#trying to replicate the experience for you

[an-android-in-a-tutu]

Hi everybody I have reached the level of sleep deprivation where music just starts playing in my head and I can't stop it.

[moe-broey]

I've hired this thing to stand there. Menacingly.

Wow, he's so good at tha--

Nevermind.

He also sits very politely though (needs assistance to do so, but hey! He's polite.)

[bacchuschucklefuck]

Can you expand on what you mean by Baron being "too cool" to really fit a horror monster? It's a very interesting concept and I'd love to hear your thoughts. Is it that they're too active/involved/tangible and it detracts from their scariness?

I feel like I should preface this with a wall of disclaimers lmao 1/I am a hardcore, down-to-the-marrow, avid, deeply sincere horror enthusiast, esp. horror creatures. this usually means my mileage is vastly different from the average populace's, and my scaredy bone has been disintegrated by longterm exposure. most things in a piece of horror media won't scare me! so I practically never use that on its own as the scale to talk abt horror experiences, but when something does scare me it's always a special occasion to be treasured. 2/canon d20 is never really meant to be horror horror, and for good reasons: it doesn't fit the company's output, it takes a kind of carelessness in production estimation that is always a huge risk, it's often vulnerable in a way that kinda goes against how TTRPGs usually facilitates vulnerability, and for most people it's just! stressful! d20, even with the "horror-themed" seasons, generally just plays with horror tropes and stays focused in its goal of being a comedy improv tabletop theater show. 3/fantasy high's chosen system is DnD, which as I've mentioned before is before all a combat-based game system, which means the magic circle of play is drawn based on stats that facilitate and prioritize combat. want or not this affects every interaction you have in the game, and given fantasy high's concept from the ground up (everyone's going to school of DnD stuff to get better at DnD) it's doubly relevant. 4/This Is Fine I have no quarrel with this. my meters are internal, I do not ask this show to be anything it doesn't advertise itself to be, and what it is is fucking great! I like it! when I expand on this ask's question it will be like a physicist going insane in a lab. that's the mindset we're going in with.

disclaimers done. my stance on horror as a genre is that it's a utility genre rather than a content genre or a demographic genre; it is the discard of narratives. it's the trash pile. horror, above being scary, is about being ugly and messy, it's the cracks on the ground any story inevitably steps over to stay a genre that isn't horror. the genre's been around long enough to develop a codex and a general language that medias and makers and enthusiasts of the genre can use to talk about and build onto, but if you go into individual pieces there's really no unifying Horror Story. one person's beautiful life can be another's horror story, it's just how it is.

this makes The Monster a deeply intriguing piece of the genre. thing is a monster is in a decent percentage of any story - it's just when the antagonist force steps into something past a certain line traced out in the story's world. monstrousness is in pretty much every western fantasy story, it's in any story with a hero and something to vanquish or win; more than anything it's a proxy of that thing up there. the line in a narrative's world. the monster is the guard of the unknown lands, where heroic, civilized people don't tread.

what does this mean in the context of horror? the genre is about that perceived lawlessness, that "unknown land" so to say. we're in the monster's home. that's the literary context that we often walk into a horror piece with; the monster knows more than you about where you are. it may not understand you, but it holds more information than you, and with that it moves swifter than you, has more covered than you, and is more assured in its existence in this context than you. it's a struggle to catch up to it, it's nigh impossible to get one over it, and you're never sure it'll 100% work, because you just don't have the information necessary to.

with that framing you can kinda see where I'm coming from here: horror's often about the breaking of rules. I always think a monster's most effective when it breaks well-established rules of both existence and visual storytelling. think Possum (2018) or Undertale's Omega Flowey or the Xenomorph Queen - unique change in medium, unique change in graphic, unique change in design language, etc. in that sense I actually really like how canon baron plays out: they don't really function like anything else in the fantasy high universe, the bad kids have not managed to kill them when they've felled literal gods, their domain in fhjy literally introduces new mechanics to encompass their existence! from an experience design standpoint they slap mad shit. BUT! I can't help finding their character, like as a character riz (and the other bad kids, eventually) interact with, to be very... coherent? in design. this is kinda hard for me to articulate in words, it's more often a sense you get once you've looked at enough of these scrumptious fuckers, their general design and the way they show up is just kinda too clean, so to say. always kinda newly made? fresh unboxed. it, once again, makes sense for their lore - they are looking for more about themself from riz - and their function - they're an antagonist in a game experience, they're meant to be interacted with in a way that produces results and meshes with the existing magic circle - but that shininess takes away from the implied history they should have dominion over and the person they're haunting doesn't.

from another angle there is kinda something there about how put-together canon baron is as a concept; the domain they call home is riz's deep-seeded fears, extremely vulnerable things he's drawn borders around to quarantine and refused to walk into. things that from his perspective would irreversibly shatter certain pleasant fictions his world is built on top of. canon baron, While Extremely Cool, I feel is kinda too neat to connect with and signify the apocalyticized mess that'd result from this paradigm shift. the part where they're in riz's briefcase and looking through every mirror is Very Cool And Fucked Up! but ultimately the show draws a line around them as well, by making game-physical, tangible spaces they're in (the mirrors and the haunted mordred manor) and put riz and the bad kids there only when they need to confront stuff. riz is meaningfully narratively away from baron's unknown land for most of fantasy high.

with that and all of my disclaimers in mind my conclusion here is if canon baron wants to be a Horror Monster they'd have to cross way more lines. be a Lot more invasive. hence (holds up my class swap baron like a long cat)

[mildmayfoxe]

it’s literally so important to make friends with your servers and bartenders anywhere you go as much as possible 🙏🏻 not only will it make both your day and their day better but sometimes they will give you free shots and sometimes they will start telling you gossip about their job and other diners and sometimes they will comp your fries

[sparrow-ceiling]

writing is so fun because i can fulfill my wildest fantasies like not having hearing problems

[onepokerhen]

the 00s may have been the dark age for cartoons but i will not lie its so fascinating to watch people go from analog to digital in real time. its so messy. everyone is baby learning how to walk again.

and its something that will never happen again most likely since we're so accustomed to digital now.

[bedlamsbard]

I totally understand your rage quitting now, although it's exactly the opposite for me! I was *very* into the Asgardian storyline in MCU and I hated Ragnarok with a passion - and the fandom sure made certain I knew everybody who didn't like the movie was an Idiot. Then IW and EG happened and killed all my joy for the MCU. I kinda sorta look at it without flinching nowadays, but it took somewhere around 5 years...

I think I know more people who went MCU --> Star Wars than the other way around! Weird couple of years for both fandoms. I'm a little bit of a weird outlier because I got back into Marvel well after Endgame, but a lot of what people criticize about the MCU is what I find interesting (the puzzle piece aspect). I am well aware that if I'd been consistently in Marvel since 2014 (which is when I drifted off) I'd probably have had the same rage reaction as like...everyone else I know.

I guess it's been a minute and my SW history isn't common knowledge to people who weren't around here between 2013-2021, so the lingering fury is probably confusing to people who only know me from the MCU. I was big into Star Wars from 2013-2021, from 2013-2015 on the PT/TCW side, then from 2014-2021 on the Rebels side (there's crossover), though I was also familiar with...everything. I have forgotten more about Star Wars than your average SW fan has ever known. (I was also in and out from 2007-2013, which is when some of my earlier fic like Oxygen and Rust dates from, but this is a period of time when my big fandom was actually Narnia) I'm quote-unquote "known" for Wake the Storm and Queen's Gambit in the PT/TCW, which have very consistently garnered negative responses since Wake started in 2013, and On the Edge of the Devil's Backbone in Rebels; I also used to do liveblogs of TCW and Rebels and the comics, for a while, so some of those posts are still floating around. I had a very, very bad breakup with a close fandom friend in 2016. I bounced off the ST, had an extremely negative reaction to Rebels S4 (to this day I have refused to do a full reaction post because I hated it so much I can't think about it coherently, and there were years where I couldn't think about it without spiraling), was okay with Resistance, R1, and Solo, hated Mando, hated TCW S7, hated the comics, hated the High Republic, and was still grimly hanging onto the fandom in utter misery in 2021 when the combination of hating TBB's sheer mediocrity (and the way they retconned Rebels) and the first episode of Loki hitting all of my favorite tropes like a fucking train finally knocked me out of Star Wars, to the extreme relief of everyone who knew me.

to this day I have fannish friends (who I met through Star Wars!) ready to stage an intervention if I ever seem even vaguely interested in getting back into Star Wars. I am the only person I know who looked at the Marvel fandom post-Endgame (and the Loki subfandom at any point in time, but especially while the show was airing) and went "this seems like a nice soothing place to immigrate to!" and honestly it is, people aren't as crazy anymore as they were around CW and Endgame. (Except in the Loki subfandom, which has made even me go "hmm. that's a bit much," but then I remember the egg genocide and you guys are fine, actually.)

very amusingly I actually speed-ran the Rebels experience with the Loki show -- really liked the first half, really disliked the second half -- but by that point I'd already gotten back into the rest of the MCU. I hadn't had a dramatic MCU breakup at all; I'd kept up with the films from 2008-2014 (CATWS was the last one I saw in order), but I just hadn't gotten around to seeing more than three odd ones out between 2014 and 2021 (Ragnarok, Captain Marvel, Ant-Man and the Wasp, and then I saw WandaVision early in 2021). I fandom osmosed some weird stuff that turned out not to be true.

anyway for those that don't know, that's the short version of my sordid Star Wars history! also sorry, you didn't actually, uh, ask for this.

[aria0fgold]

Just had another crazy dream in the month of February, but this time it had a rude awakening cuz it was semi-nightmare.

So like, I took a nap, and then I had a dream where I was looking at the monitor and it was like a footage of sorts where someone was showing me my HSR account. It was on the shop and it was like an ad about how all the prices are cut so low I can basically afford all of it. And while cycling through the shop items a little Dr. Ratio sitting on top of one of the top-up things appeared and so I immediately found out it was a dream.

So I had a small lucid dream-like experience and I knew it was fake so I focused on the numbers my jades had cuz I thought it'd be nice to remember the numbers of it, it was 98,3892 (Yeah, the comma is placed like that which is another dream detail, so basically I had 983, 892 jades. Oh how I wish that was true in reality too...)

But then all of sudden, the voice suddenly spoke low and said: But if you think I'm lying... WAKE UP (it grew distorted at that part).

And I did! I was basically pulled away from the dream but Not Fully Awake yet. My body wouldn't move. My eyes were sealed shut so tightly and it was dark and my dream just terrified me and I was beginning to panic. Tried to call my mom but no sound came out at all. And then I was like: Wait, panicking won't help at all, I need to calm down. So I took deep breaths then basically forcefully opened my eyes and I could finally move again.

[piglii]

I think the reason most video game to movie adaptations (and book adaptations, too) suck is that most people in charge of making movies just do not give a shit about video games as a medium and literally see it as a 1:1 conversion of money. like, “hey that hot new mario or zelda game came out this year and made $800 million dollars! if we make that into a movie, surely it will make the same amount or even more!” because most literally just see other forms of media as crude oil waiting to be made into gas. like it’s crazy to me that it seems really hard to understand the appeal in engaging with a piece of media personally yourself (or like with friends in multiplayer) as opposed to just watching it play out on a screen.

[fireleafwa]

@astrangerfromastrangeland here they are!! congee and focaccia, both are random recipes i nabbed from online a little while ago ( alexandracooks and nytimes ) and simplified for myself

You should be starting a recipe book. I don't give a shit if you're only 20-years-old. The modern web is rotting away bit by bit before our very eyes. You have no idea when that indie mom blog is going down or when Pinterest will remove that recipe. Copy it down in a notebook, physically or digitally. Save it somewhere only you can remove it. Trust me, looking for a recipe only to find out it's been wiped off the internet is so fucking sad. I've learned my lesson one too many times.

[abimee]

also i tried giving replicant a chance but i really cant fathom how this game is the more popular version the models looks like garbage the lighting and color grading of the enviroments are now wack and ugly and dare i say everyone looks inhuman compared to the life thats in the og. like i feel like ppl who like replicant are saying that out of a place of not knowing how much better gestalt is because man this game looks like horseshit

[alectepohe]

on a different note, i've been reading manga lately (as I discovered i can borrow it through the library) and the artwork is so good and makes for great references. i want to learn how to draw fabric so it looks more ~flowy~ and natural and i also want to learn more about facial expressions and drawing hair and manga is super helpful with that.

[sleep-0-deprived]

What would it be like if nerdy reader liked erotic books and liked to replicate scenes with yandere Bully?

Yandere bully x nerdy male reader reading erotic books~ ૮꒰ ྀི >⸝⸝⸝< ྀི꒱ა

Just imagining your sitting on a chair in the empty school library reading your books during study hall with your face indulged into the book occasionally peeking back over your shoulders making sure no one is behind you when you’re reading, “what’cha readin?” The voice makes your back go all stiff turning around and lo and behold your favorite obsessed bully right behind you with his grin obviously knowing what you were reading.

Just imagining you getting pulled out of the library dropping whatever piece of erotica was in your hands while he whispers something like “if ya don’t want me to tell the school what you like to read then you’ll suck me off just like that girl was doin in that pervy little book of yours?” He’d mumble pushing you on your knees making you suck at his cock through the fabric of his jeans just watching you all hard on the bathroom floor rutting your bulge into his shoes.

Just imagining you working up the courage after school to beg the Yandere to let you fuck him, you keep blurtin out how you’d “make him feel good” basically pouting like a puppy when the two of you are alone until he just gives a nod not thinking you’d fuck him any good, this man laying getting his back blown out was such a humbling experience to have such a nerdy guy on top of him holding his legs to his chest while you ramble on bout “gonna stuff you up s’much”

Just imagining you reading your erotic book getting in the middle of a smut scene sitting in his bedroom all hard practically jumping his pillows squirming when you read the book, until he walks back in that is “damn, didn’t know you were such a slut…” he’d lean against the doorframe mocking you until it happens, him ending up on top of you with you bent over in his bed while he makes you read page after page of smut, if you stop reading he stops thrusting leaving you on edge with a gruelingly slow pace.

Just imagining you laying on your back in a janitors closet after school hours while he eats your ass out messily drooling sucking on your s/c bud gripping the gloves of your asscheeks occasionally muttering out, “was that how they did it in your slutty little books” while his tongue delved deeper and deeper into your hole licking at your inner walls until they puff up with sensitivity just making you bite your bottom lip to keep quiet not wanting to be caught.

Just imagining you making it to a part of your book learning about a new act during sex, and ofcourse who’s better to try it on than your obsessed/very degrading man. You get a “huh??” Face out of him when you ask about fucking the gap between his muscular thighs but you don’t get denied?….here you were behind him groaning and heaving with your cock leaking precum all down his thighs, one hand on his hip the other on his cock while you lay your chin on the back of his shoulder “just a little longer please~” you’d beg him trying to cum while he just degrades the hell out of you not admitting his enjoyment.

[cherishedpartners]

people who havent seen the northern lights cannot understand how powerful it is to see. like me and my family were sat at two in the morning, on the steps to the sea, just. looking up. at some point i started crying because oh my god its fucking beautiful

[edwardshundredyearoldspunk]

call me a boomer sympathizer but I do think a tiny bit of the experience is lost when streaming albums that were originally released as 12 inch LPs. something about the act of interruption, something about the two act structure being lost in the translation to digital/CD. it's harder to notice and appreciate the build up that is unique to so many older albums when you don't have to physically interact with the record to get to the other side

[eowynstwin]

Be careful getting into any kind of relationship with Soap. Given the slightest excuse that man will start collecting sex toys like some guys collect ball caps. And I’m not talking about couples’ toys, I’m talking about vibrators and butt plugs and clamps and cuffs of all shapes and sizes specifically to experiment on you with.

He’s methodical about it too. Scientific almost. Plays with different combinations—manipulates his variables to see what happens when he uses this claw clamp alongside that bullet vibe, or what if he adds just a little bit of warming lube to this plug with a heart-shaped flare? What then?

What noises do you make? Do your thighs only twitch, or does he have to be careful not to make you kick him on accident? What happens if he holds the tip of the vibrator right there—oh, there it is, you’re squirting all up his arm. How interesting.

And he can’t just run these tests on you once. That would be extremely poor methodology. The results of any experiment are only valid if they can be replicated. And do try to be still while he’s working, hen, or else he’ll have to tie you down whether he planned on it or not. And then he’ll have to adjust his methodology again.

You don’t want that, do you?