: "The one Kaiden teamed up with or the one they were against?”

ARGDov 11:49 PM: "YOU CANT JUST SAY THAT AND LEAVE”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:49 PM: "he's me”

BUP 11:49 PM: "oh”

BUP 11:49 PM: "you wish”

BUP 11:49 PM: "nice try”

ARGDov 11:49 PM: ".......”

Xenquility 11:49 PM: "denied lmao”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:49 PM: "damn i tried tho”

Wolfcat 11:49 PM: "I'm you”

ARGDov 11:49 PM: "Ive got a feeling he's not someone we know”

BUP 11:49 PM: "oh”

BUP 11:49 PM: "i am”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:49 PM: "the baby is he”

BUP 11:49 PM: "again sort of”

ARGDov 11:49 PM: "....of course sort of”

ARGDov 11:49 PM: "inb4 this is the alternate universe version of me”

ARGDov 11:49 PM: "No tha would be stupid”

BUP 11:50 PM: "god you all just want”

BUP 11:50 PM: "to be me”

BUP 11:50 PM: "so bad”

ARGDov 11:50 PM: "Im kidding”

ARGDov 11:50 PM: "Id hate it if I were you tbh”

ARGDov 11:50 PM: "Id be disgusted with myself”

Xenquility 11:50 PM: "wow”

Xenquility 11:50 PM: "rude”

ARGDov 11:50 PM: "shame on me”

Wolfcat 11:50 PM: "oof”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:50 PM: "i mean”

Wolfcat 11:50 PM: "cutting deep”

ARGDov 11:50 PM: "Id want to slit my own wrists”

Xenquility 11:50 PM: "I mean it makes sense if you're slightly him”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:50 PM: ":THINKING:”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:50 PM: "your jevil and bup stuff is on brand for me”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:50 PM: "so”

Xenquility 11:50 PM: "jk”

ARGDov 11:50 PM: "and by my own wrists I mean your wrists that is lol”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:50 PM: "wouldnt be too bad of a thing if you were a me”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:50 PM: "or if i were a you”

Wolfcat 11:51 PM: "dov is just obsessed with killing”

/Mr. Circle\ 11:51 PM: "dov wants to murder you”

BUP 11:51 PM: "the funny thing is”

ARGDov 11:51 PM: "I AM HERE”

ARGDov 11:51 PM: "AND HE IS ME”

BUP 11:51 PM: "i straight up”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:51 PM: "idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯”

BUP 11:51 PM: "gave you the answer to my identity”

otherLiam 11:51 PM: "Dov’s just mad he fucked up and killed Yuuki, don’t mind him.”

Xenquility 11:51 PM: "So if Bupman IA or the "Okay soul contract time" guy”

BUP 11:51 PM: "i honest to god 100% did”

Xenquility 11:51 PM: "*is”

ARGDov 11:51 PM: "I AM HE AND HE IS ME https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6Uf4sjX8RE”

BUP 11:51 PM: "you just cant connect the dots”

ADULT_LINK△ 11:51 PM: ""didnt like him then, but do now"”

Wolfcat 11:51 PM: "3?”

ARGDov 11:51 PM: "nope”

Wolfcat 11:51 PM: "△”

[somedaypast-thesunset]

i have a feeling that i broke up with him. 

i could just be reading it the wrong way but i also kind of thought i read it the wrong way last night.

theres no denying he was upset. he was definitely upset. i asked him outright, “what does all of this mean?” and he replied “i dont know”. 

i thought that was strange. i thought if i were in his shoes and i was fed up then this would be the opportunity to break up entirely. i wouldnt say i dont know. i’d be like is it not clear enough. i’m not doing this anymore with you. whatever we are ceases to be now. i asked outright - what does all of this mean. why am i getting this rant. am i getting it because this is your end speech or because you want to rant and get it off your chest.

“i dont know”.

honestly i have done this before. and the last time meant i want to try something different and realize this is better. i dont know is poison and toxic and unfair. i should not be strung along. 

he said he wanted to be left alone. he needed space. but im tired of this relationship as it is. i cannot continue this and not seriously damage my soul. he felt i wasnt listening to him, that i was making excuses for my bad attitude that makes him feel bad. that things hadnt changed in two years and he wanted space and then he hung up. 

its very hard to gauge whether or not this meant an absolution. like space meant forever and we’d never be together again. this wasnt what was said. this is what i felt was implied. i dont know if im right or wrong because the actual words did not really confirm one way or another. 

but this was enough for me. it didnt really matter if he was actually done becaue at that moment i had decided i was done. 

and i unleashed a rant that has never been spoken of before by me because it is the number one thing i have kept inside for literally two years. this is “the secret”. this is the thing he has never known or understood to any capacity and has no idea the affect it has on my mental heath. 

thats not to say he is at fault for my depression. i made a concious consenting decision to be apart of a relationship i knew was struggling to meet my actual wants and needs in life. i dont know if i ever fully believed that it could but i sincerely wanted it to. like nothing more i wanted was for this to work out an i was willing to live in a more alternative kind of way for him. 

but at every single turn, at every single point this was ever brought up  it continually dashed my hopes at a legitimate stable future with him. and nothing else was ever openly spoken about. i wa never apart of the conversation. other people were more apart of the future than i was. i was just a fly on the wall. i felt like a fly on the wall, i felt really insignificant and i allowed him to say things to me that were absolutely wrong and disgusting for any person in a relationship to say to someone else. 

i acted on pure instinct and let it go; i aske him why he would ask me to follow him. why would he continue a relationship that had no future. why does he say things during sex that dont relate to the actual life i have with him and why doesnt he understand that this has sent mixed messages for two years. why cant he see the ony thing ive consistently said i wanted was a life with someone. i wanted a future with someone. i wanted to be with someone. i wanted a fucking reason to live within my own desires for life. and he never gave me that because all he gave me was money and he doesnt even see whats happening because hes too busy trying to get something back for all the money hes put out. its like he is where he is right now because he has all these arbitrary rules eeryone hs to follow in order to interact with him and their reward is a mediorce friendship where they still hve to follow all the rules to maintain it. its completely unfair when ive given him nothing but love and respect and i just hated myself enough to follow these bullshit rules without saying anything until now.

and then  i stopped. it was a blast of seven or so short messages - no long rants or over explaination. just straight forward completely plain and simple. i spent a long time writing 50 pages that in reality didnt sum up what i was able to in these messages but maybe i needed to write 50 pages to be able to sum it up. i bn a way, i didnt even need a response. this was just for me after two years of holding back an sayng nothing - this was an ending for me. i gave him two years of my dedicated love and affection and loyalty and support. this is what i wanted in return. i just needed to say it.

and i wouldve sat on it as that for the next few days. i sat down afterwards upset that i was involved in a conflict at all but not upset about the ending of this era. to be fair to the randomness of life, i wont say its an end to the relationship or a relationship with him because who knows but its certainly an end of this era of keeping this huge secret that affected the entire way the relationship played out. but its not like this really bad secret. its not me trying to harm him. my secret was that i loved him so much i wanted to be with him for 10 - 20 years and i wanted to be in his life and do things with him and become a better person with him and for him and for myself. but i knew he didnt want that. he said it multiple times. but we stil ended up at two years in a solid relationship together. a solid relationship tht had literally no future from the moment it started. and that’s really, really hard. i blame neither of us. we were really excellent to each other in this relationship by most standards. we had very little complaints about each other and the ones we had kind of remained consistent from the time we met each other. and neither of us changed these traits. but how do you give p something that kind of does work for the most part? like my laptop is pretty shit but im not tring to throw it out because it still works in most aspects. it just has some quirks that piss me off. 

but non-commitment is not a quirk. its a really big deal. its a really big deal to put two years of your life into someone and not see a future or want a future with them throughout the whole thing. 

i figured he wouldnt reply at all. a few hours went by before he replied “im sorry. i guess we’ll see if the future will prove your theory” and then “good night. you do not get to harass me because you’re upset.” 

at the time i quickly read this as a sort of passive aggressiveness. like “oh, i’mmmm sorrrrryyy you feel this way but whatever fuck you.” i got angry again. i didnt know why he was replying and why this reply was so ambiguous and mentioned nothing in regards to what i said. why reply at all? two hours later? about harassing him? that really makes no sense when i sent an appropriate number of messages nd then stopped within probaby less than fifteen minutes. it wasnt like i spammed him with non sense, i simply texted in a way i would anyone else and didnt stick to his format of how to text him. but again - why reply at all? 

i told him if he wanted to belittle my actual thoughts to just me harassing him thats up to him but i was good on talking to him tonight. he replied, “i dont want to speak anymore.” 

to which i replied of course because ive pulled the blanket off of this whole thing. he knows that i know that this is bullshit, he knows that i want more and have said i wanted more and hes continued to act the way he does and say the things he does with nothing behind it. of course he doesnt want to speak anymore to answer to any of this. hes too insecure to admit that he had a hand in the failure of this and wants to blame it on me. 

i stopped after ten minutes or so. its not like constant messages ten minutes straight but it took me ten minutes to fully type out and send the three or four messages it took to express myself. it wasnt like an hour of my time dedicated to doing this. 

but then i kind of read back on it. and it is ambiguous. its very much still in the lines of “i dont know.” because he chose not to attack me or what i said. he could decide he just oesnt have the time to care about it anymore. that hes not going to dignify it with a response. but why acknowledge it. why say something like “im sorry.”. was he sarcastically replying like lets see if youre right and if so - how does that apply to what i actually said? is that in regards to the idea that i believe what i need is having someone in my life? i didnt really insult him - the worst i said was about his arbitrary rules. 

and “i dont want to speak anymore”. i sound crazy because he makes people sound crazy on purpose. but ive explained it that i know im being played, i know this is a game and i never want to play it again, ever. i’m ending the game once and for all - either the game stops and we have a future together or the game stops and we dont. either way the game is stopping.  he did not say “i dont want to speak to YOU anymore”. it souns crazy. it sounds like im reading into it but i have not been wrong before. and this is not because i want to be with him as is. i dont. my assumption is things are not changing and this is the end times or i would not have said what i said. i would PREFER closure. i would much rather have him outright say “i cannot have a life with you, i dont see myself with you in the future, i may or may not love you but i am going to live a different life.” 

and to be fair, i deserve that closure. 

“im sorry. only the future can prove your theory”

“good night. you do not get to harass me because youre upset”

“i dont want to speak anymore.” 

the only thing he neede to say was “i’m done. i’m no longer going to be apart of this. no relationship, no future.” 

what is my theory? my theory is that he had no plans for me in his future. that he has never truly had plans and hs never spoken openly about having a future with me but he’s been more than capable of making future plans with others. and a good portion of the reason why he refuses to make any plans is due to not following his arbitrary rules to be his friend. thats my theory. hes depressed because he puts these rules on every single person in his life and ive hated myself eough to follow them knowing it was outlandish. but when you dont follow the rules its a real insult to him an you dont care and youre being inconsiderate of him and what he wants in this. 

my theory is that im extremely unhappy doing this. im extremely unhappy getting money without love. without a future. he truly made this into a 2 year prostitution. and he somehow sells this to me as him just feeling bad you know. he felt too bad to do it because things always come up and he cant talk about being upset. so two years of prostitution was a much better solution. 

so how can the future prove this theory? how can it prove that he had no plans for me in his future? that cannot be proven unless you DO have plans. unless i am actually apart of the plans. to apologize is to acknowledge that im not wrong. that what im saying is true belief and that i didnt pull this out of my ass and im not making an excuse for it. i was sold, continually, on something that was never provided. empty things were said. this is truly heartbreaking. to say im sorry is to say that im not wrong to feel this way. 

of course he feels “harassed”. its all he can do in response to this. hes not going to get into it now - he cant just fall back on how he feels about my attitude and hes not secure enough to take his part of the blame. he has to tell me im harassing him, that he believes im upset. 

and its so easy to read “im not speaking anymore” as a fuck you. it really is. but when you put it into this context - that i attacked him, that i’m now clearly incredibly upset about something that is very much of a reality in our relationship and has been for a long time - to say “i dont want to speak anymore” could very well be more like “im not going to speak anymore”. that he knows im upset and hes not going to fuel it any further. that he knows hes gotten himself into this by talking a lot of shit before this so speaking even more isnt going to solve it. 

but by all means i could be wrong. i could be completely wrong and its just me assuming we’re still in this game when he’s already left it. i dont know. we love each other a lot, i honestly believe that, and neither of us has done anything at all to eachother in two years that was malicious or mean. everything that comes up is in regards to how someone is dealing with whatever is going on. we dont have bad feelings about each other. 

since it was my birthday i ignored his rules further and sent a final three messages before midnight. i think as my anger subsided from being attacked, i began to realize that he might not have been as on the defensive as i believed him to be. so i softened a bit - not that i wanted to “get him back”. i dont really want him as is. i love him but fuck man its tooooo painful. instead i just explained much more calmly that i was really disappointed and heartbroken and all i ever told him was that i wanted a family and to share a life with someone. i screamed this at him because its all i want in life and i live in a way with him where its dangled in front of me all the time but its not actually there and it kills me because i love him and i want to be with him and i want to have that life with him and i dont need luxuries and i would follow him. but this has weighed so heavily on my depression when my depression is feeling alone and isolated in the world. i could have put the effort into someone who wouldnt leave me in two years because im frustrated they dont really want to be with me but are still fucking with me. you couldve let me find happiness somewhere else but you didnt. 

i told him i would never think of him as a bad guy or abusive. i dont think is shittier traits equate abuse. i would never sell that idea to anyone else so i can be more of a victim or something. he wasnt a bad guy and he certainly was not abusive. but he can be controlling and manipulative. these are not star qualities and do as much damage as someone having to cre for someone else with depression. i think we are both equally responsible for the hurt in this relationship but i have no resentment or feeling of needing to be vindicated. i took responsibility for my own actions - not speaking up sooner or being more straight forward when this was affecting pretty much everything. 

this morning i woke up feeling uneasy. i realize now its because i didnt get closure. it wasnt a real breakup. i didnt have any plans to get my stuff back. i have his skates and his mothers skates. he has extremely sentimental items to me that are only there because of an empty promise he made and never fulfilled. the game continues. he knows my part of the game is to return everything. he knows i want a clean break. i want to be told “im not doing this anymore, i will drop off your things at such and such time and im not interested in having further discussions with you about the relationship”. the return of things is a sign of respect and also not to further the issue along. i dont want to see you in a month to collect shit from a former relationship. i want to come tomorrow, get my shit and forget you exist. im doing yu the same favor. why prolong it. 

so i decied to make the super extreme cold trek to his house but it was good. i really needed to take a walk and get fresh air and it was super cold but i didnt freeze. i collected some of the things i borrowed from him but i returned some thngs that were kind of just momentos of the relationship. and that was my own manipulation tactic. i really want to double down on the fact that in my mind he has already ended the relationship and i am sooo hurt and feel sooo badly/strongly about the whole thing. i returned a picture. ive kept the picture for almost the whole relationshp through various moves. ive lost keys and wallets and cellphones in the time of having this picture and its a really nice picture of us but man is it painful as fuck to look at it. i certainly dont want it when this relationship was built on a two year farce. 

i returned flowers - which is funny but dried flowers i kept when he bought me flowers. because in such manipulation tactic i want him to know that he and this was of such importance to me that i kept dried flowers he bought me. i returned something he never owned or even bought or would maybe even understand why i would give it to him. i bought / made a necklace over christmas that had our birthstones in it. i dont know why. it was like the one hopeless romantic thing ive done in my life. i returned that because im pissed. he literally had no idea probaby that this necklace existed. but im pissed and the only gesture appropriate eough to express the level of heartbroken anger i have is to return a necklace i made that he didnt even know existed. its not even returning. i gave him a necklace. i gave him back a book i borrowed from him like.. three months into dating. i returned the last sweater i borrowed that i have in my possession. 

as a whole this symbolizes that at this moment, i no longer have things to return. i am not keeping things as a romantic gesture. i am literally giving him everything back. his mind, his peace, his material posessions and the “love” that he’s provided to me. i am giving him back, with all of these things, the piece of his heart he gave to me. it was very small but im really just going to return it as unharmed as possible. 

but i shifted control and put the ball back in his court. i was “expected” to “give him space”. i always am. but i can give you space forever if you just return my things, you know? like dont let me sit here wondering when the guy who refuses to alk to me might give me one of the few posessions i have thats a family relic. thats really fucked up. you can end it completely and have all of the space in the world. and he’ll make excuses either way - he’ll bide time until he wants to deal with it because he can do what he wants or he’ll bide time to let everything simmer down to try and reignite something. 

i messaged him a final time - well for me at least, for the next day or so. i personally really honestly got everything out i would need or want to say to him. i have no more questions. this is it. this is the most IT of all the things. everthing else is meaningless. i even went to insult him our of pure anger and in anger deleted it because thats not even my problem. i dont need to insult him to make him feel bad my objective is not to make him feel bad but for him to fucking understand once and for all that he ignored every single request i ever made for what i actually needed to feel content in my life. he took up space that someone else could have been in that actually wanted to be with me long term. and to what end? that was my question. TO WHAT END DID ALL OF THIS HAPPEN? WHY? why would someone put themselves through this with zero commitment and then become frustrated after playing like they were committed for two years? you cannot brush off ther seriousness of it being so long now. its not a fling. we both made choices. i am telling you why i made mine. i am telling you that i “knew” you were not going to give me what i want and i continued to consent to being in a relationship with no fucking future because i loved you. why the fuck did you do it when you werent getting what you fully wanted either? was this all just a game? a way to pass the time? an inconvient time? did he just pity me? did he use me? why did we go an entire two years when my depression caused by feeling isolated and unloved because i lived on the sidelines of the life of a person i spent the majority of my time with was making me feel sooo jaded and bitter at times that i sat completely frustrated or got into arguments where im sobbing about wanting a family like an after school special? i KNOW thats stressful. i GET IT. but WHAT ABOUT THE CAUSE? im not just freaking out to freak out. all these little things throw into question any legitimacy of a fuuture with him and hes spent two months talking about leaving and im not even remotely involved and he wonders why i have a bad attitude towards him? he wonders why i wont take his advice outright? all you’re doing is telling me whats wrong with me and leaving. you’re essentially a troll. the only way your words have any true impact is if you’re apart of my actual life. not right now. not just in the now the current day. but my lifetime, like a legitimate care and deep understanding of who i am and what ive been through with an unconditional love and forgiveness for failures and missteps. you want me to become better because you want to watch me become better, you want to see me alleviate my suffering, not because you’re scared and feel obligated like i’m a homeless person sitting on your front step. 

this is all i want to know. and i may not get an exact answer as to why it happened. but i will get an exact answer to whether he believed/s there was/is a future together for us. ive made it so easy not to commit in any certain way. but now it cannot continue in any fashion without a commitment to a future. i dont want to be on my life journey with someone whos not even sure if theyll be there. like every corner they might take another road. thats so much instability its weighed so fucking heavy on me like the only thing i want is this and its not happening. 

if he replies to my message today or makes an effort to return my things today then i know hes moving forward without me. it means hes definitely not dealing any further and hes removing all reason to contact him further. if he does not contact me today it means that all of this is so heavy and so painful for him that he cannot deal and hes not sure what he wants or how he wants to deal with it so hes not going to touch it right now. it means hes not ready to remove reason to contact him. he wants the chance to keep this going to a point where he can make a decision.

i made it very clear i just wanted the sentimental items. this is what would weigh on me the most from here and they were very important. i manipulatively mentioned that i had not cheated on him or called the cops on him for no reason to further distance myself from the idea that i was somehow like his exs. seriously. i am sad because i am isolated. i am isolated because of him. without him i would meet new and different people who may or may not help me further my life but he has made even new friendships hard on me. he wanted all of my attention and love and care and i wanted to give it to him and then he wouldnt want it but then want it again and im just so tired. im not a bad person. im fucking sad and lonely. i could be fulfilled by him but he wont give it to me. 

i told him we could have a conversation if he wanted to but my assumption woul be that he did not want to. i was giving him the option to be peaceful about it. to just end it copacetically so we could hide and lick our wounds seperately in private. his silence would speak so much more to me than words in this situation because i would know he was very much done. but im not going to shut down communication. im going to leave it open for him and let him know that he still has the door shut on his side. 

if he doesnt message me back today im going to message him again tomorrow and essentially repeat that i would like to make a plan to have this returned to me asap. and that im also still genuinely just hurt but have no reason myself to continue  trying to make something out of this that was never going to be. hes had two years to decide if he would want me in his future, it shouldnt take longer than two days to reply to ending it.