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tiny-brass-bot · 11 months ago

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Hi! I saw a post where you had a game made in godot with old school rendering, do you maybe have any tips on how to make godot render a game like that instead of its normal rendering method?

I'd be right happy to!

I'll try to make this concise lol, I always end up overexplaining and then getting lost in the weeds. Buckle up, it's a loooooot of little little things that all add up.

First off, you should decide which look you're going for. N64 and PS1, the two consoles I'm emulating, both had drastically different specs. (plus, there's plenty of other early 3D systems I've not even touched!)

The N64 had texture filtering (textures were interpolated aka "blurry"), it had floating point vertex precision (points moved correctly), it had perspective correction on its textures (no warping)

The PS1 had no texture filtering, no floating point vertex precision (vertices snap and pop around), affine texture mapping (textures warp weird). I also think the color space they operate in is different? Don't quote me

So you can go hard one way or another or pick and choose what you think looks good! We don't have anywhere near the hardware restrictions they did in the 90s so go nuts.

RESOLUTION

To get a low resolution window, I set the window size of the game and the window override size to different amounts

In green is actually how big the window is on my screen (4k monitor) and in red is the retro resolution I want. If you set the stretch mode correctly (an option a little further down the Window tab) then it'll make the pixels big

COLORS

Now the PS1 had the capability of showing you over 16 million different colors, but it could only display 50,000-150,000 at a time, so in order to get more fidelity out of it, the engineers implemented a dithering effect to better blend the otherwise sharp edges between colors.

I used this shader to achieve the dithering effect. If you don't understand shader languages, that's fine. There are a few different pre-built ones for looking like the PlayStation 1 out there.

TEXTURES

Textures for the PS1 could be as big as 256x256, but they were typically 128x128. And they would squish everything a model needed into there usually, at least with like player models and objects and such.

As mentioned, if you're not good with shader language don't worry. There are countless resources out there that people will either let you use or teach you how it works. But I'm gonna touch on it a little bit here.

PS1 textures had no pixel filtering, so you could see individual pixels.

This is what determines that in the shader code. If you want it to look like the N64 (blurry lol), the proper hint is "filter_linear". Note that it won't be 1:1 with N64, cuz they used bilinear filtering (which kinda sucks and causes weird quirks) whereas now you'll only find linear or trilinear filtering. It's a negligible difference imo.

PS1 textures also were only saved using 15 bit color. I'm told that Photoshop's "Posterize" filter set to 32 can achieve this, but don't use photoshop if you can help it. I use GIMP, and while a newer version might have a posterize filter, or there may be a plugin out there, my version doesn't so I cluge it a little.

Change your color mode to "indexed", set color dithering to how you like it, and the number of colors in the palette to a number to get a good result. Usually I'll do 16, 8, 32, but occasionally I'll cheat and do a non-multiple-of-8 teehee >:3c

You can change it back to RGB after to make further editing easier.

LIGHTING

N64 and PS1 both implemented vertex lighting, as opposed to the more modern and (now) ubiquitous per-pixel lighting. Godot as it is right now (4.2 i think?) claims it has vertex lighting that you can set as a shader property but they're lying and it doesn't work yet.

The old consoles could only handle like, 2 lights though so it doesn't matter much.

The real star of the show, and in my opinion the one thing that makes a game most look like the 90s is the inclusion of vertex colors.

By multiplying the color of your texture by its stored vertex color, you can do all the shading yourself!

Plus you can reuse textures like crazy just by coloring them differently. The N64 also made heavy use of vertex colors by forgoing a texture on models entirely and just painting them using verticies. The only textures on SM64 Mario are his eyes, stache, hat emblem, buttons, and sideburns. Everything else is done with vertex colors.

Here you can see this level from my Crock Land with no vertex coloring, with some of the vertex colors only, and then with the two combined.

Rare loved this. Look at how colorful that cliffside is in Jungle Japes. It makes it so much more interesting than just a brown cliff face. Plus you can see the vertex coloration instead of textures at work on DK and the Gnawty.

My go-to example for PS1 is always Spyro, what a gorgeous game. All of those colors there are not made by a light or an environment. They're hand painted babey! Also! With spyro! The skyboxes are actually just huge domes made up of vertices that are colored in different ways! That's how they can look so colorful and "hi-res".

There's plenty more you can do, like adding a CRT filter or a little bit of chromatic aberration which I haven't gotten into yet.

The way I've learned all this is just by being curious as to how the old consoles did their thing, and slowly accruing the knowledge over time. There's still infinite stuff I don't know too.

I hope that helped! And wasn't too longwinded or confusing! Like I said, it's all about piling up tons and tons of little things, small details, weird graphical quirks that really bring out the retro 3D feel for me.

And I didn't even get into the modeling side of things! That's an entirely different "color-of-the-sky"-sized post though.

I'd be happy to re-explain or explain more about any of this!

#indie game dev #game development #retro #low poly #ps1 #n64 #tutorial #godot engine #indie dev #lowpoly

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sgdlr-asdfghjkl · 6 months ago

Text

Link Click Musical update 170

(catching up on May performances yippee ✨part 1)

(housekeeping note in the end)

Links in replies: cq&wmh fighting for shoelaces, srb&ghx full encore bc I like their singing <3

The latest scoreboard summary (big thanks to @shimmeringweeds for keeping track of individual scores 💖):

May 14th: Teng Chunpeng, Du Guangyi, Qian Anqi

After the legendary 100+ points match, the producers said they need to make the rules of basketball event more strict. If you watched last highlights vid you can see tcp abandoned the choreo completely for sake of shooting hoops ><' So this time they played fairly and dgy won 😇

May 17th: Cao Muzhi, Du Guangyi, Qian Anqi

Seems like it was an ordinary, chill performance 🙏 Cao Muzhi won the match with 18:17 score ^^

Cao Muzhi pls never change 💗

May 18th, noon: Cai Qi, Wang Minhui, Deng Xianling

The fight for shoelaces! Cai Qi started it by untying both of Wang Minhui's shoes during sofa choreo ><' To get back at him wmh first pushed cq off the table. Then, when cq was distracted by rock, paper, scissors, wmh managed to untie his one shoe.

Match score was 1:2, wmh won 🌟

May 18th, night: Shu Rongbo, Guo Hongxu, Deng Xianling

Score was 6:8, ghx won ✨

These two sound so good together, they both have very powerful voices with surprising range ✨👌

Oh! During 'Pursuers of Light' srb went for the play fight with ghx. I thought it was cute since it's usually what Ji Xiaokun does :>

'Housekeeping' note:

If anyone was wondering why there were no musical updates for so long; aside from life stuff yadda yadda, main reason is that weibo had a bullshit update that blocks access to browsing user profiles if you don't have weibo account.

It has a roundabout but it's mundane and annoying (zooming out the website view, so you don't need to scroll to click newly posted pictures, then quickly opening the hq photo in another tab, before the login popup blocks you off) 💀 It's still working normally on mobile, but for sake of efficiency (translating captions and file management) I prefer desktop.

And making a weibo account isn't really an option since you need a chinese phone number to register and sometimes it requires you to send them ID. So yeah, no 🙃

BUT FEAR NOT I have the power of OCD and discord musical brainrot gang on my side 💪 My plan is to power through weibo's bs till 200th performance, to cover debuts of new actors and new lineups 🌟 but after that I'll have to quit/cut on the updates drastically 🙇‍♂️

I'll still keep track of performances and try to inform about any special happenings on twitter (it's faster and has bigger reach, hope you understand 🙇‍♂️).

I also have 600+ backlog pics, that are outdated, so maybe I'll use these later idk 🤔

OKAY BYEE

#link click #link click musical #shiguang dailiren #lu guang #source: weibo #qiao ling #cheng xiaoshi #teng chunpeng #du guangyi #qian anqi #cao muzhi #cai qi #wang minhui #deng xianling #shu rongbo #guo hongxu

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sylenth-l · 6 months ago

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Im sure you answered this question but I cant find it on the ask tab as theres a lot.

What kind of ink do you use or recommend as a starter?

I use a lot of different inks and have no specific brand recommendations, only that all of them are fountain pen inks. Maybe only for waterproof inks - I use Tramol inks for linework all the time, and I'm quite happy with them. It's not easy to find nice waterproof inks and in a wide range of colors too.

(Also I got a similar question just now too, so here's a link to that post as well)

If you just wanna try out inks as a medium and see some of its unique qualities, I think I can safely recommend one of these 4, whatever colour seems more appealing to you. All of them are very well-behaved, easy to get, have some great chromatography and reaction to bleach. The ornament on top is done with a bleach (any household liquid bleach will do) and the paper here is Baohong S8 grain satin.

If I had to pick a personal favorite, that would be Parker Quink Black hands down, it's my favorite ink of all time. I use it absolutely always, either in mixes or on its own.

BUT I must warn you, because I barely see it mentioned anywhere - Quink Black also has a washable version. It's written on the packaging with a small font. Washable Black is also a gorgeous color, but it's significantly lighter and warmer than the regular Quink Black, almost olive in tone.

And the regular ink also seems to have some little variation in colour - this is my second bottle of Quink Black, and the first one, which I bought a few years ago, is a bit bluer and has a little less chromatography. The difference isn't too drastic, but still noticeable.

Inks are also extremely sensitive to the paper used, much more than the watercolour or other similar mediums. Paper can change the ink's tone and behavior quite drastically. Here's an example of the very same ink swatched on 4 different papers:

So my suggestion is to test whatever paper you have in your possession to see what works the best for you.

I'm so cheering for you to play with some inks, it's fun even if you don't draw anything in particular. Just wet the paper, add a few drops of ink on it and see the magic happen!

#ask #art tips #inks #i wish more people used fountain pen inks for drawing #this medium seems to be so horrendously underrated 😩

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kivaember · 7 months ago

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Not sure if anyone's asked you this yet but PLEASE drop the walt/mich essay!!!

OKAY i went crazy and did an actual essay. im not joking this fucker is long. i'd open the read more in another tab, just to warn you.

ALSO ALSO! This was just me sitting down and rambling about things. It's a summarisation of my thoughts, and I pared it down since it was hitting 5k (it's about 4.4k words long lmao). If this essay has you thinking of specific questions and the like, feel free to ask and I'll try to answer them!

Now without further ado, my ramblings below:

THE WALTER/MICHIGAN SHIP ESSAY!

INTRO

That's right baby, I'm giving this an intro and everything. Alright, this essay is all about exploring and explaining my version of the Walter/Michigan ship using the characterisation I gave them for the APV verse. First I'm going to drill down into the individual characters, what makes them tick, their backstory, etc, before finally going into detail about how they mesh together as a ship and why they're both good yet terrible for each other.

THE WORLD LORE

To understand Michigan and Walter, we need to understand the type of world they were born into. Furlong Dynamics is a major powerhouse on the Jupiter colonies, owning several shipyards and carving a specific niche for themselves as the weapon-dealer for interstellar craft. They may not be as well-known or successful as Arquebus or Balam in the defence industry in terms of MTs or ACs, but if you're arming an interstellar craft, you sure as shit are going to use Furlong Dynamics weaponry.

Problem is in post-Fires age, that corner of the market is stagnating due to a lack of new interstellar craft being built. Prior to the discovery of Coral as an energy source, humanity had to do long-stasis and slow-walking their way across the galaxy, which meant trade and the like was incredibly limited between extrasolar colonies. With Coral, however, they were able to make tremendous technological shortcuts to create what they called the "C-Wave Drive". It functions a lot like the hypothetical Alcubierre Drive, with Coral producing the insane amounts of energy required and running the equally insane amounts of calculations needed to ensure the craft doesn't crush itself into a singularity (also, Coral has a very strange relationship with spacetime, the scientists found...). An added bonus as well was that these "C-Wave Drives" required no refuelling.

The interstellar craft needed crude fuel for sublight travel and other functionalities on the ship, but as for long-distance travel? There was no need to make pitstops or set aside cargo space for fuel, so many ships got used to just carrying a small amount that would allow them to travel as needed locally, as it would be easy to refuel when arriving at their destination as and when was needed.

Post-Fires changed this landscape drastically. Overnight, the interstellar craft market was rocked by the realisation that the previously thought limitless and abundant miracle substance that made FTL travel easy and convenient was now extremely finite had them all scrambling. The UEG openly seized every single galactic store of Coral from the corporations, citing "galactic security", and all orders for new interstellar craft - amongst other Coral technologies - instantly halted.

By Young Jupiter time (ten years post-Fires), Furlong Dynamics is beginning to feel the strain. They built their empire on focusing predominantly on interstellar craft - their designs, their weaponry, their engines - and their frantic R&D into solving the energy problem the Coral had shortcutted wasn't going very well. All that could be done was continue to maintain the existing ships that existed, as theoretically the C-Wave Drives could run indefinitely until some sort of mechanical failure happened due to wear and tear. As for new ships, the only ones being built were those utilising the old "slow-walker" engines, which meant bigger, bulkier, slower ships, with less room for ammunition fabrication and storage, and more for stasis compartment and fuel storage. Corporations that had specialised mostly in stasis technologies enjoyed an unexpected windfall, while those like Furlong Dynamic began to languish.

But as they say, shit rolls downhill. With the Corporations struggling to adjust to the Coral shortage and the UEG viciously hording the few galactic stores that remained, the working class found their workload increasing - heavily.

Factories that had benefited from the automation of Coral technologies found themselves in the position where they needed heavy reliance of human productive power. Yet they didn't want their productivity to lower thanks to human limitations, and neither did they want their profits to dent by either hiring too many workers, or paying the few higher wages to make up for the harder work. The few worker protections that had been steadily built up over the past few decades were immediately torn down and rescinded, and the working class were forced to work to maintain the corporations' and the UEG's productivity in their factories and fabrication facilities on basically starvation wages.

So, we have a world that has suffered from a fatal blow to the comfortable status quo. Furlong Dynamics is desperate to try and stem the bleed from their profits that the Coral shortage had started, and the boot has never been heavier on the working class's neck. It's an atmosphere that creates considerable tension within the various stratas of society, and the Jupiter colonies especially - known as the industrial powerhouse of the solar system - have become a bubbling pot. Any socialist talk or gatherings are viciously cracked down on by the corporate and government forces, and the workers are becoming increasingly frustrated and antagonised.

So it makes sense why Walter and Michigan initially have a bit of a rocky start, coming from these polar opposites of society. Michigan, the son of a Furlong Dynamic's director, and Walter, a Rubiconian refugee clawing his way out of the slums.

But alright, world context has been laid down, it's time for the character context. First up:

MICHIGAN - THE PRINCE WHO WANTS TO BE A PAUPER

So, Michigan. G1. Hell On Four Legs. Where did he come from, and who is he? To answer that, we need to look at his family... and Furlong Dynamics' leadership.

Every corporation is unique in its structure and the way it handles leadership. For example, Balam is well-known for its unusual meritocratic selection process for its CEO, though that hasn't exactly escaped the nepotism that pervades the upper echeleons of corporate society. Those with advantageous beginnings normally win the meritocratic race: they just have to work a little harder than most. Furlong Dynamics, however, are upfront about their leadership roles being hereditary.

Five families sit on the board for Furlong with one presiding as a CEO, a role that rotates every five years in a set pattern between the five families. This is a system that has worked for almost as long as Furlong Dynamics had existed (almost 300 years by this point), and needless to say that those five families were old money. They're the equivalent of an aristocracy in a hypercapitalistic galaxy.

One of these families is Rivera, which Michigan was born into as Gabriel Rivera. It was expected of him to succeed his father and sit on Furlong Dynamics' board as a director, so from a very young age he was prepped for this eventuality. His father dictated everything in his life, from his hobbies to what he wore and right down to what he ate. He was drilled in everything to do with business, politics and the interstellar industry, as his father was keen for Michigan to be ready and prepped for when he succeeded him, especially as Furlong Dynamics was entering a critical slump for the first time in its long history due to the Coral shortage. He didn't want his son to be the weak link.

Michigan despised this. He hated the people his father forced him to interact with, he hated the two-faced communication and backstabbing schemes he was encouraged to learn and inflict on others, he hated how boring yet stressful this kind of life was. Contrary to his personality later in life, Michigan was reclusive and anti-social when he was young - a direct result of his father's overbearing and relentless micromanaging - and when possible would hole himself up in his room and escape by watching classical films.

Classical films being... war films and action movies.

Though plenty of media had been lost when Earth suffered from ecological devastation, many had been salvaged throughout the centuries. It had begun from Michigan pilfering from his father's collection, something to put on display and boast about possessing rather than watching, and found himself hooked.

Brave soldiers heroically saving their comrades, taking charge of their destinies, denying fate, overcoming the odds, starting from the gutter and rising to the top from their own merits, making fire-forged friends that were genuine and not shallow transactional facades... this type of fantasy entranced Michigan, giving him a craving that he couldn't quite itch with his luxurious yet empty life. He desperately wished he had been born as some poor bastard whose only option was to join one of the corporate militaries, and distinguish himself by commiting acts of heroism, have people awed by him because of his own merits, and not because he is a Rivera and surrounded by brown-nosing sychophants.

It was a delusional dream driven by an intense desire to escape and forge a genuine connection with anyone, and after years of burying himself deeper and deeper in the propaganda belched out by these old action films (the message of 'war is hell' from the more solemn ones flying miles above his head), Michigan decided: he was going to disown himself and become an MT pilot.

Which he managed. To cut a long story short, Gabriel Rivera became just Michigan, the Rivera name used sparingly and only for legal reasons. He left behind the comfortable executive life to start at the very bottom of the pilot ranks, working his way up with grit and determination, denying any advantages or opportunities that came his way due to his blood or name. He wanted to emulate those heroes that he had watched in those films, he wanted to start with nothing and become something, all with his own efforts, and leave behind the Rivera name and reputation for good.

He started acting more like those gunslinger heroes, loud voice, boisterous personality, easy-going nature and possessing a masculine charm. He's always seeking that big, heroic event, that euphoric moment of victory and achieving the impossible against the odds... but he never really found it. Even after abandoning Furlong Dynamics entirely to jump ship to Balam, he realised that it was just more of the same, his battles against downtrodden workers protesting against their inhumane treatment, or furthering corporate interests over some useless moon in the middle of nowhere. There was no glory or higher purpose - just the company's bottom line.

Michigan started his piloting career as a rich kid craving adventure, naive to the true gritty nature of the galaxy. After decades of piloting under his belt and with an intimiate insight on both sides of the corporate ladder - both at the bottom and the top - to say Michigan was jaded by the time he landed on Rubicon would be an understatement.

He learned that there's no such thing as big damn heroes in this shitty galaxy. All the titles and medals he earned were just window dressings to whatever shitty advertisement his corporate master touted to bolster its reputation or sales. He hated his "Hero of Jupiter" title, and he took great pleasure in launching his "medals" off a cliff and into the ocean like they were frisbees. He hated that in the end his father had been right, that becoming a pilot wouldn't let him run away from the corporate lifestyle, it'd just throw him down to the very bottom and get him trampled

In short, Michigan's a man who tried to forge his own destiny by following a childish dream. His naivety resulted in him being trapped in a life that only had one escape - crawling back to his father and retaking the name Gabriel Rivera - and he viewed that worse than being a corporate attack dog with no real freedom. He'd rather die in some shitty hole in a random ditch somewhere over some pointless resource that meant nothing to him. Was it pride by that point, or stubbornness? He really didn't know.

He just knew that he was just another guy suckered in by the corporations' glitzy and false promises.

WALTER - THE AVENGER WHO KNOWS HE'S DIGGING A GRAVE FOR MILLIONS

Walter, meanwhile, was born to a privileged family of a different sort.

A good few decades before the Fires, Rubicon had done the unthinkable in human history: it had broken away from the UEG and declared independence, becoming a self-sustaining colony with a distinct identity - and able to negotiate with the fuming UEG on equal footing due to its sole access to Coral and its development of the C-weapons. The UEG couldn't take Rubicon or its resources by force (though it surely contemplated it from time to time), and so begrudgingly dealt with them as a peer, legitimising Rubicon as an independent colony and allowing it to forge its own desinty on the galactic stage.

While UEG and its many colonies functioned as a hypercapitalist ogligarchy, Rubicon became a technocracy, with the Rubicon Research Institute having considerable sway over the Rubiconian central government - to the point where it was understood that despite the elected 'president', it really was the Institute that was in charge. This gave rise to the 'intellectual elite', the scientists and academics who ran the Institute - the class that Walter belonged to before the Fires.

His parents were both scientists that worked on the Xylem and lived on-site. They were passionate about their work with the Coral and highly respected within their community, but while they clearly loved Walter, he was always second priority to their research and ambitions. Walter was the only child growing up in the labs (at least, the only one that wasn't a test subject of some kind), and only ever interacted with adults - all of whom were scientists or the security staff. He had never left the Xylem either, his concept of the 'outside world' being the small, sanitised courtyard with the lone tree, and the street he could see past the bars of the labratory's secure and gated exit. While he had some freedom of movement within the facility, there were areas he was barred from entering due to sensitive experiments, or to minimise his interaction with detained test subjects.

As a result, Walter became scarily self-sufficient from a young age, and came across as taciturn or emotionally stunted. He spoke like an adult but struggled to navigate social situations in general, unable to sugarcoat his words and coming across as rude or abrasive when speaking to others. While he found himself occasionally curious about interacting with people who weren't harried scientists that barely tolerated his prolonged presence, Walter genuinely found himself unbothered about his isolation. He was lonely, yes, but he occupied himself well enough, and filled the long stretches of time in furthering his education - determined to become a scientist like his parents and continuing on their work, as what was expected of him.

Then his father began the augmentations and everything went terribly wrong.

His mother volunteered to be Gen Zero, the prototype used to present to the Institute to have the augmentation project greenlighted. Initially, things went well. His mother suffered no significant drawbacks, and demonstrated an incredible boost in mental acuity and calculation power that current neural implants couldn't even begin to compare to. Once the Gen Ones were well underway, however, with a significant death rate at that, his mother began to rapidly degrade, physically and mentally. Walter's last memory of his mother was her unable to recognise him and talking to people who weren't there, knowing that it was the Coral's fault somehow.

His father was driven to perfect the augmentations to ensure his wife's sacrifice wasn't in vain. In Walter's words, he began a carnival of horrors within his labs, killing and mutiliating hundreds within his labs in his pursuit of the refining the augmentation process, with the Institute pumping unlimited resources, funding and test subjects into the project. The glimpse of the future Gen Zero showed them had them eager to achieve that perfection, no matter how many bodies they had to stack up.

It disgusted Walter. While he had never been emotionally close with his parents, he had still respected them, and to see his mother reduced to a crazed husk of herself before dying and his father turning into a monster, destroyed the pedastal he'd put them on. Walter found himself fostering a near irrational hatred for the Coral, rationalising that none of this would've happened if Coral had never been discovered - if it had never existed. He wished, vehemently, for it to disappear.

He got his wish with the Fires.

While the augmentations had made Walter view the Coral with a negative lens, seeing the damage it could do in the wrong hands, the Fires cinched it as a traumatic avatar of destruction in Walter's mind. The Coral was too dangerous to exist in their galaxy, not with how greedy humans could be, and blind to the dangers in pursuit of power. But his motivations weren't noble: he absolutely despised the legacy it represented, how he couldn't hear the word 'Coral' without thinking of his father, his mother, and how everything was robbed from him. It seeded in him an obsession, a hateful, vengeful obsession, because focusing on that, on gunning for a tangible entity that you've vowed to destroy, is far easier to stomach than processing the fact that your life was utterly ruined by selfish ambitions and a freak accident.

Overnight Walter went from part of the very prestigious intellectual elite on Rubicon, to a penniless refugee on one of Jupiter's colonies: Ganymede. It was a shock to the system to find himself in a world where food wasn't simply there whenever he desired it, that shelter wasn't a given, and that clinical cleanliness was a privilege, not a right. He fortunately had Carla with him, though, and while the first few years were rocky, they managed to find their footing by creating a scrapping service in the Ganymede slums, Carla using her previous experience in R&D at the Institute, and Walter his education, to repurpose old tech and mechs or salvage somewhat valuable tech to sell on.

From there, they began to plot, to focus their shared hatred and distrust of the Coral to really make sure it was gone for good, that it wouldn't come back. In the filthy slums beneath Ganymede, with a promise made between two emotionally exhausted yet furious Rubiconian refugees, Overseer was born.

But that's its own story.

Walter's endless conga line of misfortune did well to harden him and make him adaptable to unpleasant surprises. He always expects shit to go wrong at the most inconvenient times, he doesn't trust a single person to do the right thing even if he's known them for years (Carla, who all but raised him, he only trusts to a certain extent), and he realised how hypocritical most people could be. Though he was born as one of the intellectual elite, witnessing and experiencing first hand the oppression and indignity the working class suffered in UEG territories genuinely sickened him - and cemented in his mind that this galaxy couldn't be trusted with the Coral at all.

He had to destroy it for good. He had to make sure it could never come back and hurt anyone else. He had to erase every drop of legacy his shit-for-brains father had built and let history bury him forever. Walter, for all of his outwardly cold and emotionless masks, feels deeply and intently, and all of it is bitter rage.

Walter just doesn't know how to process his emotions well - he was never taught, and he missed those vital milestones with his lonely childhood, locked away in an ivory tower filled with nothing but scientists and test subjects. He feels so much over his father, the Fires, the Coral, but has no idea how to sort through it all. So he stuffs it away. He keeps his gaze fixed on the horizon where his mission to destroy the Coral hangs. He tells himself that once he destroys it for good, it'll all go away: these incomprehensible, heavy and painful emotions. The source of them all will be gone.

Imagine that: condeming millions to death because of crippling, unaddressed daddy issues.

THE SHIP ITSELF

Right, with all that context given, onto the part people really care about: so, why does the Walter/Michigan ship pair well? Or at least, why does APV Walter/Michigan pair well.

Michigan's POV:

From Michigan's side, he's fascinated with Walter. Everything about him just doesn't make sense. He's a 'sewer rat', a working class drone that managed to claw their way out of the muck and elevate his social standing through stubborn grit and determination - but his demeanour belies that. Walter demonstrates a level of education and sophistication that the working class just don't have. Michigan has grown up on Ganymede, and despite the high-ranking executives living in their gated communities and busying themselves with the day-to-day running of their businesses, they do keep an eye on what the working class are up to.

The corporations have perfected subjugation and propaganda to an artform. They can only achieve this if they know their target audience. Michigan knows, as any self-respecting Rivera knows, how the working class tick, their current worries and desires, the statistical trends of their few purchases and which style of propaganda they're most receptive to. Walter fits none of the established norms for Ganymede working class - he doesn't even have a recognisable Jupiter colony accent - so he already presents himself as an interesting puzzle for Michigan to break down.

There's also some genuine respect there too. Michigan acknowledges that Water had to work hard to get where he was, and he appreciates that Walter doesn't mince his words or beat around the bush. He's blunt, direct and isn't in the business of brown-nosing or fawning to ingratiate himself. You always knew where you stood with Walter, or so Michigan felt, and admittedly, Walter reminded him a lot of a certain character achetype in his precious films: the underdog, the guy you ended up rooting for just because he worked so fucking hard for what he wanted.

So, to Michigan, Walter's interesting, he's mysterious, and he's a representation of what Michigan wanted for himself. He wants to be like Walter: a poor as shit refugee making something of himself, with a whole future to distinguish himself and build his own reputation, to forge himself in fire! Michigan is mildly envious, but thinks as well that if he sticks close to him, he'll be able to live vicariously through him, to get a taste of dream he really wanted to achieve...

And because he's so fascinated with Walter, he starts to learn all of his tics and mannerisms too. He begins to understand the minute shifts of Walter's expressions, what he leaves unsaid and knowing when Walter is feeling but just doesn't know how to express or word himself. Michigan is the more emotionally intelligent of the two, and very perceptive despite how he acts. Combined with his easy-going nature and his respect for Walter's hardworking nature and competency, this helped him break through a few of Walter's walls - despite Walter doing his best to rebuild them as fast as possible.

Not to say they don't butt heads: they butt heads a lot. Arguing is their favourite pasttime. They challenge each other, and Michigan knows that he can say whatever and Walter can dish it out right back. Walter doesn't give a shit about any potential ties Michigan may have to the Rivera family - he just gives a shit about Michigan waking him up at 6am and asking him to go running with him. He snaps at him, argues with him, insults him... he treats him as Michigan, and this is what Michigan cares about the most.

Walter's POV:

Meanwhile, Walter's feelings towards Michigan are very complicated. He's irritated by what he sees as Michigan's nosiness towards his private affairs, and he doesn't appreciate him trying to figure him out. Mostly because he doesn't want him figuring out his true identity. Walter wanted to sever any and all ties between him and his father's legacy, and he and Carla took great pains to have no one realise that he was the famous Dr Kohler's son. And the disowned heir of the Rivera family? Definitely in the best position to connect the dots.

But Michigan's also the first person to ever just... treat him normally and roll with his verbal punches. People are usually scared away by Walter's cold attitude and sharp words, but Michigan gave as good as he got, and always shrugged off Walter's meaner comments. It left Walter at a bit of a loss, and after a while he slowly desensitised to Michigan's presence. He rationalised that it's just pointless wasting energy trying to chase off Michigan, but the fact was he... ended up liking his company. He had no idea socialising could be so enjoyable, once you learned to tolerate their more aggravating parts.

There's also a colder and more pragmatic side too: Michigan is useful to him, as a son of an executive, disgraced or not. Walter is aware enough to acknowledge that a small chunk of his tolerance is proportional to Michigan's use for him, but in his mind he sees it as an expected part of their relationship. It's transactional, what they share (or so he tells himself). He offers entertainment to Michigan, who in turns offers the same - and lets Walter take advantage of the few perks being "friends" with an executive's son offers.

He tells himself he can't get attached - he has his mission after all - but by this point Walter's good at ignoring his feelings and burying himself under six feet of concrete denial. He clings to the rationalisation that they're just "friends with benefits" for years, that from the beginning they were only making use of each other - there wasn't really anything there. Even to him that sounded hollow when he finally cut ties and left, to pursue his hopeless and doomed mission. He never really stopped thinking about Michigan, the what-ifs.

He hated it.

...

Also they both share a hatred of their respective fathers, so they Get That. They're part of the Dads Suck club.

CONCLUSION

So basically........ they're gay, your honour.

#armored core #armored core 6 #handler walter #g1 michigan #ship essay #i finally wrote it...#i don't write essays often but this was kinda fun to do #even if just to put my thoughts down or something #welp i hope people enjoy uwu

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trainsinanime · 1 year ago

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tell me about french train headlights

They're all the same! Or at least they were, from the mid-1950s to about the early 1990s. They all look like this:

Okay, some context for why I find this interesting. Suppose you see a picture of a train, especially one made in the second half of the 20th century, and you want to know where the train is from. The key trick to telling this at a glance is having a bit of autism, but more specifically, the headlights.

In Europe, all major and many minor countries used to have their own government-owned railroad and their own train-building industry, which would build trains to the specifications of their railroad company. There has always been some exporting going on, but for the most part, the trains you'd find in Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria and so on would be all completely different. This has changed drastically over the past 20ish years.

One thing about this old model is that railroad companies would standardise certain parts within their fleets, especially small parts that need servicing and replacing every now and then. It saves on how many different types of spare parts you need to have.

Headlights are the most notable among these by far: Every train needs to have some of them. All trains have basically the same requirements for their headlights, no matter how fast or slow or whatever they are. Before LEDs, you needed to service the headlights regularly to replace the light bulbs. Also they are glass parts at the front of a fast moving vehicle, they can get damaged, so spare parts logistics are an issue. And most importantly, we as railfans can easily see them. So you get something like this:

As a result, basically all railroad companies in post-war Europe standardised their head- and taillights for all or most of their trains. And all of them had completely different ideas. Fundamentally, all of them agreed that you need white headlights and red taillights, and since modern trains are easily reversible, you put both of them next to each other.

But do you make the white and red lights the same size (West Germany, Netherlands) or different sizes (Austria, East Germany)? Are they separate things, or do you combine them into one assembly (UK, Switzerland)? Do you make them anything approaching normal sized or gigantic (Poland)? Maybe I'll do an overview post over these later, but I don't have enough pictures in my library right now and I'd have to scour Wikipedia for them later.

The French headlight design shown here is in many ways just one of many, but also interesting in its own right: The actual lenses for red and white are the same size, but the white headlight gets this huge lens assembly that makes it look much more prominent. You can clearly see that different French designers had very different ideas about whether you align the center-lines (most of them), or the bottom of the lens assembly. Why is the headlight lens so big, and what are the metal tabs around the bottom half of the circle? I have no clue. My guess is to put some coloured glass panes in, but I have no idea why you'd need that. Also, note that the red taillight classically has a fresnel lens, that's unique as far as I can tell.

I've taken all these pictures in the Cité du Train, the big central French railroad museum in Mulhouse. (That's why I was posting about traveling to Basel early this weekend. Mulhouse is actually really close to Basel, and going via Switzerland is the most practical—and most scenic—route for me) The oldest locomotive I could find with these headlights was CC-7107:

During high speed trails in the early 1950s, this locomotive reached a speed of 326 km/h (203 mph). That made it only second best behind the other locomotive at the trials, BB-9004:

This one reached 331 km/h (206 mph), a world record that would not be beaten for a long time. The difference was nothing to do with technical performance. Instead, both locomotives melted their pantograph, the part on top that touches the overhead line to get power, at around 320 km/h (200 mph). BB-9004 had a second one that it could lift up to continue accelerating, while CC-7107 only had the one. For a long time, SNCF pretended that both locomotives had reached 331 km/h, to protect the reputation of both manufacturers.

What's notable for our purposes is that BB-9004 has different headlights. As far as I can tell, these seem to be an earlier standard design, also found e.g. on the CC-65001 diesel locomotive:

And even on steam locomotives, like this class 141 R:

So CC-7107 lost on the high speed world record, but it was the way of the future when it came to headlights. These headlights then started cropping up everywhere. From the detail pictures I've shown you above, we have e.g. Le Petit Gris (the small grey one, an EMU for suburban services in Paris):

A CC-6500, dressed up with a nameplate for the express train it was hauling. Fun fact: One locomotive of this type (not this one) was used in the US for a while, as Amtrak was trying out new electric locomotives to use. They weren't happy with it and bought a Swedish one instead, mostly because this locomotive's suspension did not work well with the American track quality.

A Z 2200, a diesel railcar for rural lines designed to be cheap first, second and third.

A BB-26000, which feels altogether way to new to be in this museum.

It's from the 1980s, so I guess the first are reaching retirement age. But at the same time: The train I took from Basel to Mulhouse was still pulled by one of these BB-26000.

Other favourites include the BB-25600 with its rare diagonal light arrangement:

Or the really terribly lit gas turbine train RTG, which puts the headlight on stalks:

Fun fact: Amtrak did end up buying a few these. They didn't use the same white headlights (although they did use the same stalks), but they did use the same fresnel lens red taillights.

And the headlights went all the way up to the top. To the TGV. Only these headlights aren't very aerodynamic, so for their high-speed train, SNCF decided to cover them up.

As far as I can tell, SNCF used these headlights in the TGVs up to the Réseau series, including the Eurostar. That meant that they're also found, though behind faded glass, on the TGV Atlantique 325 in the outdoor area. Number 325 is notable because it was involved in another high speed trial, and reached 515.3 km/h (320.3 mph) on May 18th, 1990.

That was a world record, of course; in fact only the French ever exceeded 500 km/h on conventional railroads. So these headlights did get their world record after all. They didn't get to keep it for long, though. In 2007, a newer TGV reached 574.8 km/h (357.2 mph). That one is still in service, though, and it was equipped with newer LED headlights. I think it's highly unlikely that this record will be broken anytime soon, but if anyone does, I wouldn't be surprised if it were the French again, they like that sort of stuff.

Some final odds an ends with the headlights, though: Here's CC-40101, which isn't actually relevant, I just like the way it looks.

Designed for service in France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, with four different voltages and four different train control systems, and that with mid-1960s technology. It wasn't quite as successful as hoped, and in service it only ever reached Belgium, but still, look at that design. The front is supposed to evoke an athlete, a sprinter about to start, but this type of design has instead become known as "Nez cassé", broken nose.

BB-9291 shows a rare early version without red tail lights at all. Someone thought they were saving money.

This small work train has a free-standing version of the headlight, which shows us how deep it really is. Apparently, the French headlight is actually not that deep, and isn't that a nice summary for this post?

And a personal favourite of mine, I even bought a T-Shirt with it on it, the Z 600:

The design, in particular the side windows (recessed instead of flush, no outside visible gasket) says Swiss, the headlight and SNCF logo says French, it's narrow gauge and it has a third rail to provide power. Just all around a weird little train, for the weird little line known as the Mont-Blanc Express from France via Switzerland to the bottom of the Mont-Blanc mountain. The train was built in Switzerland, experts of building small trains for mountains, but for the French part of that rail line, so it got French headlights.

Headlights with exporting is a fun topic in its own right. Do you keep the headlights from the country of origin, or demand your own? You will find both approaches. Both Portugal and the Netherlands bought very similar electric locomotives from France. Portugal has French headlights, the Netherlands insisted on (less interesting) dutch ones.

These days, of course, you will still find these headlights, but they're getting rarer. They stopped being used in new trains around the mid-1990s. What's more, the ones you do find, like on this MI-84 in Paris, probably don't have the fresnel lens taillight anymore. Instead, those were replaced with LEDs.

LED lights for railroads make a lot of sense. They last forever and require less power. And since most railroads have standardised their head- and taillights, you just need to design one replacement light for most of France, and then keep building that one until SNCF stops giving you money.

(Since we're showing a picture from Paris, a quick note: These headlights were never used on passenger-carrying trains for the Paris metro. However, some work trains do have them.)

These days, standard headlights are completely gone. LEDs don't need a lot of replacing, and they give you much more freedom to do things like shapes and patterns and designs. Also, we don't have the "one country, one railroad, one rail industry" pattern anymore. Instead now we have multi-national rail conglomerates. Alstom is technically French, but arguably just as much German, ever since they bought Bombardier's rail division, nominally Canadian. Stadler is Swiss, except for the stuff they build in Germany or Poland or Belarus or Hungary or…, and some of their most interesting products right now are built and designed in Spain.

The end result of that is this:

That's a company I saw at a trade fair (Innotrans, Berlin, 2022) that makes LED train headlights, and specifically they make… all of them? Okay, I'm exaggerating, but this is a great picture to drive a European rail fan insane as they try to assign the different headlights to different trains. You get Stuttgart trams, German (and Turkish) high speed trains, lots and lots of Swiss stuff. Nothing specifically French that I could tell, but at least the German high speed train regularly travels to Paris.

The standard headlights, or their LED variants, were still in use for work trains until fairly recently. There are not that many companies that make rail grinders or ballast tampers, and those tend to just use whatever headlight their customer tells them to. But these days they go for shaped LED headlights as well, because they're just better, and because thanks to European standardisation, a headlight approved in one country can (generally) be used in all European countries.

(All pictures © me, feel free to use them under CC-BY-SA 3.0 DE if you want)

#trains #railroads #sncf #france #alstom #alsthom

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annakie · 2 months ago

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Fixing The House Part Nine: Within a Room, Somewhere.

Part One: I Do Not, In Fact, Have the Power

Part Two: Let’s Spend Lots of Money!

Part Three: All These Things That I’ve Done

Part Four: I Really Want to Stay At My House

A little interlude.

Part Five: Power Down

Part Six: You Will Leave Some Paint

Part Seven: Backwards to go Forwards

Part Eight: Master of Bathrooms

Another update? Already?

Yeah, we are really starting to close in on the end now. Probably 2 more days of Arturo's time and my checklist of what's left will be all checked off. I have slightly mixed emotions about that, but we'll get there! Last time, I posted in extreme depth about the master bathroom. I promised an update on that when the last two things happened, and they did! So we'll start with that, then I think we're just going to do all three of the bedrooms (or what should be bedrooms) because a lot of what happened in these three rooms was a lot the same.

MASTER BATH FINAL UPDATE

First, art prints came in so I did, after a mere twelve years, decorate the medicine cabinets with art. It was more annoying to get them in than I was hoping for but both bathrooms art looks perfect so I'm happy with the results.

Just a lil Monet in pretty complementary green and brown.

And, the big thing was, the new window was put in today!!

So one of the reasons it took so long was Arturo was trying to get the window without bars. But he went to several places that said they had the right window without bars but all of them were either in a salmon color and we definitely wanted white, or they just lied. This morning he sent me a picture of a window with bars and I was just like "Get it, I just want the new window DONE!"

Soooo....

Oh hey, a window you can see out of? Amazing. Honestly looks great and I'm happy with it. They painted the entire windowsill white, which I didn't love but I get why. I might try re-painting it to cream later, though. Or that might look terrible. :p

So yeah, now the master bathroom is completely done. No items on the checklist. First room to earn that honor!

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

THE MASTER BEDROOM

Now, lets move on to the bedrooms, starting with the master bedroom.

It's a bedroom. There's almost never exciting pictures of a bedroom. But there's a couple of pre-move-in pics?

Along with a very "I have little money and this is the only shit I own and I just moved in" type pic at the top."

And yeah that is the bedroom suite I drastically overpaid for in these pics.

It was better a year later.

Big regret though forever is going to be keeping those ugly green blinds up for 21 years. It was so easy to change those a couple of months ago? I mean Jorge did it, not me, but I both could and should have. They were not good at keeping light out in addition to their uglyness and many had broken tabs that had to be repaired.

The color was Dusty Apricot in there for 21 years, pretty cozy and tbh I was pretty happy with it the entire time. Almost didn't change it when it came time this year.

Probably could dig up some pics of when it had the white carpet from 2009 to 2019 but... that's OK. Much more pleasant memories when I got the laminate put in. Here, I had yet to put most stuff back into the room, I was just so damn happy to not have carpet anymore.

So for the renovation, obviously getting the sliding glass door replaced was definitely the biggest and most important part. I cannot tell you how much better life is with that new door. The best thing is that it dampens sound so much better. Like I could hear every dog in a block radius barking before it felt like. Now, if I have my white noise machine going, I don't even hear my next door neighbor's dog barking. They're very courteous about not letting the dog bark a long time usually, anyway. Can't say the same for the across the alley neighbors. It's just such a relief. And not to mention of course the temperature control, which I did last time.

I would wake up all the time to dogs barking. I already posted at length in part six about the new door with pics but I just want to reiterate how much I love that damn door for so many reasons. Looks, the fact that it's so much quieter AND makes everything else quieter, and temperature control. Truly if I could go back and make myself do ONE THING years ago instead of now, it would probably be that door.

I also posted in part six about the ceiling fans, and hell yeah I still love the fan.

And THEN I posted before that in the Interlude about the wall color, a bit.

That painting hangs over my bed and it means so much to me. I've probably posted about it somewhere before, but when I got my new job in 2012, they also hired a new office manager, Mary, at about the same time as me and we got along great. We both kind of hinted at our bosses that the office was ugly and unwelcoming to clients and had a lot of wasted space.

So here's a post about what we did together, me and Mary, with some pics but not of the painting, which is one of the things we bought to liven up the office. We saw it, both LOVED IT, and bought it. It hung up behind the front desk, it was the first thing you saw when walking in the front door, every day until late 2017 when the company got bought out and things went to shit.

I've talked about that job a lot, both when I had it and after, here on tumblr and how much I LOVED it there, so many of us who worked there did. It was a great place to work and all of us in IT and Development and a handful of others (like Mary) became really close work-friends. It was a special place that was still a job and we didn't do the "We're a family!" bullshit there, but it was like, a great job. I set up a Discord when things went south and it's still active. My Sunday Night D&D game started at that job and we're still playing. And there are ten of us from there who work at the place I work now because we try to stick together. (There are other clumps of people together at other jobs, too.)

Mary and I had a joking rivalry about who was going to be the first one to steal THE PAINTING and hang it up in our own homes.

Mary left the company (along with everyone else) not too long into things Going to Shit. And not long after the new company announced we would be moving to a different office. They more or less let those of us who were left take whatever we wanted, and there's stuff to talk about there, but that day I walked out with The Painting. I think at one point someone from the new company asked what happened to it since they liked it and I just played dumb. In my head I was playing no fucking way I'm telling you it's in my house.

So yeah, it got hung up over my bed not long after and so when it was time to decide to repaint the master bedroom, the bedroom would get painted FOR The Painting.

I pulled the main orange, called Chivalry Copper (have I mentioned I like copper yet?) straight out of the painting, as shown above. And knowing it was a crazy color to paint an entire bedroom, Sweet Orange, the top color on that card, was for the other three walls.

It turns out that Sweet Orange isn't that different than Dusty Apricot, lol. A bit lighter, slightly less pink, but pretty close.

Honestly I'm well aware that the colors here, or in any room, aren't for everyone, and this is a particularly crazy choice for a master bedroom, but I love it.

So another decision that happened was... all of the trim getting painted white. You can see in the original pre-move-in pics that allt he trim had been like a pinkish cream color. I painted it all the cream that's in the master bathroom I talked about last time, but because of a chain of decisions, it only made sense to re-do all trim and doors just pure white. It was a good decision.

You can also see here, compared to the pic right above it, that I got a new vent cover. All vent covers were replaced. They were all rusty and had been painted over several times and pretty gross, and now they look fantastic.

Also in this pic is the new closet door hardware. Every closet got the same oil-rubbed bronze door handles, instead of gold handles from the 1960's. Just bringing even the little details up to the modern. Oil-rubbed bronze is basically black and copper and.. something something... me and copper.

All of the closet doors had ISSUES before, I think there was one of five bedroom doors that moved easily and stayed on the track. Literally just today, Arturo fixed all of the closet doors in the house so they all work as intended.

And honestly I thought a few days ago how the closet doors were like an analogy for this house as a whole. Technically, they worked, mostly, but they were all a little bit shitty, each in their own way. They had been fixed up OK a long time ago and just got a little bit worse and a little bit worse and were dated but now not in a super obvious way anymore. But then a fresh coat of paint, replacing the visual with a more modern handle and a little elbow grease from Arturo and voila... still the same door... just way freaking better!

I think I mentioned this before, but every interior door handle ALSO got changed out also to oil-rubbed bronze handles, ten doors in total. Both of these things were Arturo suggestions that I absolutely had not thought about and when he was like "Uh, hey, you going to put in new doorknobs?" I basically smacked myself in the head. Another thing I just never thought about.

I even swapped out four of the doorknobs myself. I would have done more but I couldn't get the old handles off myself, lol.

There's a better version of this picture but it doesn't have Fry in it, so is it actually better? No.

In the master this door was rebalanced so it didn't automatically close today, I didn't even ask Arturo for that, it was just driving HIM crazy so he did it, lol.

That full-length mirror is also new, I never had one in the house and wanted one! Annnnd every door also got a doorstop, also in Oil-rubbed bronze. Many doors didn't have them before.

My bedroom isn't exactly picture-ready-perfect yet, but I'm OK with it.

Along this wall, a few new things. First, the speakers. Those used to be in the office, but my dad gave me new speakers a few months ago.

I bought this little receiver, $35, yeah it's a bad picture, sorry, after the speakers were mounted I connected them to that, and it has bluetooth so I can run music from my phone to the bedroom easily. Sounds amazing. I used to sleep with a little Soundcore 3 bluetooth speaker, which TBH, I would highly recommend if you're in the market for a little bluetooth speaker, it is great. But having two big speakers in the bedroom, even better.

Also in that pic, I painted a little bookshelf the copper color. It'd been in rough shape looks-wise since I acquired it like 25 years ago, and finally it looks cute.

The little white table near the door is brand new, just put it together last night. It holds my white noise machine. I didn't like it so close to my head on the nighttand. Already made the little drawer on that table a junk drawer, but at least my dresser is mostly clutter free. Mostly. There's more work to do.

Still on order is a new white bookshelf that has a cabinet at the bottom, should be here Friday. Going to put it in that far corner and the outside boys' Meow Mix will be going in there, along with the towels for the master bath, to get the rest of the bath clutter out and put somewhere logical. May need to move that TAH poster or the Ninja poster. Plus, I need a little more book storage.

My house has a serious lack of storage and one of the things you'll see in a few places is that I'm working on fixing that as I can.

Also, hey! Ugly green blinds are GONE. Instead, a heavy blackout curtain!

I'm aware that dark grey isn't exactly the most matching color for the room but tbh, that I don't care about. The important thing to me was that the curtain actually blacked out light so I could have a very dark bedroom at any point I was trying to sleep in it. Thinking maybe I should have gone with dark brown instead, but maybe I'll make that change later.

I have a memory foam mattress that doesn't have a cooling component (which, at some point when I have money again I may fix) so generally I just sleep with a sheet until it gets actually cold. Too hot for anything else.

And Fry and Pemily of course have their beds on my bed. Fry uses his a lot. Pemily... only when it's cold, otherwise she just sleeps on the bed directly.

I had Arturo install SIX outlets (instead of just two) next to the bed so I can charge ALL THE THINGS. Two are the bedside lamp and the reading lamp above, though. Not all of these things are ever all in use at the same time. I just have two USBC cords, a MicroUSB, my Fitbit charger and... something else I'm forgetting here.

Just a little quality of life change so I don't have to have a power strip under the table. Way more organized this way.

I already made a note after seeing this to get Arturo to fix the drywall here.

Okay so that's the Master Bedroom! I'm so much happier with it now!

----

Since I talked about all of that stuff there, doing the other two rooms will be much quicker.

But also... I'm tired and want to do something else now, so I'm going to wrap this up and next time we'll talk about the Guest Room and Living room!

#personal post tag thingy #fixing the house #fixing my house

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soir-rouges-esprit · 3 months ago

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For those who wonder what I mean by the custom theme not working in reply, it's because the mobile version sometimes glitches out and doesn't show post, so I typically tell them to access my blog via the site instead.

It also has a custom theme (As previously stated) that matches more my color scheme, it is just a template, not mine, but if you're having issues seeing new posts or just curious of what my blog looks like with the custom theme, just click the link above and see for yourself!

Thanks for all the DM's here or on discord asking questions and showing general interest in my life/story. Super appreciated it and thanks a million, I hope you'll stay tuned!

More to come soon, before the end of the month, just have some extra editing to do, then it's formatting and then posting! My life has drastically changed in the past couple months so sorry for the delay, I also have to live the story being told so ... takes time lol. But thank you everyone on Discord and especially with the Server up in running. Please check the Q/A section for any quick asks, I'll try and answer as soon as possible.

We also have the new music tab for those wanting to share music, possibly get it featured in a post, if I find it suits the post well.

Anyways love yah and thanks!

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cervidaedalus · 1 year ago

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Long time "popular blog" users are the backbone of this website and produce or spread about 50-60% of the content I'd wager. Drastic changes that run them off the platform will be a death sentence for Tumblr. If a new user follows even one large blog, they have a wealth of content to follow other blogs from the reblogs. The problem- from what people have told me when I've recommended Tumblr- is that they're coming from completely different platforms where they ARE spoonfed content by algorithms and where tagging doesn't play as much of a part.

Instead of changing the environment to match other platforms, make the existing environment more intuitive. People have short attention spans and a wealth of other apps and sites, but if you get them to find their space here, they'll have the will to stay and adapt. Like we have seen a bunch of new folks coming over from Twitter for XIV stuff. They often have to post a "looking for blogs to follow" and hope it gets reblogs. Not only would having new members choose tags from their interests help, but yes, have them enter what they're interested in. Make them follow those tags when they join, include little pop ups encouraging them to follow the people posting in those tags for more content. Then they can unfollow the tags after they've set up their blog if they want.

I deleted a nearly 800 follower blog in 2020 because I was having severe distress after a major social trauma and needed to wipe all my social media. That was my 2nd blog and it was about 6yrs old at that point. Out of every platform I used, the ONE I returned to was Tumblr, purely because it was the ONLY platform I found not to be a high contributor of life-threatening emotional distress.

-All because of the curation tools it provides-

On Instagram I am forced to see non-blockable ads based very vaguely on the tags of posts I interact with. If I interact with posts about Buddhism, the algorithm pulls the "religion" tag and the most popular ads from it, which of course are mostly Christian. Many queer folks have trauma from Christianity. If I interact with drag queens? I get ads for makeup and nails and plastic surgery and women's clothes... as a trans masc person. If I follow sport shooters, metal engravers, knifesmiths, and archers, the algorithm starts sharing extremely right wing posts related to jingoism, conservative politics, and patriotic macho aggression. The kind of stuff by and for people who want people like me to not exist.

All of this is because the culture there is to load your posts with as many vaguely related tags as possible to get your posts picked up by the algorithm. It's not just ads, but my Suggestions tab. Algorithms for post content DO NOT work like these businesses assume they do. People immediately start tag-stuffing in hopes their content gets seen.

On Facebook, you can't hide posts your friends interact with, which put on of my abusers posts on my feed several times. I had one friend who routinely engaged with bigots and creeps. I had other friends with bigoted family members. Here, I'm not forced to see what I don't follow and tags for blacklisting of heavy content are encouraged.

Imgur and Reddit both are geared more towards social interaction and you get to see some of the Worst takes, and as another post I saw here recently hilighted: the upvote/downvote system which often creates a disturbing amount of insecurity and ego. Social interactions here are not forced.

Tumblr's biggest downside over the years has been vitriolic anon asks, but even then, if someone engages too much with trolls? Either they have a tag users can block, or they can just be unfollowed.

Curation tools are the bread and butter of this website and what draws a lot of marginalized groups here to such a degree that we snub other platforms we inevitably feel unsafe on. If you try to become too much like those other platforms and reduce the curation, you can guarantee many of the popular blogs will lead people to another platform and many of the ND, queer, and racial/ethnic minorities will go to one of the indie alternatives en masse. Then the new people drawn here won't have much to stick around for anymore.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience.

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content.

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up.

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant.

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are.

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds.

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs.

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread.

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads.

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed.

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it.

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages.

Test what the right daily push notification limit is.

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users.

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

#long post #at LEAST let all users set Following as default via a toggle #rather than forcing anyone into For You as the first thing they see.

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ohh-kaye · 2 years ago

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2023 Resolutions

Not gonna lie. I failed miserably this year.

I don't know if I should retire this because I honestly just cannot be bothered.

EDIT: this reloaded and deleted all my progress. i will actually un-alive myself right now.

what a fucking mess

let’s review this nonsense. this is going to be extra extra salty because i can’t believe i have to fucking write all this bullshit again.

2022 Resolutions

1. Manage my finances (NO)

i didn’t even try at this. i made an excel sheet for the first payslip that i received and i didn’t even progress after that. i don’t know if i’ll ever be good at this because i can barely look at my bank account without retracting into myself. maybe i’ll use an app next time?

2. Weekly IG dumps (YES)

I love that I did this. It was a good challenge because I actually had force myself to document something. I had to find something interesting that happened that day. I stopped taking photos of myself years ago because i couldn’t stand to exist in my life. I still don’t but I’m trying to be better at appreciating myself. I’m also easing myself back into social media without it manifesting itself into a toxic beast. i think i’m getting better at it.

there were days that i forgot to post on the friday so i would post the day after and my captions became less and less well thought out but i’m glad that i pushed myself to be out there a little bit.

3. New Instrument A Month (BAAHAHAAHAHAHAHA no)

I opened this tab of drumming basics. Did I open that tab at any point after january??? nope. to quote my brother “It’s impossible to learn a new instrument a month. That’s 12 instruments in total”. When he put it into perspective like that, I knew this goal was unachievable.

It’s okay though. I’m not super cut about this.

4. HelloFresh? Or any healthy food service? (NO)

I was highly considering this but in hindsight, there’s no practical way for this to be a applicable because there’s no space in the fridge. And my eating times have changed drastically this year. Mostly I’d be eating just lunch and dinner. Sometimes breakfast and lunch. Sometimes just breakfast. Sometimes just lunch. Sometimes just dinner. Rarely all three at the same time. And I’d eat at random points throughout the day. It’s a mess so I didn’t really think that this was that viable of an option to eat healthier.

5. 18 or more books (YES!)

This was only on here so that I could at least pass one thing. I read 19 books. I was aiming for 20 but I sadly didn’t make it. This challenge will present a lot harder in the next coming years because I’m averaging 18 ort 19 books a year. I really need to be better. Maybe write those long-ass reviews a bit quicker.

Honestly though the reviews take longer than necessary.

6. GET BANGS? or a new hairstyle? (YES!)

These were my COVID bangs. I think everyone will cut their bangs at one point or another and mine just happened to be during COVID when I was bored out of my mind.

7. Pass the GAMSAT? (let’s stop the nonsense)

what a mess. what do you think???

YES - 3

NO - 4

oof.

2023 Resolutions.

1. Read 20 books!

My Goodreads says 19. Tumblr says 20. Maybe this is just to push myself. I really want to read more books to prepare myself for my last challenge of 24 books in a year. So far it’s not possible but if I try hard enough. Maybe???

2. Book a hair appointment

nothing. AND I MEAN NOTHING has traumatised me more than that time when i was 10 years old and my mum took me to nail salon to have my hair cut into a boy cut as punishment because i didn’t brush my hair properly. NOTHING HAS TRAUMATISED ME MORE. I haven’t been into a hair salon in 9 years. that’s because i refuse for people to touch it unless they have consent. my cousin was allowed to bleach it (but now she isn’t) and i sometimes as my brothers to cut an inch off every few months or so. but otherwise, no one is allowed to touch it. i will threaten to shave my head it anyone tries.

but i’m feeling brave in that i may book a curl appointment? maybe commemorate my near decade of hair salon trauma by having someone cut my bangs properly and have my hair shorter??? why not.

3. Go to the gym at least once a week?

Anytime Fitness has emailed me recently asking why I haven’t been to the gym for weeks. this is not good.

i may have been forced to get a gym membership for discount purposes but i still need to make use of the stupid amount of money i pay.

maybe i’ll be extra brave and use something other than the stair master.

4. Learn a new instrument/ Learn a new song

This is a double because I probably just want to either learn a new instrument or learn something new on my ukulele. for the longest time i had avoided picking up a new instrument or any instrument for that matter because of maybe jealousy of my brother because he is a good guitarist and maybe lack of time because of the transition from high school to uni to job. it’s too hard. maybe it’s mainly my lack of motivation. but perhaps now that i have to keep myself accountable, i may push myself?

5. Vlog?

I did this challenge in 2022 on IG that i would post weekly posts. it’s one photo a day. i really enjoyed that. I don’t know it straight up vlogging is good because it seems like such a tall hurdle but maybe i can do what i did last year but it in reels??? it’s a mini vlog? maybe? something? anything. i didn’t think this through. i just bought a camera and hoped for the best.

6. Manage my finances

let’s try this again. i maybe will start by putting away a portion of my savings. maybe open a separate account and chuck a little bit in there and i don’t touch that unless needed. let’s start small.

7. GAMSAT

we will keep this goal on here until i have means to delete it.

i’ll be nice to myself this year and only do that much. let’s not drag this. odd numbers will make it easier to know if i succeeded.

reflection time!

i think i’ve improved a little but. not drastically though. I’m 25 now. i’m closer to 26. in 2024, i would’ve been in australia for 10 years and i have nothing to show for it.

if i dwell on this for too long then it’ll make me sad and i don’t really want to do that anymore. it’s wasteful.

i’ve improved my confidence a little bit. i’ve made friends at work. i was invited to a christmas party which was nice. i’ve stood up for myself against my family during that america trip we had. i travelled overseas this year without my parents and with planning that was done independent of them. i take photos of myself now. i’m trying to be better with my physical health by going to the gym and making sure i keep my steps up, and my mental health but not necessarily caring too much about how i look, and what i eat. maybe nonchalance is good for me.

i just hope that this year is better.

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arabella111 · 2 years ago

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[☆] future of arabella111 + the subliminal channel

as you people must've noticed, i've been really inactive past these days, considering the fact that i promised to stay online. it's mainly because i have been really busy with my life + school. i try to take some time and check my asks & tumblr and honestly all it does is overwhelm me. i love tumblr and want to post stuff and answer asks like the old times but i don't get time. honestly, it gets a little hard balancing my social life and personal life along with academics. this is the reason why i have decided to try to work it all out. i will continue using tumblr and helping people but there are some stuff that i would like to state and clarify before doing so.

[ changes i will be making ]

× no more answering asks and DMs — i have noticed a drastic change in the type of asks i get now. it's all repetitive and can be answered easily by going through my masterlist. i am sorry, but i must say, i get really annoyed when people ask the same thing over and over again. same goes with my private messaging, i will no longer be answering them as they really drain me out.

× q&a sessions on my account on the weekends — since i still love you all and absolutely love interacting with my followers, i will be holding q&a sessions on instagram, youtube and tumblr (for people who don't have instagram), you can ask any question you want, loa related or not (even the repetitive ones).

{ SATURDAY - INSTAGRAM

SUNDAY - TUMBLR

YOUTUBE COMMUNITY TAB - SUNDAY & SATURDAY }

× subliminals will be posted regularly on my channel — you can send me requests through instagram DMs or just comment on my latest video!

× posts regarding loa will be posted every sunday — i will try my best to stay active and not disappear again :)

× if you have any success story/updates you wanna share, you can send me them through the submit feature or put it in my DMs on instagram :)

× if you want to have a conversation with me, please send me an ask or tell me during the q&a session OR ELSE i won't respond.

#law of assumption

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mavqlava · 2 years ago

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doodles yay!!!

some are pretty teeny but it should be good enough quality if you want to zoom in a little hehe

honestly posting this as an excuse to ramble about post sunset thoughts - feel free to scroll past the rambling if u want I just need to get it out of my brain

I’m constantly thinking abt what’s going on post sunset comic. It rattles around my head like a tab from a soda can

I think my favourite thing to hc is that they’re just wordlessly closer. Nothing drastic seems to have changed between them and they haven’t talked about it, but now a little physical contact is welcome. Now eva doesn’t swat neil’s hand away when he wants a sip from her coffee. Now small tokens are exchanged like a crow bringing shiny objects to someone who throws it breadcrumbs. Yknow?

Another hc is that he knew beforehand what she takes in her coffee (or what her order was somewhere they go to often etc) but he would ask her what she wanted every time anyways because he thought maybe it would be weird if he remembered. & now he doesn’t ask, just brings her usual.

I have so many thoughts. I typed this a while ago but now maybe I need to start having thoughts abt the beach minisode .is it too soon for that

anyways, end of my little train of thought. they mean so much to me

#they’re so cute in this one Æ #I do want to learn digital #but maybe I’ll just say fuck it and do a pencil crayon piece…#rosawatts #to the moon #neil watts #eva rosalene #sigmund corp #mavsnack

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fullyanimated · 1 year ago

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ok i ended up writing a lot of tags so lets just do this instead

YOU'RE REALLY COOL AND I LOVED READING THIS!!! never seen anything so relatable in my life and i'm so happy you put this out

i'll put a bit about my experience here

mine are pretty rare but they have huge impact. a few months ago i got one who will remain unnamed (they're always totally secret because they're just for me and there can't be exceptions i don't make the rules), and that character and his values got me deeply reevaluating things i've forgotten to reevaluate, it made me cut out people i shouldn't have had in my life in the first place, my life was drastically changed after the obsession started for just being a fictional character. i actually didn't care about him much at first, didn't pay much attention to him, and after a couple weeks it crept in on me. it was kind of like

1. who?

2. huh look at him go

3. feels like a little obsession incoming... let's just curb this now

4. it's stronger this time. i'm sure it'll pass

5. just thinking about him sometimes in a normal, regular way is fine that's fine

6. oh i opened the floodgates

7. this is my [character] folder it has all the information you could possibly find online about him, i've personally read all the opened tabs several times and will be able to answer any and all questions and where i don't have facts i have headcanons aplenty

when it first started i hadn't been on antidepressants for a little while and well that had consequences and i needed a coping mechanism desperately. so during that time i was daydreaming like 80%-100% of the day, closer to 80% if i was with someone else at all that day, closer to 100% if not. there was literally nothing i would rather do than daydream. maybe do research on whatever i was incorporating so it would be accurate. and it helped a lot, i was happy in a time i would otherwise be extremely unhappy to put it like that. now it's just when i'm bored, if i need to cope but not so much i put on studio ghibli, and before sleeping as that's become routine (it goes level 1 cope: normal although intense hyperfixation, level 2 cope: constant daydreaming, level 3 cope: studio ghibli marathon to distract me so i'll stop constantly crying)

my daydreams are also ocxcanon in some way but it's usually just a name and some rough details and then i scratch everything except that every time i feel like it. say i'm feeling really angsty one day, well now she's made for that. say i want to explore a character trait, i have a character for that. some storylines last days, some a week, some just one daydream session. so i can do the most important scenes again and again but different each time. i also like lying down and closing my eyes and i'll usually do soft expressions, it helps with the immersion

hm yeah that's it brain feels done anyway thank youuu so much for this post i'm super super tired rn cause i had a major depression hit (which means i can't sleep because i'm scared of being alone with my thoughts) and this post got the dopamine flowing again✨💕

A Very Long, Personal [but positive] Ramble about Neurodivgerency and Character Hyperfixation

[u can ignore this if you want this is just an ADHD ramble - this is a kinda 'mask off' talk about ADHD, autism and my personal history with it all. I also talk about the upsides and downsides - and the importance of Hobie to me personally - I just wanna normalize this stuff lol]

a.k.a The story of how I sent from obsessing over him to HIM in 10 years (what a glowup on my part ik)

(I know a lot of peeps on here can feel self-conscious about being neurodivergent and character connection or whatever you wanna call it and so do I! So I wanted to write it out or just ramble for my own sake)

I don't know if it's obvious or not, but I LOVE HOBIE BROWN. I'm going to be completely candid - I think about him maybe 85 percent of the day if not more, and that's in no way an exaggeration.

No matter what I'm doing, there's a least one tab open in my brain thinking about him. It may not be the focus, but it's there.

That's just how I operate. And I've been this way for a LONG time. In fact, Hobie isn't my first 'total focus' character in Marvel.

I gain VERY deep hyperfixations on Marvel Characters, many lasting years. And there's nothing wrong with that - in fact it's rad!

!!!! ATTENTION: This is a whimsical care-free zone. For Happy Funny Folk !!!!!!!!!

Loki - My introduction to hyperfixation with characters

I don't know if this is surprising or you'd be like 'yeah u seem like the type' but I use to LOVE Loki. For YEARS.

I'm AuDHD and when I was 13/14, a freshman in HS, he was my hyperfixation. Eerything I do for Hobie, I did for Loki. I even had a Loki blog for like 3/4 years.

This was back in 2012-2013, when Avengers had just came out, and the MCU wasn't - well, the MCU yet.

But even back then, the Loki fandom was HUGE. I have no idea who was also on Tumblr back then but it was gigantic. Because movies weren't coming out every 3 months, it went on for yearrrrsssss. Art, edits, fics, everything.

I was soooo into, I loved Loki. Like Hobie, I probably thought about Loki maybe 85-90% of the day.

And sure I was doing a lot of other stuff but in the back of my head there was always the oc x canon storyline running in my head, or replaying scenes from memory and analyzing, or wondering and speculating about his character.

I mask very minimally or not at all - so everyone in my school knew me for it. And at the time I didn't know I was neurodivergent, but that didn't stop me - I was genuinely proud of it.

I wore Loki shirts to school and brought the Avengers DVD the day it dropped (this was back before streaming in ye' old 2013). I knew the Avengers movie back to front.

I saw Thor: The Dark World the day it released and SOBBED openly in the theater when he 'died'. (I remember my mom leaning over and whispering 'Do you wanna leave?' cause I seemed that upset lol)

And everyday I use to wear a necklace like this -

(credit IJSY on Etsy)

But in black, until one day I had it in my pocket and I sat on it in class and broke it in two. And people around me deadass were like 'daammnn I know that shit hurt in ur soul' cause I LOVED Loki and people knew it. And I didn't care if they did.

And I was like that for years. Overtime the Loki fandom fizzled out, especially around Phase 2 when things like GOTG first came out.

But I had a Loki fixation like maybe up until the show came out. And even then I've seen the whole thing (I ain't even like it that much 4.5/10) and I'm gonna watch the second one (I'm a fool)

But any way like to this day I still remember the first time I saw Loki and how it made me feel and I can like picture it in my head and I consider it a pretty influencial albeit mundane moment in my life.

And it was a very specific feeling but it was like as soon as I saw Loki's first scene in Avengers, I was plugged into the screen.

Other Hyperfixations - Charles Xavier, Peter Parker

All of my hyperfixations are on men in marvel and they have always been. There's been others I've cycled through, usually based on the newest movie. I even went through a LENGTHY and very in depth K-pop era (don't get me started).

Charles Xavier was a favorite of mine (from X-Men First Class), and I LOVE MCU Peter Parker. I still do. But none hit like Loki did.

There was never THAT feeling, like the fantastical electric feeling.

And I had never felt that feeling again UNTIL I SAW HOBIE (i wanna cry)

My fixation with HOBIE BROWN HOBIE BROWN HOBIE BROWN (sorry I can't say his name only one time im too excited)

In the theatre my jaw genuinely dropped like I'm pretty sure I said 'OH NAH' to myself when i first saw him

Cause he was the prettiest character I've ever seen and I mean that

I didn't recognize what that feeling was until just now like YES, it's the same feeling. And I can't even describe it.

It's like every other character is normal but as soon as you lay eyes on this character for the first time it's like suddenly they're under your skin and curled up in your heart and you can FEEL them and the weight of them PHYSICALLY like not body wise but like astral personhood wise (do I sound unhinged)

And Hobie was just so pretty.

First of all - I didn't know he was black fgsbtgtuiuigs id never heard of spiderpunk

The wicks were what caught me off guard first. I know what wicks are, I've seen them before. But never animated.

And although Miles and Gwen and Pavi all look realistic - Hobie looked real to me. The high cheekbones and broad lips, the raised brow ridge and wide set eyes - he looked different from them, not just in art style but like - I DONT KNOW.

But that's how it is, you know what I mean. There was just something in my brain that was like 'he has meaning to me'. Like 'Idk who this man is, but whatever story he's writing, I'm reading it'.

That's what hyperfixation feels like.

And Hobie in specific held and holds so much more weight for me IN ADDITION.

I started falling out of my Loki phase around Thor: Ragnorok in 2017 - which is to say I was varying degrees of 'obsessed' with Loki for about 5 years.

Around that time, maybe starting in 2015, police brutality in NYC picked up. Me and my friends started getting more radicalized, going to protests, and identifying as communists, anarchists, or both.

One of my favorite things at the time was The Black Panther Party handbook I'd found at a second hand-book store. And for a while the Black Panther Party was a special interest of mine.

It made me really interested in the 70's, the civil rights movement, and the rise of punk that happened at the same time. Around this time, I made my first 'battle jacket' with a patch that said "Black Lives Matter, Bitch." and begged my parents for a pair of doc martens.

I didn't have Hobie back then, but I have him now. And he still resonates.

There was very much a time where I was that homeless, punk teen, angry at police, who wanted to be taken in by my favorite heros.

My admiration for Hobie comes from like - everything he is. Everything he stands for and represents. I don't need Hobie like I would've as a teen. But I know deep down the healing he could bring other people as a comfort character.

Or even in terms of a good political example, or great rep for alt black people. All of it.

That can't really be said for Loki. Or Charles Xavier (even if X-men is a race allegory), or even Peter Parker.

I grew up in NYC all my life, and I LOVE Spider-man, but I never felt Connected to Peter Parker as if we lived in the same city. I never felt something in common with Peter even if he was broke too.

Hobie's just different, y'know.

The Downsides

It's easy to feel really embarrassed by all this - and even now I'm feeling shy even describing how it feels.

Cringe culture gets in your head before you know it. I'm CONSTANTLY telling myself 'no, Hobie would understand that you're neurodivergent and this is you expressing yourself he wouldn't think youre cringe youre not cringe okay' As if my comfort character Hobie Brown thinking I'm cringe is like jksjfkjf the worst thing ever - i can't, i can't with myself.

I genuinely want to hug Hobie more than I want to huge most celebrities or influential real-life people.

I genuinely think hugging him would be more healing to my being than hugging the Pope or the Dhali Lama or something. I admire him and care about him but he's NOT REAL. It's PARASOCIAL And like duh, I know that - i'm grown as fuck.

Sometimes it can genuinely get you down that you care about this character-person and you can't be with them

It's like you miss them. But they're not real and you don't know them. And I know that sounds tragic or bizarre. But it's kinda just weird. It feels weird not in a sad way, but in a 'why brain?? why is this possible in my brain?? huh???' way.

Like...I know it's parasocial, but like it's not like a fan and a youtuber. He's not real, I'm not giving him money or hurting anyone. I know there's nothing to be ashamed of, but it's just WEIRD.

Like... I know my cat isn't a person and mentally I don't see them as a person and can't like analyze them like a full formed person even if I wanted to. But with Hobie - someone who is not a person - my brain can???? Like I've never met him but like... I can imagine a full conversation with him beginning to end in his place of residence I've also never seen before??????? SO WEIRD.

Also theres that thing of him running in the back of my head 85% of the time.

Even if I'm talking or cooking or something, I'm still daydreaming about him - I have ADHD. And during those times if i'm interrupted and someone give me a THIRD thing to do (besides thing 1 and thinking about Hobie) I get irritated. Because now I have less brain room for Hobie stuff.

The Upsides

Now reading all of this you might be like 'sib this sounds like nothing but a problem r u okay' but I PROMISE ITS REAL FUN SOMETIMES

And it's nothing to feel ashamed of!

Now the last part was just a list of downsides, but the upsides are more things I can do because of my hyperfixation on Hobie that makes me happy

Like I said, I daydream a LOT. Like a LOT.

Mainly with OCs You can probably tell how much I like OCs, and how much OCs - even others', mean to me. And usually, my OCs are the ones who I see the in-media universe through. I don't have to think about making an OC much, for me personally they come fully formed. Because of this, while I'm watching movies I begin to have involuntary daydreams of where I can add in an OC, or what they'd be doing. I typically only do this for Marvel though. Hardly DC or any other media other than maybe Batman. For Loki, it was a character named Asdisira Heimdaldottir who I shipped with him. And for Hobie it's Diane Pastors (Disco-Spider).

And although I am in completely control of what these daydreams are, they are vividly realistic, and can come on at different times.

For me, it's while listening to music mostly. But anything can trigger it - from a good text post, to hearing a phrase. And these daydreams are extremely vivid. Most times, you can visibly see when I'm doing it. My eyes will glaze over or start moving as if I'm trying to remember something. Sometimes I may say 'random' phrases. I say lines from the scene I'm in outloud. (Like saying 'How could you!' in an offended tone to myself, if that's what the character in the daydream is saying). I also make facial expressions. I can do it on purpose, like hitting play on a movie and resuming where I left off. Usually, when I do this, I close my eyes. I much prefer to sit and do it without multitasking, but I often do it while doing something else.

These daydreams connect, and arcs/storylines can go on for months/years.

Usually these stories go on for months in IRL time, and span the whole history of the character. For Loki, I probably has Asdisira for 4 years at most. Which is still a LONG time. These arcs can take different pathways, and I may imagine a scene multiple times - in different ways, but usuall the timeline of the oc x canon stays overall the same. Sadly, I almost never write these down. I would pull my hair out and theres not enough time in the world for me to write Diane and Hobie's full narrative down in detail that does it justice. I wanna make a bullet list of their narrative but i dont wanna clog dashes

I can genuinely use them as a comfort character.

I don't need this much now, and nowhere as much as I needed it in high school, but having the ability to daydream vividly at will about a character you feel safe and happy with - it's dope. Sometimes it really helps. There were a lot of times I imagined Loki comforting me or showing me kindness or helping me calm down. And sometimes you can do it just for fun. Like, as a treat. Whenever. I'm imagining Diane and Hobie at a fish n' chip shop right now. It's drizzling outside and it smells like oil and Hobie douses his chips in wayyy to much vinegar. It's like I'm there. Like...I just do that. thats rad as hell. (and I don't know how to describe it if you can't do it but hopefully others know how it is but it's VIVID, like wayyyy more than any dream.)

Literally a walking fact book about them.

I'm smug AS FUCK. I use to love when dudes in high school challenged me about the MCU cause I wore a shirt. Like, oh buddy. Oh pal. Just you fucking wait. I know this character better than you know your own mother - try me hoe. I love reading characters like a book and rewatching scenes, breaking down motives, watching their movements, looking for patterns and drawing connections to real world history, cultures, or psychology. I LOVE watching behavior and personality in the movies, and making conclusions about where they'd come from, reasonably, for the character, and how it affects them outside the scope of the film.

And most of all - It's Free Joy we're almost at the end I promise

This is long as all hell and unlike my other posts there really isn't a neat little character study but uhhh I wanna end with this I guess -

The best part of it, is it's free joy. Literally.

My brain can do something a lot of others can't. I can feel a kind a comfort and understanding with a character, I can entertain myself and come up with amazing stories that have mean to me.

I can make wonderful worlds and all that without lifting a finger, and hangout with my favorite characters just by going

(literally how i be sitting there - professor x headass)

I hoping the fucking multiverse with my mind.

But there's nothing cringe about that. And there's nothing cringe about drawing Hobie for hours on end, by himself or with an oc. There's nothing cringe about thinking about them a lot, or wanting to buy or make a lot of merch.

We aren't hurting anyone. It's not like a celebrity or a youtuber. Nothing we're doing is taboo or anything we're literally just being happy. And squealing about a character we deeply love

Like..Golly if more mfers in this world were squealing like us once a week maybe they'd be happier, you know what I mean. People be walking around mad as hell at the world...like why don't you look at this picture of Hobie and calm down? That's what makes me calm down.

__________________________________________________

Anyway uh this is LONG and not connected much to ATSV but if you read down this low THANK YOU so deeply it means a lot. If you relate to this at all I'd love to hear.

And if you think I'm unhinged. Absolutely. But that has nothing to do with this and ain't nothing wrong about it, in the words of megan the stallion... 'ah'.

I leave you with this pic of Hobie goodbye :)

im using my magic autism powers to hold his hand :) now im giving him a hug im having fun

#autism #actually autistic #i stopped seeing a guy because i realised how incredibily inferior he was to my comfort character #also im gonna watch those spiderverse films #is that what theyre called?#i was gonna watch them 'soon' but i mean when did the first one come out?#a few years ago or smth?#'soon'#but now i gotta see your guy #gotta appreciate him in action and context #for all the good work he does #the picture at the end is great #he looks safe

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prettylittlehoard · 2 years ago

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Looks Can Be Deceiving

Fandom: Criminal Minds Pairing: Luke Alvez/Spencer Reid Rating: T Summary: A beta at the park makes assumptions about Spencer's family and his role in it. Warnings and Additional Tags: No Warnings Apply; Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Mistaken for Wrong Gender, Self-Consciousness, Post-prison!Spencer, alpha!Luke, omega!Spencer Author's Notes: It's implied that Luke and Spencer's kid refers to Spencer as "Mama". Also, the "Mistaken for Wrong Gender" tag is purely in an omegaverse context. If anything about that displeases you, please hit the Back button/close the tab. Read it on Ao3 here

Despite it being a few weeks into fall, the weather is still on the warm side. Perfect for taking cute little daughters for a walk in the park.

Spencer pushes Molly's stroller down one of the walking paths at a leisurely pace until he finds a spot to sit. He points out all sorts of shapes and colors to her the whole way there. At this stage, she can only manage "Mama" and a few other words, but that doesn't rule out learning other things. It certainly won't hurt her brain development.

Once he arrives at the shiny red bench, he sits down, locking the stroller's wheels. Gently, he lifts Molly out and puts her in his lap. He knows he could interact with her while she's in the stroller just fine, but as long as she's still small enough to hold, he's going to indulge. He whiles the time away by pointing out more things to her and explaining them, which he knows she doesn't understand. He and Luke agreed to meet at the park after work and spend time with Molly before going home. By Spencer's watch, it won't be long before Luke gets out.

Spencer is explaining the history of Golden Retrievers when a lady sits down at the other end of the bench. Without pausing, Spencer looks up instinctually. The woman looks to be in her mid-50s. She's got on a red tracksuit with a wide stripe of zebra-print fabric across the middle of the jacket and a zebra-print headband in her chestnut hair to match. The woman has her phone with her and a tall tumbler of something hot, judging by the smoke drifting from the lid. She sets the tumbler down in the empty space on the bench and fishes her earbuds out from her pants pocket. He refocuses on Molly, now entertaining her by making funny faces and tickling her.

He doesn’t catch what the woman says to him. “I’m sorry?”

She smiles at him, not bothered by his inattention. "I was saying how nice it is to see an alpha spending time with their kids for a change." The look of confusion on Spencer's face prompts her to elaborate. "Not that I have any strong feelings on the subject or anything. I'm a beta and the whole alpha/omega thing goes over my head sometimes. It just seemed a shame for only one parent to b around the baby all the time or be responsible for most of the childrearing while the other does whatever they want, you know? I mean, just look at you." The chatty woman gestures at Spencer, who stares back in wide-eyed shock. "You're out here with your daughter, taking perfectly good care of her while your omega's out doing whatever, and you don't look silly or weird at all!"

Spencer can only blink at the woman while she fiddles with something on her phone. She probably thinks there was nothing odd about what she just said. She has no clue about the turmoil she's sparked in her bench partner. Aside from the way she said "your omega" not sitting right with him, Spencer is uncomfortably aware of the fact that she believes he's an alpha.

Inwardly, he sighs. Spencer is well-aware of how he looks to most people. Prison saw to that; between the radical changes to his cleanliness routines and the need to guard any weaknesses that might get taken advantage of, he practically re-invented himself as an alpha behind bars. Nothing too drastic, and it was only skin-deep, enough to keep the other prisoners (and some of the guards, he hated to admit) off his back. It was amazing how much a person could change in so little time, how those changes could last.

Assuming and hoping the one-sided conversation is over, he goes back to entertaining his daughter, though Molly's no longer the only thing on his mind. He wonders to himself if it is his face that threw her off. Omegas tend to go clean-shaven, a habit Spencer was forced to drop in prison out of necessity and never quite picked back up on the outside. Or it could have been his figure, something else he had to change. He's been tall for an omega since puberty, but his soft features and awkward mannerisms had helped smooth things over. He wasn't an attractive omega, but at least people figured he was an omega. Not now, apparently.

He's so preoccupied that he doesn't even realize Luke's arrived at the park. It's not until Luke's a few yards away, having come from the other entrance, that Spencer looks up and spots him. Once he sees Luke, though, he resettles Molly on his lap to point Luke out to her.

“You see Daddy?” Molly starts babbling excitedly and making grabby hands once she sees her father coming. “Yeah, Daddy’s here!”

Luke’s eyes light up as soon as he sees his two favorite people in the world. He picks up the pace, opening his arms when he gets close. “Hey, guys, I missed you!” Spencer passes Molly over for Luke to hold, then lets himself be swept into a hug. He pecks his husband on the cheek and quietly says, “We missed you, too. I kept her entertained with plenty of people watching, though.”

They pull away from each other, Luke still holding their daughter. Spencer thinks they're about to go on their walk and starts turning toward the stroller but is stopped by the drastic change in Luke's expression.

"Speaking of people watching," Luke says under his breath. Spencer turns around, following Luke's line of sight, and catches the woman in the tracksuit hastily looking away, messing with her phone again like she hadn't just been staring at them. And Spencer had practically forgotten about her, too.

Before Spencer can warn him off, Luke calmly puts Molly in her stroller. He also isn't immune to playing with her at every opportunity, and Spencer fondly watches him tickle her and sing a Spanish nursery rhyme to her while securing her in the seat.

“Can I help you, Ma’am?” Luke asks, suddenly standing up. Spencer doesn’t know what’s going on until he sees the horrified look on the woman’s face. Luke must have caught her staring again, and he’s about to make it her problem.

She puts her hands in front of her, warding off Luke’s anger. “I am so sorry. I wasn’t trying to creep on you and your family, I swear! I was just taken aback because I’ve never seen an omega as…handsome as you before!” Her nervous laughter does nothing to help the situation.

When Luke throws him a look of confusion, Spencer shrugs at him. Internally, he cringes, not wanting to explain why this stranger assumes he’s an omega. Luke shakes his head and goes back to settling Molly in her stroller seat. “Well, I’m flattered, lady, but I’m not an omega,” he responds neutrally. Pinging her as an omega is taking a back seat to the rest of her behavior.

"Oh! Well, that's wonderful. People say so many terrible things about same-dynamic couples, but you two are doing perfectly fine raising your little girl. As a matter of fact, there's a couple like that on my block!"

Spencer can tell this woman is gearing up for a likely long and possibly embarrassing story, and the look on Luke's face tells him his husband is not having it. Tired of feeling like a battle's being fought for him and not wanting the situation to escalate, Spencer finally speaks up. "I'm an omega, actually. I know you probably think you know what one looks like but, surprisingly, there's no single standard for an omega's appearance, or any dynamic's for that matter." Before he has the chance to think about what he just said, he starts fussing around with the stroller, making sure everything is in place, re-situation things, anything to keep himself from cringing into a black hole of embarrassment. He didn't say one thing that wasn't true, he knows this, but he still can't help wondering if he overreacted. Her staring had been rude, but her assumptions, while clearly ignorant, didn't carry any malice. Sue him for wanting to give people the benefit of the doubt.

Luke gently places his hands over Spencer's, easing his nerves. He gets behind the stroller and starts to push off. "Anyway, Ma'am, we're leaving. And next time, maybe you should open your mind up a bit before you open your mouth." Luke doesn't bother looking to see what effect his words have, and neither does Spencer.

"I should probably shave more," Spencer says absentmindedly. They're a reasonable distance away from the woman by now. Luke looks at him.

“What?”

"My face," Spencer says, gesturing to the stubble there. "I had to let it get like this while I was…" He trails off, and Luke has a good idea of what he would have said. "But I'm not anymore; I don't have any excuse." He stares out ahead, lost in thought. "Maybe then–"

"Okay, first of all," Luke says, cutting off Spencer's train of thought. "You don't have to do anything to your face if you don't want to. And I know you know this. You're a genius; you know everything."

“I do not!” There’s a smile on Spencer’s face as he remembers a conversation involving him and Derek years ago.

Luke grins, too. "I know you don't, but that is one of the things you know." They walk for a bit, taking in the sight of the beautiful trees and the feel of the warm air. When it seems like the conversation has died off, Luke picks it back up. "And secondly," he says before leaning over to plant a kiss on Spencer's rough cheek, "your face is perfect the way it is. That's my completely correct and totally unbiased opinion, so you can't argue with it."

Spencer's about to do just that, but when he looks over at Luke, he gets utterly distracted. The light of the setting sun is coming at just the right angle to illuminate Luke around the edges like he's lit from within. He looks so happy, like there's nothing in the world he'd rather be doing than strolling through the park with him and their daughter, leisurely ambling toward their shared home. "I wouldn't dream of it," Spencer says instead.

#ralvez #ralvez fanfiction #Criminal Minds Fanfiction #omegaverse

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moneymasnn · 3 years ago

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i'll come back to you.|chapter 2 |mason mount

youtube

so you can get an idea of 18 year old mase❤️

Come back to me.

chapter 2, dealing with heartbreak.

It had been approximately a 4 months since mase left, her mase. Saying she missed him would be a huge understatement, she craved his touch like the need for oxygen. She had hugged all his hoodies and other clothes of his until they no longer smell of him. Watching the odd sad fan edits of the both of them she would come across on twitter. She even went as far as to breaking down when eating her roast dinner at her nana, dropping tears all over her roast potatoes, her nan then giving her some advice about love and heart break. Explaining that if two people are really meant ti be together their souls will adventulalmy find their way back to each other, non the less that doesn't mean millie shouldn't move on with her life, 'he will come find you when your ready' she says. that's what made millie want to move in with the sidemen in the first place. Millie and Masons break up wasn't too public, but Millies fans from YouTube noticed the lack of her smiles in videos and the lack of masons presence. Seeing how mason moved to Amsterdam most fans put it together, but as the pair were so caught up in there drastic change they never thought to have to adress it publicly. Mason had only featured in a few videos, like the 'boyfriend tag' and been in the back of a couple of Millies vlogs saying a few things here and there, he was defiantly a fan favourite though. Millies fans easily noticing his disappearance. Mason personally feeling like the two never need to address the break up, he knew as soon as he was done with his year loan he would be back with the girl. Still, he assumed she has handling the loss of his presence better than him since she was still active on her social medias, he still tracked her socials like a 13 year old fan would, having all of her notifications on, re watching her old YouTube videos of them together and stalking fan pages to see what she was up too. Millie goes for coffee with masons mum every week or so, that's when millie would hear all about how well mason was doing, not that she handed been keeping her own tabs on him. She was still coming to terms with the drastic changes in her life, for example; when jj called mentioning the boys were going to start a sidemen house saying that there was a spare room if she wanted it, and to think about how good the content will be. So that's how it stared, she now lives in a huge mansion in east London with 7 boys. Millie had formed a close bond with the boys when they met a YouTube fest, coming in as a huge fan favourite when the girl would hang out with the boys or would be spotted in the back of videos.

When mason got back from a long day of training mason opened sos laptop in bed to see millie had posted a new video, she didnt post as regular as she used to, so mason loved when she did. She always has the same humour in her videos as she does in real life and he loved that, he felt like he was on FaceTime to her watching her videos. Not even glaring at the total he clicks the video and gets comfy in bed.

"er, well, hello everybody. So todays actually a really exciting one."

Mason was in awe hearing her voice and her little 'erms' and 'res' when she talks.

She had placed the camera on her dressing table all dressed up with her make up done and brown cardboard boxes behind her.

"so im actually packing right now, I haven't been very tactical about it theres shit all over the gaff" she giggles at herself.

Mason giggles at her little sayings, he misses her weird humour and the fact she would giggle at her own jokes.

"yeh im actually moving, as you probably saw in the title. With the sidemen, yeh probs not the best decision ive ever had in my life, I already know that living with seven boys is going to be hell but, it might be fun." she giggles again laughing at her own unsureness.

Masons heart pangs. 'she's moving?' 'with boys, seven of them' 'shit' The thought of her potentially living with 7 males made mason heart pang, he was supposed to be the only male she lives with. He had it all planned out they would have a flat in-between cobham and London, so it was easy for them to travel, and millie could still be close to London, knowing how much the girl loved the city.

"so yeah, im currently just chucking all my stuff in my dads van and then he's going to drive me to the house. I have seen the house, its lovely, really big, im just hoping the boys have kept it clean for when I get there" she pulls a face at the camera stating that the boys are clearly messy.

After that she shows all off her stuff now in the back of the van as she gets in the front with her dad and she chats a little bit when they drive. Mason notices she's wearing his jumper, one of his favourite ones he left it to millie to look after, his heart warm even more when he notices she is still wearing the m initial necklace he got her for the first Christmas the two had celebrated together hen they were only just 16. Laughing at a comment he had made about the necklace.

flashback memory:

A 16 year old Millie, and a 16 year old mason, sat on masons single bed in his dorm room at Chelsea academy. Their legs are crossed as they sit across from each other, both holding over decorated boxes.It was December 20th, mason was going back home to Portsmouth for Christmas, obviously. So the two of you have planned to have your own first Christmas together in his dorm room at cobham.

In front of mason, placed gently on his lap was a small square box, it was red with golden sting wrapped around it to keep it closed. He handed you the box with a huge grin plastered on his face.

“I hope you like it. Jaz helped pick it out by the way, so it has a girls opinion.”

Millie looks up into his beautiful brown eyes noticing the anxious tone laced in his voice, she then looks back down ready to open the present.

Thats until mason pipes up again causing millie sos top pulling the ribbon at a a hault.

“it’s quite basic, but you like basic-“ she snaps her head up, eyebrows furred at the boy.

“no no I mean the necklace, not you, I don’t mean basic I mean more like simple. Yeh it’s simple and I know you don’t like things to flashy or bold. Ugh shit…I’ve just told you what it is”

Millie giggles looking at your child like boyfriend, “mase, whatever it is I’m sure I’ll love it. And even if I don’t, I’ll wear it anyway, its the thought that counts I guess”

Pecking his cheek and finally pulling the string from the bow to opened the box. Millies heart melts as she opens it to see a simple golden chain with a golden M initial pendant on it.

“Awe mason i love it”

“really? Oh thank god”

She watches him release a huge breath she could tell he’s been holding in. Pulling the necklace out and dangleing it in the air, the M placed in her palm.

“Put it on me” she says passing him the necklace. Not moving her hair purposefully knowing he would have to move it for her.

“I can try, I’m not really good with these things i have fat thumbs."

“Don’t ruin the moment mason”

“sorry."

He very gently moved her hair into a makeshift bun her holding it up for him so he could use both hands, small peices of hair grazing her shoulder as he placed the necklace over her neck. Feeling his hot breath on her neck as her hand traces of the M on her chest.

“all done” mason kisses Millies shoulder and moving her hair back.

The girl turns to the boy in absolute awe, a loving grin on her face as she turned around and attacked him with kisses, so he’s laying down her on top of him, straddling him.

As she attacks him with loads of little kisses on his temples, cheeks and nose not missing any part of his face except for his lips. His hands gently hover over her waist as he’s giggling at the attack.

“So” she says finally sitting up.

“Is it a ‘M’ for Millie or a ‘M’ for mason?” questioning the boy as her hand traces the necklace.

“Well, I though it could be for mason, well it is for mason, but if your mum asks you can say it’s for Millie.”

Only being 16 and dating for 6 months she still hadn’t plucked up the courage to tell her mum about her boyfriend. Knowing if she did she would be more protective about when you would go stay with dec and be staying with mason too, also wanting to avoid that convocation about teen pregnancy.

“And if we ever break up, you can still wear it, people will assume it’s your name” he sits up with a smile.

Moment ruined.

“You think we’re gonna break up?” She says looking at mason.

“Well if we EVER do break up, it won’t be me breaking up with you. He looks at you clearly realising he’s said something stupid.

“oh come on the only reason we will ever break up is if you get sick of me.” Mason looks back down with a sheepish smile. A small smile creeping up on your face,

“1. I could never get sick of you or that smile, 2. I love the necklace mase, thank you.” she leans back in to kiss him again, but this time on his lips, as both of her hands hold his cheeks, she slips her tongue gently over his bottom lip then into his mouth, letting their tongues swirl together in unison.

Pulling away she looks at her boyfriend in his eyes and giggle “I love you weirdo” he just smiles and pulls her in for a hug.

Mason watched the rest of the YouTube video, a smile plastered on her face thought the video. He could see she was truly happy and that made him happy. Although he was worried she might find enough happiness and forget about him.

6 months later, Mason was doing really well at Vitesse fc, Millie knew this though, not only because his mum would update her regularly, she would illegally stream his matches when she could. It was the same for mason to really, he would watch all her YouTube videos the second they were posted, as well as all the videos she was featured in. He became slightly disheartened when he came across a few edits of her and harry (w2s) I mean he seemed like her type and that worried him. Mason had met harry a couple times when mason went with millie to one of her YouTube con things. Harry had a god sense of humour, an out of pocked one, the kind of stuff millie finds funny, harry constantly had a smile on his face, he was goofy, really awkward and would always seem to be making millie laugh in the back of videos. Mason stared to once again feel like a 13 year old girl as he searched the internet for any evidence the girl was dating harry. Feeling a lot better when he could never find any specific proof, although he couldn't lie to himself and say millie and harry didn't have good chemistry because they defiantly did. He don't know why he did it but he found himself on the phone to dec questioning him about millies relationship with harry, he defiantly hadn't planned on looking like he was still obsessed with his ex girlfriend however the urge to know if his first love had moved on bothered him, he just had to know.

So he called dec.

"maseeeeee, you alright mate" dec slurred his words, mason could hear loud bass music in the background.

"yeh, yeh im fine. Actually I just was erm well-"

"spit it out masey"

"is millie seeing anyone" mason blurted out,

"oh,"

'oh?'

'what does that mean?'

'she defiantly is seeing someone'

'shit' he thought.

"well to be honest mate I don't actually know, I don't see her a lot but erm, I'm sure is she was she would have told me" more of a serious tone kicking in his voice as he try to find a quiet space to try and talk to his mate on the phone.

"right"

"I mean she still loves you so" decs emphasis on the 'you'

"what?"

Declan was clearly drunk and blabbering but mason just wanted to hear him say she loved him still again.

"how do you know that"

"arg mate all she does is go on about you, you know she watches your matches, well she used too."

'used too?' mason though, she's moving on, he still watches her YouTube videos to try and sleep to her voice.

"yeah she had to do it illegally because your in a different county, I did just tell her she could use my sky sports but, you know what she's like, she stubborn, but yeh, she used some dodge website, uno the one that has the porn pop ups," Declan giggle as he repeats the word 'porn', like a child.

"and, yeh, she got a virus, can't say I told you sooooooo"

Mason can't help but smile at the story, it does sound like something she will would do. Mason takes advantage of decs drunk stake knowing he won't remember this in the morning to ask some questions.

"what about this harry bloke"

"harry? harry who? I don't know a har- ohhhhhh, yeah what a sound bloke, yeh he's here tonight actually"

'shit'

"yeh Millies here too if you want to speak to her"

"nah im alright mate, I just wanted to see how your all getting on, im gonna, yeh, im gonna go mate"

but before mason could finish and say goodbye he heard her voice

"hello?" she laughed into the mic

"dec, what the fuck, who's on the phone" she was drunk too mason could hear her laughing in the back, he loved her laugh.

"its mason, he wanted to talk to you" mason could hear dec faintly say in the back ground. 'shit dec no'

"Oh. Erm, heyyy mase. Is everything alright?" she was clearly confused.

Mason tried not to stutter at the use of his nickname coming out of her name, something he hadn't be called in months.

'erm- hah- hi, I didn't want to speek to you decs just a little pissed" 'no no no why did I say that'

"Oh"

"Not that im not happy to talk to you, its erm been a while"

"yeh it has" her reply were cold and blunt, he could tell she was getting upset.

"im sorry are u okay?"

"yeah, yeah, im fine, im going to go actually im- busy."

"yeah I can hear" Mason lets out an awkward giggle "alright then erm yeah bye mills, have a good night, be safe, yeh?"

"I- yeah. Thanks, bye mase"

And the line goes dead, and with that mason tried with every bone in his body to not cry. He missed her voice just as much as he missed her face, her smile, her laugh, everything about her. He kept thinking about how her high pitched happy tone dropped as soon as she realised she was talking to mason on the phone. Mason cried a little, missing his home.

Millie on the other hand was fuming.

"what the fuck dec" she said throughing the phone back onto his chest.

"he said he wanted to speak to you?" dec asked confused why millie was angry.

"no he didn't! ugh why did you do that?" she was shouting over the music. Mumbling something about how embarrassing that was fir her.

"erm yeah he did, look he misses you too." repeating to the girl what he had just previously said to the boy.

"what?"

"yeah, was asking if your seeing anyone and that. Asked about harry too," dec laughs, "he's probs stalking you and come across something of you and harry"

And with that Millies eye gloss over 'he still cares'

"but- but on the phone he said he didn't want to talk to me?"

"he's lying, he asks about you more than you ask about him. Fancy another drink?" trying to change the concoction as he was the tears threatening to spill from her eyes.

"I think i'm gonna need it" is all she replied...

omg so that's cheaper two lol hope you guys liked it, it felt kind rushed I dunno but yeh sorry its so short. love u all, thanks for all the kind messages xxxxx

#mason mount #mason #mount #w2s #harry lewis #football #YouTube #money mase #chapter 2 #ill come back to you

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