#this was originally much sadder

[wigglebox]

“The voice says I’m almost out of minutes 😡” [x]

[andrew-dramaqueen-minyard]

25 year old Andrew to his younger self: we’re in love with a man, we have cats together, you have a twin brother, we go to therapy weekly but we made it. We are alive.

14 year old Andrew, who thought he wouldn’t make it to 18, was in denial about his sexuality, hated every therapist he’d ever met, and had no idea aaron existed yet: what.

6 year old Andrew: we’re in love? We have a brother?! 🥺

25 year old Neil to his younger self: you play exy professionally now, and you’re no longer on the run, you have a partner named Andrew. You love him with everything you have. You’re safe.

14 year old Neil, tired, who very much thought he’d be dead by now: we’re not running? It’s over?

6 year old Neil: WE GET TO PLAY EXY?!

[terrorincarnate]

thx for coming to my rodeo

[bumblingbabooshka]

Missing me/you: An Everbleeding Wound. [Patreon | Commissions]

[peachpitss]

the newsletter recontextualizes so much. i had always believed chara tries to find a reason for the no mercy route to happen, something to cling to to make sense of it. noelle does the exact same thing during the events of snowgrave, which made me feel vindicated. but now i have a sudden canonical shove into it face first like i’ve been hit in the face by a clown with a pie.

[witched-kid-writer]

Day Eight: Missing

TW: Missing person

It's not the first missing poster to be put up there in the park and it will not be the last. Her hands tremble as she tries to get the tape to wrap all the way around so the flimsy paper won't go anywhere in the cool fall breeze. She knows, deep down, that it is pointless to post it. It will just be lost in the sea of other near identical posters littered around the area. She knows it will just be a matter of time before another covers up the one she so painstakingly put up is covered by another.

They yell and deny and say nothing is happening, but here in the actual city, in the actual neighbourhood it is obvious something is. You can't miss how much more empty the streets are. You can't miss the haunting look in the eyes of those you do happen to pass. You can't miss the feeling of dread that seems to permeate everyone and everything here.

There are candles in almost everyone's windows, calling those who are lost home. But the light seems to beckon nothing but shadows.

She is alone in the park, a stack of flyers in her hands, and thinks about just sitting down on the near dead grass and letting the wind scatter the paper to those who might see it and might finally take this all seriously. But sitting down, stopping, letting somrthing else take the job from her, feels like giving up. It feels so much easier to give up but if she does there is no one left to pick up her torch, her burden. There is no one left to keep searching, to keep putting up posters, to keep calling and demanding answers.

So she moves on to the next pole and puts up the next poster. She tried not to look at the face of the person whose poster she must cover up in order to put her own there. She tried to pick the oldest one, the one most worn by sun and rain and sorrow, but still it feels like something sacrilegious. Like she is telling the world that this person is less important.

She can't help but think oh what face her own missing person poster will cover up.

[fictionadventurer]

imaginary book: “The Ruined Idylls of Calomar”, low fantasy (quite obscure, authorship disputed; philologists suspect the first draft was written in a Celtic or Semitic language in the late 19th or early 20th century.)

The Ruined Idylls of Calomar by A.E. Mann

This haunting work of fantasy claims to be the journals of an unnamed scholar living in exile after the fall of the hidden lands of Calomar. Once a thriving, peaceful, highly civilized culture, its glory was brought low by the pride, greed, and wrath of kings, scholars, explorers and warriors who fought for glory, power, and honor, until its final destruction by a dark, nameless weapon left only a scant handful of survivors to escape and tell the tale. In haunting language, the narrator writes of Calomar's glory and intrigue, its final fall, and his irresistible yet doomed attempts to return to his lost homeland and learn what, if anything, has survived.

[crimeronan]

also I’m SURE this has already been discussed but like. what are each of their songs To You vs what do they actually listen to? like what songs make you think of them vs what songs do they like for real?

OLD question about the OC quartet but here i am finally answering <3 i think the OCs' tastes in music are more varied than my own. keep in mind this is technically not our world so i can't cite specific bands/songs but

nova: stimmy EDM bitch through and through.

sol: likes anything loud and angry (perhaps unsurprisingly).

ruby: particularly fond of fiddle, drums, & any form of live music.

devin: has the most varied taste in that he literally will listen to whatever is engaging enough to serve as a distraction from The Horrors

i can't choose One Specific Song for each bc i have a million half-formed playlists for a million different character facets. so i grabbed one song for each OC from each of the three loud angry bands i've been listening to most lately (rise against, delain, & the pretty reckless)

i put all 12 in a spotify playlist here. sorry for lyrics spamming but i chose snatches that are Particularly painfully relevant

sol: get the devil out of me - delain

though i try not to lose, if in the end i will fall better to have you in tears than not to have you at all i'm no jesus christ, i'm the one mistake that you love to hate i apologize, it's your destiny to get the devil out of me

witches burn - the pretty reckless

welcome back to the days of old where the men are men and the women are sold unwilling sacrifice, i'll fuck you for a price they kill 'em young so they never get old

prayer of the refugee - rise against

we are the angry and the desperate, the hungry and the cold we are the ones who kept quiet and always did what we were told but we've been sweating while you slept so calm in the safety of your home we've been pulling up the nails that hold up everything you've known

devin: your body is a battleground - delain

your body is a battleground and chemicals are scattered round your body is a battleground but don't think you can do without your body is an industry, your pain nothing but gain to me your body is an industry, you can't break free

hit me like a man - the pretty reckless

take your time, do with me what you will i won't mind, you know i'm ill, you know i'm ill so hit me like a man and love me like a woman buried and sad, look me in the eyes, i want it

sooner or later - rise against

from the gods we all seek favors with every sacrificial lamb but the bodies all pile higher and the blood just stains your hands and soon you'll feel the panic in your breath and in your veins when you know there's no tomorrow and you've realized too late

ruby: start swimming - delain

all i seem to hear is stop, stop, i'm catching up on you don't leave me behind i can't see a soul out here it's dark dark, i'm catching up on you and all i wonder is why, why don't i try to stop running?

living in the storm - the pretty reckless

there's something wrong with all of my friends empty heads and violence, i'm trying to pretend that it's not me i can be anything i want to be and i'll try to ignore it, this banging at my door

the eco-terrorist in me - rise against

when business and suffering are one and the same when laws fail the people they turn to the flame i found love, i found life as a thorn stuck in your side, and you wonder why when it all comes down, will you say you did everything you could?

nova: army of dolls - delain

army of dolls stole your reflection army of dolls stole all your perfect imperfections just shut them out, don't let them in, into your head, under your skin do you really think misery tastes much sweeter served with a perfect smile

miss nothing - the pretty reckless

i'm misused, miss-cunt-strued, i don't need to be saved misguided, high-minded, i'm stuck in the rain and i don't know where i am and i don't know what i'm into and i don't know what i've done to me

a gentleman's coup - rise against

afraid, we cower to interests not our own the power to free or to control we let it skip through our fingers to the bone watch as the bodies wash ashore, nobody lives here anymore

[dirt-str1der]

Love all the randos in y0 making fun of majima for being skinny calling him shit like stickman and other insulting things i forgot and they make sure to really cement that majima is your wireframe protagonist and then he takes off his shirt and hes literally normal shaped. Bullshit i want to see a scarecrow i dont like his beefy body , you hyped me up only to lie to me

[rookinthecrownest]

I think the thing that Gets Me about Veilguard is just how much of an impossible task it had heaped on it from EA from the start of its inception.

It’s arguably supposed to be a soft reboot for the series while ALSO being a follow up to Inquisition. These are two fundamentally incompatible goals in my opinion. This game had to walk the most insane line of any video game in recent memory. I guess EA wanted to have their cake and eat it too.

And the more I think about it the sadder I become for the original team who worked on Joplin. From what I’ve seen of the art book, Joplin was going to be about as firm a sequel to DAI as you could get - with references to rescuing whoever was left in the Fade, having Calpernia and Imshael as companions, having to fight Solas’ agents, etc.

Then EA makes them scrap it for live service. Fine. But wait - now we’re scrapping it again. Back to single person RPG but you also kind of need to distance yourself from the previous games as much as possible while still somehow being a follow up to the previous game.

New setting, few returning companions, and new Big Bads in the form of Elgarnan and Ghilanain to get a clean slate. Any mention of what’s happening in the South (where we spent 3 whole games!) needs to be relegated to letters and codex. ** I dont have the art book yet, so I dont know if these two were supposed to appear in Joplin beside Solas - or if Solas was supposed to be the sole antagonist in that iteration of the game.

But.. I hope you see what I mean when I say this game had a monumentally, borderline impossible task ahead of it. And when I think of it that way, I think it did as good a job as it possibly could. Especially since the actual development time was closer to 3ish yrs to get what we know of as datv today even though it’s been 10 whole years since DAI.

I hope it’s successful enough to get DA5, but who know’s what’ll happen.

I wish everyone except the EA execs who meddled with this game’s development and are seemingly trying to kill dragon age a pleasant day. I have a cynical detective I need to romance 😔

[shriekthemighty]

writing this sequel means i have to actually figure out what the fuck is going on with Eddie.

[undying-love]

Paul's grief over time: A Compilation

“During the session [in 1981] Paul fell into a lugubrious mood. He said, ‘I’ve just realized that John is gone. John’s gone. He’s dead and he is not coming back.’ And he looked completely dismayed, like shocked at something that had just hit him. ‘Well, it’s been a few weeks now.’ He said, ‘I know, Eric, but I’ve just realized." (Eric Stewart)

“It’s still weird even to say, ‘before he died’. I still can’t come to terms with that. I still don’t believe it. It’s like, you know, those dreams you have, where he’s alive; then you wake up and… 'Oh’.” (Paul, 1986)

"Occasionally, it wells up. Y'know, and I'm at home on the weekend suddenly and I start thinking about him or talking to the kids about him and I can't handle it." (Paul, 1987)

"Is there a record you like to put on just to hear John’s voice?" I ask Paul the next day. Paul looks startled. He fumbles. “Oh, uh. There’s so much of it. I hear it on the car radio when I’m driving.” No, that’s not what I mean", I persist. "Isn’t there a time when you just wish you could talk to John, when you’d like to hear his voice again?" For some reason, he instead responds to the original question.“Oh sure,” he says and looks a little taken aback. ‘Beautiful Boy". (1990)

"Also not obvious is that McCartney [for the Liverpool Oratorio] has penned a gorgeous black-spiritual-like piece for mezzo-soprano that intones the last words spoken to John Lennon as he lay dying of gunshot wounds in the back of a New York police car -- "Do you know who you are?" McCartney gets a bit choked up at one point when he reveals, "Not a day goes by when I don't think of John.” (1991)

"Delicious boy, delicious broth of a boy. He was a lovely guy, you know. And it gets sadder and sadder to be saying “was”. Nearer to when he died I couldn’t believe I was saying “was”, but now I do believe I’m saying “was”. I’ve resisted it. I’ve tried to pretend he didn’t get killed." (Paul, 1995)

"Paul talked about John a a lot, but the strange thing was that it was in the present tense, “John says this" or "John thinks that. Very weird." (Peter Cox, 2006)

“John Lennon was shot dead in 1980. That totally knocked dad for six. I haven’t really spoken to him a lot about it because it is such a touchy subject." (James McCartney, 2013)

"It's very difficult for me and I, occasionally, will have thoughts and sort of say: "I don't know why I don't just break down crying every day? […] You know, I don't know how I would have dealt with it because I don't think I've dealt with it very well. In a way… I wouldn't be surprised if a psychiatrist would sort of find out that I'm slightly in denial, because it's too much." (Paul, 2020)

"Like any bereavement, the only way out is to remember how good it was with John. Because I can't get over the senseless act. I can't think about it. I'm sure it's some form of denial. But denial is the only way that I can deal with it." (Paul, 2020)

"When I talked to Paul about John and when he missed John most, he couldn't answer me for a long time and his eyes teared up. And I asked him where he thinks about John and when John comes into his mind and he just … he lost it, he completely lost it." (Bob Spitz, 2021)

-------------------------------------------------

The following two are from the gossip website Datalounge, so they may or may not be true. Still interesting though:

"The one time I was ever actually in a room with Paul, zillion people between me and him (and no way I'm gonna bother him, all of us who travel in celeb circles have people we're fans of and all of us inexplicably try to hide it to seem "cooler"), he started talking loudly about himself and John, and how hard it was not to have him there. I remember him saying something along the lines of not a day passing that John's not still in it with him, but it's not like he can pick up a phone and say, "Hey, just needed to hear your voice today," and even when he got craggy responses, he still missed them. He misses it all, and it's bothering to him that he misses him more as time goes on -- it doesn't heal, he just learns new ways to bandage the wound."

“Since everyone is anonymous here, I guess I can give a bit of info I got from a female friend of mine who at one time worked as one of Paul’s assistants. [...] She does not know for certain if John and Paul were involved but she suspects it since to this day whenever John’s name is brought up he acts in her words ‘like a widow’ and he also addresses John in present tense. He would say things like, ‘John thinks that the music should be like this,’ and during his bitter divorce from Heather he was saying, ‘John says that this is getting nasty.’ Kind of creepy." (this one actually seems very intriguing because it sounds very similar to what Peter Cox said, about Paul often talking about John in the present tense, saying "John says.." or "John thinks...")

[hasnomoxxie]

So, if the Smile Dip Dog swaps with Bill, did he still destroy his own dimension? A dimension full of colorful talking animals? Because I’ve gotta say, that already sounds even sadder.

Right on the money boss!

Here's how I think it'd go!

First off the zodiac, this initially was the way that the beast was split and banished to the astral plane.

Now that this is here, I can list out all the main swaps hoho!

Dipper ⇆ Stan

Mabel ⇆ Ford

Wendy ⇆ Lazy Jane

Soos ⇆ Manly Dan

Abuelita ⇆ Tyler

Pacifica ⇆ Fiddleford

Gideon ⇆ Bud and mrs Gleeful (little villain couple to rival the stan duo)

Robbie ⇆ Preston

THE BEAST ⇆ BILL CYPHER

The pups are silly and playful in nature, opting to try and make things as brightly coloured and 'fun' as possible. Though this usually results in freakish abominations that do things that really shouldn't be done. Though they're not stupid, they know exactly what they're doing and how it effects others- It's mainly just for their own enjoyment.

After destroying their universe full to the brim of brightly coloured talking animals, 'The Beast' was split into halves and banished to the astral plane. This meant their reality warping abilities was whittled down to being intense illusions and hallucinations, however they typically tend to use it to try and restore their original look when they are seen by people- though that only works for a short time.

Pretty much anyone could theoretically see the dogs, either through extreme meditation or having a suspiciously high amount of sugar in your system. Safe to say, a food company having a suspicious amount of complaints from parents saying their kids are now 'unresponsive', 'babbling gibberish and mysteriously disappearing' or were 'seeing God and He's a Dog' was enough to get the entire line of candy shut down. Mabel was unlucky enough to stumble onto some smile dip during a late night work session and met the pups. They quickly bonded and the pups were leading Mabel to the weirdness left right and centre, with the end goal of opening a 'weirdness rift'.

A portal.

Safe to say, Mabel couldn't do this on her own. She's smart but not- dimensional science smart. So she called on the smartest person she knew, her twin brother Mason. At this time, Mason wasn't really doing as well as he could have, being attracted to the extraordinary he was prone to being the laughing stock of his university- but a solid breakthrough. Money wasn't an issue, especially when Mabel's old friend Pacifica was willing to help lend a hand and be on site (despite lying about her financial security in order to help her friends). So- the three of them set to building the portal.

Due to unknown circumstances, Pacifica leaves the project. When Mabel finally realises the true intention of the portal and tries to shut it down, Mason is reluctant to do this- fearing that it may be sabotaging his last chance at being recognised for his scientific works and being slightly jealous that Mabel found all of the weirdness instead of him. Either way, a small fight happens, ending with Mabels disappearance, leaving her scrapbooks behind.

The project failed and the pups still aren't free, but it's a matter of time before someone eventually sets them free

I'm litterally figuring out the timeline as I write but some things are set in stone. I'm just figuring out how to show it all off- I did get alot of outsite help for this too ^^

How would y'all feel about comics? or animations? What particular scenes? I feel like tackling this bit by bit would be the most effective way to go about it, especially for what the world is like in this flipped version.

I dunno this is my first time doing something like this umm, if this doesn't make sense lmk and I'll revise some stuff

umm

bazzinga, thanks for yer question ^^

[mysterycitrus]

rereading lpod just makes me sadder that so much of tims origin has been muddled through interpretation cause what do u MEAN the character who catalogued bruce’s grief and violence in the wake of jasons death to try and convince dick to return to robin is now a stalker who followed batman around for years. so much of tims character was driven by his own logical necessity. someone had to show dick grayson how bruce was spiralling. someone had to be robin again. someone had to hold things together.

retroactively changing things so tim was a turbo-stalker jason fan with actively abusive parents who hate him misses the point. he knew dick grayson before he knew batman. he only knew batman in the wake of jasons death. he did not view bruce’s actions as aspirational, and he did not know jason as robin, only as a ghost.

like ig him being an actual intense batman fan changes dynamics for storytelling purposes but foundationally tim drake was conceived to be an ordinary person who achieved the extraordinary. that’s the entire point!! im rattling the bars of enclosure again because this kid didn’t even care about photography before he chose to take action like come on

[ti-girl1226]

I see a lot of people who do draw Tim with his Joker Junior scars on his cheeks but I don’t think he would get cheek scars, I’m pretty sure (not 100% so feel free to correct me) the whole cheek scar smile was only Made in the Batman movies. Like I don’t recall it being apart of jokers origin but then again joker has like 20 origins. But I do know one thing that would definitely have scared Tim during his time as JJ and due to the torture from joker. The electricity.

See that is one off the main things Joker used and is shown the electrocution. And I don’t know if y’all have seen someone who has electricity pushed through them but it is going to leave a mark. If your looking for like reference for good electrocution scars I suggest looking up Fox from StarWars the clone wars fan art. Or just googling scars. Either way I think it would be a good and not so obvious scar because well if Jason saw those smile scars I think it would be a lot harder for Jason to hate Tim. Also with the burns I also think it would like fuck up Tim’s nerves right. Like maybe (and this would make it so much sadder) maybe Tim can’t feel a lot of the pain in his hand or arm so he’s not trying to hid his wounds really at all. It’s just he can’t feel it he can’t feel it due to the nerves in his body beign fired. Also I think this would also mean Tim can’t like see to well out of either both or one eye so let’s say something happens and his good eye gets injured and now he’s stuck with just blurry pictures unless your like an arms length away from him. Also his hearing might be messed up to. I don’t know fully if it would be because I literally am writing this with no real research before hand.