#unless they're going bareboned

[dearmizumi]

Angst potential angst potential angst potential angst potential—

I love them I'm not letting go of them anytime soon nuuh they're my bb now (should also make digital art too, got too many pencil doodles ajsbsjb)

[mosspodge]

HELLO @okartichoke I AM HERE WITH MOSSY'S GUIDE ON HOW TO START SEWING: A VERY MESSY TUTORIAL

I am extremely self taught, so this is gonna be a lot of links and infodumping!!!! Hopefully this helps a even just a little bit :>

SO! I honestly got into sewing through youtube during covid, largely bc i wanted silly fun clothes! There are a loooot I could recommend to you out there, but I personally find that the more chaotic and learn-as-they-go people help me the best! Rachel Maksy and The Stitchery are, to me, some of the best to learn from! Which is honestly pretty funny since they tend to just fully wing it most of the time lol. While i could recommend excellent sewists like the amazing Bernadette Banner (who is actually the first sewing channel I watched!), I find that the more loosey goosey the process, the more i can learn, if that makes sense? I find it helpful to watch people trial-and-error their way through projects and show where they succeeded and failed since I get a better grasp on their process that way.

The best way to start sewing, in my humble opinion, is to grab whatever sewing machine you can get your hands on and play around with it! Read the manual, find a tutorial video on how to thread the machine, grab some scrap fabric and play around! You don't really need any special needles or feet (the little thing that holds the fabric down), unless you wanna get started sewing denim or velvet or something Speaking of which, learn about fabrics!!!!! I learned mostly by going to joanns, touching the fabrics, and looking at the content labels. Everything has different uses, and while two things might both be cotton, one could be knit while the other jersey (tshirt fabric). I like this video for learning the basics! Tbh this one took me a while. Usually patterns have recommendations for what fabrics to use, so that's always a good place to start!

Patterns. Ah my arch nemesis. Unless you decide to start drafting your own patterns (or get a mannequin and learn how to drape fabric), you're probably gonna need to use one. There's two major things i recommend for this: 1) Make sure there's a video tutorial online before buying, and 2) start with something you might actually use/wear. Pattern instructions are notoriously vague, but thankfully many wonderful people make video tutorials for them! And while you might be tempted to grab one of those beginner friendly patterns, they can sometimes be. real ugly and not well fitting. Also boring! Finding something you like will hold your attention better and make you actually wanna finish it!

Ok SO. getting into more of the cosplay sewing stuff. First things first my knowledge here is a bit more limited, unfortunately. Fortunately there are many wonderful people out there with tutorials!! So if you wanna learn more definitely look there!!! General tip for cosplays + more complex sewing: MAKE MOCK UPS PLEASE IT SUCKS BUT IT HELPS SO MUCH. Go find the ugliest fabric in the sale bin and buy a few yards, then use it whenever you wanna test patterns. It might be tempting to immediately start cutting and sewing the finished garment, but the truth is that patterns rarely fit perfectly well (especially if they're fitted/tighter on your body). Make an ugly, barebones version first with your bad fabric, take notes, and then start making the finished piece. It'll save you money and sanity.

As for cosplay youtubers, I heartily recommend Sarah Spaceman, since not only do her videos show her process, she also does segments teaching you more about sewing!! She tends to tackle more complex projects, and watching her take those on has helped me a lot :} For cosplay patterns etsy usually has quite a few! I like Indigo Patterns (they have a good array of loz patterns I need to buy) as well as Alice in Cosplay Land. Please note that I haven't bought from either, but both their etsy shops have wonderful reviews and I plan to buy from them in the future!

not gonna lie I am getting very sleepy so I'm gonna cut it off there for now! Hopefully my rambling helped lol. Feel free to ask me any questions or for any clarification!

[jenroses]

When i built my first PC, I'd done a few upgrades, but Youtube did not exist yet so there were not endless videos of "This is how you build a PC". It was fiddly and fussy and i barked my knuckles and I did something temporarily terrifying but it worked out okay and I built my PC. Then prices on bare bones dropped precipitously so for a while I was just buying barebones and upgrading them. It was cheaper that way.

Last year, a couple of games came out that I really wanted to play but my 8 year old laptop, which was making a yeomanlike effort with most games, was just flat out not in spec anymore. So I started to research. Looked at Linus Tech Tips, then JaysTwoCents, then Gamer's Nexus, Paul's hardware, Hardware unboxed... LTT had a great "this is how you do it and this is what each part is supposed to sound like going in, yes the crunching noise here is okay, no your board won't die if you get a little regular thermal paste on it, very reassuring. I watched a lot of build videos, and finally, after a couple of months, I ordered parts.

Infodump under the cut

Now, picking parts is COMPLEX and HARD and FINICKY and it changes all the time. You can be an expert builder, take a couple years off and ignore buiding for a while, and come back and like, all the parts are different! Which parts are good deals has changed! But the fundamentals haven't really changed all THAT much, even since my first build. It's still motherboard, processor, cooler, RAM, storage, power supply, internet device, basically... but gone are IDE and even SATA is now pretty archaic. In 2024, your RAM will look pretty similar but the hard drive is a dinosaur and your storage is now basically a high tech stick of gum. Prices are wild, too. You can build a passable computer which can play most games for about $600 with new parts, or you can spent $4000 to get get the absolute tippy toppy "best" parts, and the parts being actively used and recommend and sold right now cover about FOUR YEARS of product development. This is NUTS. Most of the systems I've built fall in the cheap-to-middling range.

They're all competent at most games, though my mother is annoyed that she's having trouble getting Civ2 up and running on Windows 11 in 2024. I do fine with Alpha Centuari from GOG, but no, that's not good enough. (I like Alpha Centauri about 1000% better than Civ2, but when you've got a game, you've got a game, I guess.)

So where to start?

Look at the Youtubes of the folks I mentioned up top, and look for their "Top X of ___" videos. Most of them will ALSO include still-on-the-market for previous year stuff! This is great!

Think about what you need and what you're doing on your system. Unless you are doing competitive gaming and are made of money, you do not need the top of the line anything. It's not necessary and most people can't make use of it unless they're doing high powered stuff for money. In which case you probably know what you need already. Most people will be fine gaming at 1440p (2k monitor) or 1080p. Unless you have a giant fancy monitor already, the pricing sweet spot is probably expecting to spend about $140-150 for a 2k, 27 inch monitor. If your monitor is at normal monitor distance from your face, larger than that is not going to be easy to adapt to. You can get 1080p monitors for cheaper, but any larger than 24-27 inches, 1080p starts to look weird, so really 1440 is kind of ideal for the kind of computer you plan on using for the next 5-10 years. I don't go for refresh rates lower than 120hz at this point, but higher than 180 is not going to be noticeable for MOST people. The monitor i recently bought for $140-ish was a 180hz refresh rate 2k curved monitor (1440p.)

Once you know what kind of monitor you're aiming for, you can get a sense from those review videos of which cards will get you to the frame rate you want. Look for the games you want to play, and people comparing them at high/ultra settings, and look at the FPS that various cards offer. Keep in mind that there's a huge amount of technology aimed at boosting fps, and the upsampling is pretty good now. Nvidea cards are stupid expensive and have the majority of market share. I don't bother with them. The cards I've bought in the past 2 years include (all AMD): (Upgrading a very old system, AMD RX 6400, 4gb graphics card.) AMD RX 6650XT for two people on very tight budgets. AMD RX 6750XT for a mid-range system. RX6800 for two pretty good systems last year. RX7600XT for a casual gamer on a newer system. RX 7800XT for the fanciest system for the most avid gamer in the family. In 2024, I strongly advise going for a card which is at least 12 gb but preferably 16gb of VRAM. More than that is not yet really necessary for most systems at 1440p. The video card is the single most expensive component in most systems. I tend to build to the graphics card, but it is reasonable to set a budget, get the most reasonable parts you can afford for the rest of the computer and spend as much as you have left on the video card. 8gb cards are not likely to give optimal results long term, and since I build computers for people who hate changing computers, the only reason I would go with a smaller-than 12gb card is for someone who just doesn't game much and is unlikely to start playing the kinds of games that need it.

Then there's the processor side of things. Until Intel screwed the pooch this year, most of what we were putting together, parts-list-wise in my family were systems which had intel processors and AMD graphics cards, because that was the sweet spot for us price-to-performance wise. But if you have an Intel 13th or 14th gen processor, you need to update your bios, and we're still not 100% confident in them, as a community. There were a LOT of bad processors the past two years. Also, AMD came out with a bunch of reasonably priced kickass gaming processors, and those will be best for people whose primary purpose is gaming. The processors we've leaned on the most heavily include: Intel 12400 and 12600 processors and Intel 13600 processors. But recently, knowing I was about to build a FAST gaming PC, I knew I needed to get an AMD X3d processor, and my purchasing timing happened to correlate with the 9800X3d dropping, and I managed to order one... but the ship date was in JANUARY. And it's a Christmas present. And Trump is talking about tariffs, which WILL send prices through the roof. So I decided to build another computer, and ordered parts for it. So in order to get onto the platform that 9800x3d processor will need, I picked another processor which uses the same motherboard and got that, too. And then ordered inexpensive versions of that motherboard and other parts, and whatdyaknow, I'm building two computers. But the principal is pretty sound: If you need to build cost effectively, get a lower end processor for the motherboard of the processor you ultimately want, and upgrade later when prices drop. So all those Intel 12600 systems could, later, upgrade to a 14900k and get a huge performance boost if needed. On AMD, they tend to stick with a given motherboard ecosystem for a VERY long time, so people who bought AMD years ago can now upgrade to a perfectly capable 5800x3d and be fine, but AMD is now in the 9000s, and getting a 7000 series processor is on the same board as a 9000 series, so most of the time that's the best deal, EXCEPT for a 7800x3d which is almost as expensive as the 9800x3d for reasons.

Other parts are simpler. RAM: 32 gb is the sweet spot, DDR5 prices have come down okay. Most games can't and won't use more than 20 or so gb, but many will use over the 16gb that used to be the standard rec. You can, however, get 16gb and upgrade RAM in a few years.

Storage: Optimum for gaming is probably your operating system on a 500 gb C drive ssd, your games on a 1, 2 or 4 terabyte SSD. New builds will use a M.2 2280 ssd, and they fluctuate somewhat in price, but the performance boost of ANY NVME drive is going to be worth it over SATA or a hard disk. If you are just wanting to upgrade, upgrading to a SSD and increasing your ram will give a new lease on life to old computers and make them feel a whole lot more functional. If you have an open PCIE slot, you can get an adaptor board to allow you to install an M.2 drive even on an older system.

pcpartpicker.com will let you make build lists and tell you if there are incompatibilities but it isn't perfect at sourcing RAM for the correct processor family. It will also help you find best current pricing, but isn't always accurate.

newegg has a pc builder function which is helpful but only if you buy all your stuff there. If you live close to a microcenter, you'll want to go there and shop their combo deals.

All the builder tools will give you a rough estimate of how much power you'll need. I go a bit over, but unless you're doing a stupid expensive build, you will be unlikely to need more than 850w for a gaming system and 600w for a "regular" system for someone who doesn't do much gaming. That allows a fair amount of headroom for upgrades, since power supplies often last the longest.

Cases are very subjective, but I've done a lot of building in Fractal G Focus cases, which are cheap, big enough for most parts and not the most convenient to build in. I dearly love the Lian Li Lancool 216 which I just built in for the first time, but it's big. REALLY nice cable routing though. Worth it just for the complete lack of barked knuckles, and the fact that you don't need to install like any extra fans beyond whatever your cooling solution is, and it's under $100. Which case you get might depend a lot on aesthetics or space considerations. Like, I paid extra NOT to have a glass side because I don't want extra lights around me, at all. My kid's has a lot of rainbow RBG. Hubby's has a glass side but minimal to no lighting.

Cooling solutions... for any higher end systems for heavy duty users (i.e. gaming a LOT with newer games, doing a lot of computationally heavy 3d modeling or whatever) I like using an aio watercooler. These can be easier to install even than air coolers now, as long as you do a little homework, and the ones I've bought were all under $100. Most users will do fine air cooling, and Gamer's Nexus has some dandy charts on gamersnexus.net that will help you figure out which coolers to use. (Hint, most of them are pretty good!) And for case fans, if you need extra, Arctic has 3-5 packs for super cheap.

But ultimately, if your computer is functioning okay for you, or just needs some upgrades and maintenance, you probably don't need to upgrade. Laptops are a whole 'nother ballgame completely. And you know how I built this system to play a couple of new games?

I ended up mostly playing my old favorites with better graphic settings. LOL.

No regrets, the system is SUPER functional and will last me years and if anything breaks I can fix it. And since then, I've helped two people buy parts, upgraded two computers and built systems for four other people and helped others put together parts list or figure out which laptop would be right for them. And the old computers? Are not ewaste yet, because the build process will allow a lot of moving around of parts to improve the old systems which can then be handed down to other family members. Even my old laptop went on to find use with another family member.

[still-a-morosexual-help]

forgive me if I'm wrong/if you've addressed something like this already, but demons can't make pacts with other demons, can they??

so how would MC go about making pacts while they're acting as a demon without giving themselves away or risking the brothers telling someone like diavolo about it? would that not make it clear that they're not who they say they are almost immediately (unless the brothers (aside form lucifer maybe) don't have a ton of pact knowledge/demon knowledge in general so soon after the fall, but I'd assume they'd at least know some things- however from an angel's perspective I wonder how much of it is unbiased)??

personally I hope something like that gets addressed in the game, I want to see MC talk their way out of that one lmao

hope you're having a nice day <3

Hi! Yeah so demons can't make a pact with demons. So they will eventually have to tell they're human. My guess is they'll help a particular brother with their issues, win his trust, the fact that they're human will get revealed and they'll make a pact (<- a barebones version of what may happen, but this is just my belief, at the time, relative to the information we've been given. I may still be way off)

The human thing is 100% not something they can keep hidden during the whole duration of their stay.

Hell, even the time travel thing might have to be revealed (at least to an extent) because at some point they're gonna have a profound bond with these past versions of the brothers and they're gonna have to poof back to their own timeline (even if all their memories of the time travel is erased, like in S3, they'll still need to say goodbye - suddenly losing another close family member with no notice right after what happened with Lilith is probably not a good thing...)

I'm also 100% sure that Diavolo knows?

• Barbatos definitely knows. He can see through timelines and alternate universes so he absolutely knows. (The op also ends with him going "🤫" right?) And if Barbatos knows then he definitely has told Diavolo.

• Diavolo can also tell when someone is lying. He even knew Belphie was in the Devildom throughout S1 (he told MC in the very first or second lesson that they would be living with all 7 brothers despite Lucifer telling him Belphie was sent to the human world. There's also another moment, I believe, where he casually mentions Belphie still being in the house)

Hope you have a nice day too! <3

[samuelroukin]

hi! not here in favor of you making Actual Books (i don't even read any of the newly published books anymore for reasons and reasons and reasons), just complimenting your work in general

i dont really care for cod at all but i really enjoy how you write the characters!! and tbh the only reason i watched some playthroughs of the games was so i could understand your work better. sure, fandom is the main reason people click in, but it's definitely not why they're staying. and it's not why people are writing paragraphs of praise to your stubborn ass even though you work so hard to never listen to any of it 💖

also id be enchanted to hear more about your ocs on future works or even here on tumblr!! you're great at creating made up people that actually feel real. they're pretty round (funnily enough that is the actual technical term), even when you don't tell us a lot about them

also 👀👀 say you have original stuff in mind?????? i would love love love love love to know more about that!! you're getting pretty darn good at worldbuilding and ambiance. better with each update now that you're trying out this AU thing. it would be infinitely interesting to see what you come up with when working with your own stuff only

anyway what i mean is. even though I don't quite believe in Published Books on this day and age, please know that your writing is definitely good enough for the editorial market (even more so now that those dark romance things are going mainstream and a lot of them read like the stuff 12yos post on wattpad. what tf is the deal with that? but I digress. out of those circles your work is still definitely good enough) it's legit like Good Work, even if the tiny mean bully whispering in your ear disagrees. it's good realism. good introspection. good porn and also good narrative and great junction of those. it's lovely seeing how far you've come in so little time and we're excited to see you reach new heights in the future (because you will, with absolute certainty, unless you stop. but i don't think you could really stop yourself at this point lmao)

and please know that achieving that level of quality with no help or instruction or training in so little time is a grand fucking accomplishment

point is: Who Care? We Care (even if we're not an enormous audience)(...yet?). and not just because it's cod

it's def a nice compliment to get thank u 🙏💖

and so is you reading my stuff without caring much for cod! though i wouldn't be able to write this much about them without (clearly) being completely insane about Them and the basis the games laid (haha laid) because without them i'd be nowhere at all, these characters are so. well they clearly took over my brain lol, though i worry a Lot about them being ooc when i write them 💀

i actually feel like my guys are so barebones and one dimensional rip, which is fine since i mostly created them as little more than a joke and they're just being used as set dressing, so that means a lot 🙏

my Main story is this sprawling urban fantasy thing, which if i ever did write it would need serious adjustments since it's. old and not aged very well. the gist of it was the main character (30 year old barista) has Visions, cue road trip with his bestie (ex bf from high school that he reconnected with years later) to figure out The Deal after they suddenly get much worse. it's about that on the surface, and below about dealing with missed chances and not living up to ur potential. it sounds stupid but i've been Thinking about it since i was like 14 so cringe is to be expected lol

lsklhkjhffghst yeah no offense to them but despite this fic being what it i i wouldn't really want to fall into that category even if that sound like i think i'm better than them (i'm not it's just not my thing. or i guess it is and i just have a superiority complex. anyway) um thank you once again 🥺i def feel like i haven't improved a lot but you're dead on about not being able to stop myself anyway lmao

idk why you're being this nice to me but 💖💖💖

[zmediaoutlet]

hello. huge fan of ur fics. do u think sam and dean/deanna could ever get past their internal cringe to explore petplay.

friendo I want so much to be the person who responds to this with a nice 2k of porn that would suit your lowercase desires, esp since you have been so nice to say you like my fics, but sadly I cannot get over my own internal cringe to write you some Sam/Dean(na) petplay. I can only apologize.

But also, yeah, I don't really see them doing it either. I mean -- unless I'm missing the mark entirely, and someone please let me know if I am -- petplay is essentially formalized D/s with different props, right? Like when you get down to the (milk)bones of it. If you like my fics you know that I'm obv into a certain amount of power play, even skating right up to the edge of properly formalized D/s, but with Sam and Dean specifically I just... can't get to that spot of like actual rules/roles/props being taken seriously enough to really make it... work. Like this is the same reason I never write Dean calling Sam 'sir' or them using the traffic light system or whatever the hell. That's just... not how they operate, together. (Barring like 10k of lead-up for why they might, obv.) Calling your brother your good little puppy is just. A bit beyond the beyond.

Now, I can sorta see it entering as a joke. Like, they're at a sex store and Dean sees one of those plug tails and makes a joke and next time they're in bed he half-assedly pretends he's wagging and they laugh about it. And then maybe it slips into something a tiny bit more serious? Sam says good boy and Dean's dick says, oh, yes, he's a very good boy indeed. But even so that's not about the pet, that's about everything else. With all that though I also can't see it fully getting into the like -- paw glove thingies and ear headbands or masks or whatever.

As far as Deanna's concerned, I feel like that's WAY less likely although if we spin it from dogs to cats then maaaaybe Sam could make some crack about her being a lazy house cat and she squints an eye at him and goes meow and he gets a weird catgirl boner, lol, but even so. If they're gonna do powerplay they're going to do it barebones, and not rawhide bones.

[asteriasfallingstarsandtears]

Not tagging this because I don't really want to contribute to the general discourse, but man, I am annoyed at the letter change. I've seen people be like oh but it looks better and fine, whatever, glad you do, but it doesn't change it takes away the nuance in a character that already has so fucking little in a game that he's supposed to be one of the three last antagonists of the game.

What was wrong with those letter beyond one single typo? Why did they need to change? Why could these new letters not be added in in addition to these existing letters.

Act 3 is a fucking disaster as is, Orin and Gortash get so little screen time, and what they do get, you can tell the actors are giving it their all. Besides that, we have a few scattered notes that give us backstory that are all optional and easily missed. If you don't go to the House of Hope and talk with the dwarf and find like one? Note, you don't find out that Gortash was sold to the Hells and was tortured daily. If you don't find his parents, you don't get the details of why he was sold and how his parents fucking despised him as a child.

Orin is likewise the same, you do have to face Sarevok to get the amulet to get into the Temple, but unless you go into his office, you won't learn before the Temple that Orin and Helena were victims of their father's abuse. If you don't use talk with the dead on Helena you miss out on a lot of how she gave everything to Sarevok and Bhaal only to be deemed as nothing more than a womb to be filled and a sacrifice to her God.

You have to find this note or talk with Helena to confront Orin and make her question what happened and force Bhaal's hand and see just how bad the abuse and trauma of Orin and by extension Durge and every Bhaalspawn mentioned in the game has undergone for Bhaal.

You have to undergo very specific actions in very specific orders to unlock memories for Durge and a number of notes just do not exist in the game if you are not playing the Durge, or are replaced by other notes that do not tell the story of Orin, Durge and the Temple of Bhaal.

Orin gets more attention given to her stuff than Gortash ever does. You cannot confront Gortash with your knowledge. There's hardly anything for you to do with him with the information you can gather.

So taking away from an already barebones character frankly (ha) sucks.

And before anyone tried to say something, no, this is not me excusing anyone's actions, they did what they did, they're all serial killers, slavers, and worse. Whatever, it's a game, they're very clearly Bad(tm), but they're also very interesting characters who have their stories squandered.

If you can't understand why this bothers someone, imagine your favourite character being rewritten for the worse post game and think about how much that would suck for your enjoyment of the character.

Might delete later, but wanted to express my feelings and thoughts on the matter.

[caparrucia]

What's IA and why is it relevant? Lol

So I'm gonna answer this in good faith, but I will point out that this is a very weird query to send to a stranger. This is the kind of basic research you should do on your own whenever you encounter topics you don't understand. Like, if you're at the bare bones basic, starting point of a discussion, it is actually very rude to walk up to a stranger participating in that discussion and ask them to give you the primer. Don't do that online, certainly do not do that in meatspace. Your teachers and professors are paid for their time to educate you, random strangers are not and unless they've clearly and openly signaled they're available to provide that kind of barebones, basic primer? Exceedingly rude to just feel entitled to demand that explanation from them.

If you don't know where to start, start with google. I know, google is not great these days, but you can add ?udm=14 to the base google URL to get the strict results, no AI slop added. Or you can bookmark this:

From a basic google search you can then go to wikipedia for a more in depth primer, and hunt down the sources and citations to track down more thorough explanations and resources.

Once you have a more nuanced understanding of the topic you can also search for forums and communities where the topic is discussed and track down more resources there if you need them.

But you have to do it. Because you have to be responsible for your own learning.

And also because asking random strangers, disregarding the matter of manners entirely, subjects you to their bias. Case in point, I will, as I said, answer the query in good faith, but that's a good faith answer with my bias. And because they're my bias, I can't signal them out for you. I might not even know they're biases.

Do yourself a favor and get in the habit of not delegating all your perspectives and opinions to others. Your very sense of self is built in your convictions. You become the person you want to be, by sculpting yourself with knowledge. You do yourself a disservice by letting other people determine who you are and what you should think.

That said!

IA stands for the Internet Archive, which you might know for their URL, www.archive.org They're a US based non profit organization dedicated to archival work effort. Their most famous and well-known project is the Wayback Machine, a webcrawler archive that maintains records of a good chunk of the lightnet. The lightnet, surface web, indexable web or accessible web is the part of the internet that can be reached through the use of standard, common web tools like browsers (windows edge, google chrome, mozilla firefox, etc) and search engines (google, bing, duckduckduck, etc). This is the thing that a lot of people are worried about being lost, since a good chunk of the last thirty years of the internet no longer exists or is accessible anywhere else. They also curate digital collections of materials otherwise unavailable to wider audiences, like out of print books, music, tv shows, and other media.

The Internet Archive is relevant because it is a well-established, well-known institution in the sphere of conservation that plays a crucial role in the preservation of modern, contemporary history. They have under their stewardship countless, invaluable assets that are simply not available anywhere, and they are one of the most public, vocal advocates for digitalization of and, in their view, access to information.

The conversation surrounding access to information and also accessibility of resources as well as the crucial role libraries play in their communities, often in the physical world and which cannot be digitalized by their nature as a Third Space, is a nuanced, often thorny one. Mostly because people whose idealism stops at ideas and has never contended with the practical application of any of those ideas, are very bad at understanding that they live in a nuanced, imperfect world and there is no true one size fits all solution to literally anything.

This particular group is having A Really Rough Time handling the fact their darling IA fucked up spectacularly in a preventable, observable way, and are trying desperately to silence any criticism about the IA leadership - which is... flawed, to say it politely - by screaming about bootlicking and fantasizing about The Great Revolution that will surely come one day to fix all of their problems.

It's all very Evangelical, if you ask me about it.

But then, most Americans are Culturally Evangelical and don't even realize it. So!

It's what it is.

[space-blue]

may we know what is the crumbs 3 wip? 👀

Aha! It's the 3rd chapter of the fic A Trail Of Crumbs whose concept I adore but fell out of love with when I stumbled out of the Avatar fandom.

It follows Recom Miles Quaritch after the events of the film, lone survivor back on base and wrestling with the increasing dread brought about by a series of 'crumbs' he picks up on over time. RDA staff say and do weird things. The way he's treated seems odd. Ah, and his fucking custom watch. The tattoos they all have... Stuff doesn't really add up.

The goal of the fic was to explore the nature of the 'soul drives', how edited recom memories are, and the growing realisation that Miles isn't anywhere near his old human self, not any more than any other Marine with a similar background.

It was pure vibes of Blade Runner, artificial memories, created as a sentient tool unaware of their own artificiality beyond the obvious, etc.

In the end, I think I explored the concept better in this short comic in Mansk POV.

Chapter 3 crumbs is the incomplete conversation between Aslan and Miles, hinting at past Miles/Parker Selfridge. I stuck to dialogue only towards the end so it grows barebones, but I'll put what I have under the cut for the curious because I honestly don't think I'll finish this unless Avatar 3 makes me its bitch again.

'Why did you come back to Pandora?'

'Well, we landed in fanfare, as you can imagine.'

Yes, Miles can well imagine the media shit-storm so politely labelled fanfare. There's a part of him he's not particularly proud of that is glad his own death allowed him to skip this particular shitshow. He'd been, after all, the man in charge of operations at the time. Had pulled rank and everything. The media would have vivisected his career, his entire being. It's unlikely to have been much kinder to other RDA personal, returning with their tails between their legs.

'And in the middle of all this, my family...' Aslan gnaws on their lip, their faraway look snapping back to Miles with sudden intensity. 'We weren't really friends, you and I. You weren't one to hang out with the "science pukes", right? You'd know about my family if you had. I used to complain quite vocally whenever I got a comm from them. The old vent, you know. Anyway, let's say they were there, at the landing pad, waiting for me. In the middle of all that... fanfare.'

They look through the blinds, over the blighted landscape of concrete and metal, crawling with bots and shivering with heat and ship exhaust fumes.

'I signed up for the next mission over.'

Miles nods politely. He knows the type of family they're alluding to. He's met people who worked on the Mars terraforming program off world, because restoring Uganda's water table wasn't far enough of a getaway. Pandora's one of the furthest frontiers known to mankind. Different appeal to the science pukes, who generally arrive thrilled to go pull up grass, but dysfunctional families are universal, and to many RDA workers, the distance is a bonus.

He goes to say some platitude, that he understands, because really, he does. But Aslan cuts him off with a sharp hand gesture.

'Can we cut the crap, General? I mean Miles. You're not interested in my family, and you're keeping me away from the deeply fascinating samples I've come all the way here to put under a microscope, so let's just talk.'

Miles is struck by the sudden realisation that he's got no easy segway ready to start on the whole RDA conspiracy thing. He turns a few sentences over in his mind, growing discomfort flattening his ears to his skull. Should he threaten Aslan? Ask plainly? He's burning to cut the crap, as asked. But Aslan is also the one who'd gone to great pains to arrange a believable meeting between them, who'd seeded fear into his mind.

The manual had held no hint when he consulted it. The term soul drive had an asterix to an appendix that wasn't in the book.

'Something bothering you?'

Miles smiles tightly. 'You can tell?'

'You have a long way to go before you obtain a Na'vi poker face. I suggest you stay away from the Thursday games.'

To hell with it. It's not like he expects he'll make it past the court martial, the way things are going.

'Why do your people tattoo us?'

'You flatter me if you think me this involved, but that happens on the ship over, with a crew well out of my jurisdiction.'

A deflection. He'll be damned. 'I'd appreciate an answer,' he says, putting steel into his voice. 'Of the straight kind, too, if you can manage those.'

'A jab at my sexuality? Too easy. Is the tattooing what's bothering you? Really?' Aslan's smile is knowing, the light in their eyes dances with unwholesome mischief.

'Let's say that I've tried and failed to find a better starting point.'

'All right then. Let's do a short test. Answer my questions fast and truthfully.'

Miles relaxes. 'Sure.'

'Year of birth?'

'2104.'

'Do you have a son?'

'...Yes.'

'What was his mother's name?'

'Paz Socorro.'

'What year was she born?'

'I...'

'Am not sure?'

'I don't think we discussed it, but—'

'You had her file. She was one of yours, wasn't she? Surely you remember how old she was?'

'I think—'

But Aslan doesn't let him catch his breath. 'Who was Parker Selfridge to you?'

Miles sits straight, ears point to attention now. Will Aslan also reek of fear if he answers 'friend', no matter how much of an overstatement the word might feel? Heck, they asked for fast answers, so he says, 'He wasn't exactly my boss, but he was the Head suit in charge.'

'I need an honest answer,' they say, rasping a knuckle on the table.

Miles has his jaw hanging. What do they want from him?

'Do you recall leaning in his doorway?' Aslan continues, hardly slowing down. 'Poring over maps together?'

'Well, we...'

'Do you remember the way he laughed at your jokes? You leaned into the corny dad humour and he loved it. Do you remember your mug?'

'Yes.'

'Do you remember how you got it?'

'...Selfridge? Wasn't it Paz?'

'That's a question, so I'll take it as a no. Moving on to—'

'All right, all right. You've made your point.'

'What point do you think this is?'

'My memories are incomplete.'

'No, Miles.' Aslan sighs and sinks into their chair. 'Your memories are edited.'

It's somewhat depressing that of all the emotions he feels in that moment, surprise is not one of them

'Look at it this way. The machine scours your neural pathworks, and bounces memories. But it can't recreate the events that got you there, and it can't recreate what you blocked even from your own wakeful memory. Things you've forgotten, things you've hidden under too many layers, things you've trained to look away from.'

'So we're missing chunks?'

'Yes, all soul drives are inherently incomplete. That's why the technology isn't widespread. But that's not it. When you're in the machine, they can trigger memory chains. It helps map out... Look, it's hard to simplify, especially since it's not my specialty either, but they can snip out entire sections, like cauterizing a thought beyond surface level, or blot out all emotional reactions to a concept.'

'Are you saying... Do you actually mean the RDA edited the story of my life like a fucking home movie?'

They shrug. 'Yeah. That's the gist of it.'

'That in the contract I signed?'

'Of course not. Come on, colonel, you worked private long enough to have seen this coming. What? Do you think they'd give a fuck if you had issues with your situation?'

Miles rubs a shaky hand over his eyes, trying his best to remember the sound of Parker's laugh. 'Are you— Are you saying Selfridge and I were close—'

'Close is a good euphemism.'

'—and they erased so much of it, I freaked the shrink out by referring to him as a friend?'

Aslan tuts. 'Bad move.'

Miles gives them a sickly sweet smile. 'What a shame nobody warned me about the nature of this assessment!'

[kogameh]

Uh, OC related thing

I did some ✨️significant updates✨️ to the main 6 characters' Toyhouse pages, so just in case anyone actually noticed "wait, since when this got added?" or you know, want to read them now BEFORE it gets overwhelmed with MORE characters, here you go!!! YAYYYY

➡️➡️You can view them HERE. (mainly the first section of characters. I've yet to update the rest lol)

And now the patch notes(?) under the cut:

The most significant update is the fact that their character description AND backstory now has at least 3 paragraphs. It's not as intimidating as it may sound, but I can 1000% predict only like 3 people max would actually read those, so welp. (HUGE special thanks if you do though!!! You're the REAL MVP here.)

This was mainly because I don't want to oversimply them too much to the point it felt too tropey/barebones and I'm putting away their longer/more fleshed out Weebly profiles (for now) which also means there's no access to that for the few people that may want to know more. So. Yeah. (I try to keep them relatively spoiler-free unless mentioned, though, which is why some characters may have less information than the others. Namely Kagami and Kureha haha.)

(Then again, I've learned the hard way that even a shorter one sentence of paragraph won't make a difference if people just, well, don't want to read them haha...so might as well go big or go home)

The moodboards are changed to be properly aligned with the rest of the sections now. I still don't know if I prefer the older, bigger layout where you can appreciate the artworks better or this one that is way cleaner and satisfying to look at haha. I do worry if it's much easier to scroll past them this way though...you wouldn't want to miss the cat on Kureha's page. Would you.

You can compare the old layout with the new layout here and here if you want to, albeit they're different characters aha.

I also reset the favourites for them, so if you have a TH acc and want to fav or re-fav, feel free to do so!!

And I guess that's about it! Not much else to say about the rest than some added trivia section (which I often update quietly whenever an idea strikes anyway lol) and fixing some outdated links :3c

With the Weebly site being temporarily put on hiatus(?) from new updates I also realize there isn't a way to thoroughly share the lore and worldbuilding anymore which TH isn't meant for so...I WILL finish that crash course powerpoint eventually for that purpose. Surely. SURELY.

Thanks for tuning in~

[the-ratronaut]

So I've been replaying the Alan Wake series and its connected games in preparation for playing Alan Wake 2 and I just felt like putting down my thoughts on Alan Wake and American Nightmare down. Nothing too intensive, just some random thoughts and critic I've had about them. Spoilers for those two 10+ year old games below. It's also long so, like, be aware of that lol.

Alan Wake:

God this game shows its age lol. It's such an XBox 360 game. Like you know the devs were super, super proud of their physics system when they made the game 'cause physics objects are everywhere and they really want you to play with them.

This is one of the most "wears its influences on its sleeves" horror games and unlike most of those it's mostly not based on Lovecraft (though it is partially). It's goddamn Steven King.

The combat is really barebones, but at the same time really tight. It works suprising well and hasn't aged too badly. Like shit maybe it's the sound taken make when you kill them but it's super satisfying to shot shit in this game. The poltergeist encounters can be a little annoying at times though and the fast Taken are always a slog unless they get stuck on a corner or something.

I always really liked the narrative devices of the manuscript pages. Giving the player a chance to see what's going on off screen or getting glimpses into the inner worlds of your nonpoint-of-view characters if they're diligent about exploring your world is such a fun idea. It's something you don't get to see in video games often but do see a lot in literature, so it fits very well here. Not to mention letting the player see glimpses of the near future is fun as well.

The DLC chapters are really funny conceptually because you know they spawned out of someone saying "Hey, you know that gimmick mechanic we had in literally the last five minutes of the game and nowhere else that we did nothing with? We should actually use that for something."

Also I do like how literally everything after the main story of Alan Wake is trying to resolve the resolution to Alan Wake. Like Alan did exactly what he needed to do to fix everything, but fuck it this man is really struggling to actually save himself from his own self sacrifice.

Alan Wake American Nightmare:

Once again, this game shows it's age. It's a very XBox 360 game, though the devs clearly put some thought into how to improve the original game's formula. Their conclusion was to make the combat quicker and more varied and I can't say they were wrong. I will say that the over abundance of ammo and ease of killing foes does make this a bit less scary though. This is much more of an action game than the original and the presence of an "arcade mode" makes me think that was the intention.

This is one of the better handled time loop stories I think I've seen. Though the duration of the loop is short, everyone involved quickly gets a grasp of what's happening and, suprising, they all are able to grow very competent. By the last loop, missions that took an entire act to finish are literally set up for you to complete when you enter the area. People learn from their mistakes and make sure not to make those mistakes again. It's such a pleasure to see people placed in this odd situation act like rational people.

The situation with Serena is super fucking unfortunate. Like, fuck. If you play this game, make sure to go turn on the light for her in the second and third loops. It's fully an unmarked optional event, but, like, fuck no one deserves that.

The ending is, annoyingly, a little misleading. Leading some people to see this game as non-canon. Like, I definitely get that but the post credits scene makes the situation a bit more clear... shame it's easy to accidentally skip tho. Cutscenes in general are too easy to accidentally skip in this game.

[kieuecaprie]

KieueCaprie's Games Completed List of 2022 #43: Armored Core For Answer

Started: (i don't remember) Finished: 28/12/22

I have mixed opinions about 4th gen Armored Core as a whole and I don't really know how to go about it without sounding like an overly negative mid 2010's youtuber. Maybe the best way to go about this is the classic sandwich.

Experiencing Armored Core's 4th gen games after playing through 1st, 2nd, and 3rd's felt like I was being given Human+/OP-INTENSIFY from the get go and told to go buckwild. Movement is fluid and fast, you could actually keep the jets rolling while on the ground, and the overall gameplay is so much better. Hell, you could even shoot weapons with NEXTs that ordinarily ACs would have to stop to use (unless they're a tank-legs user).

AC4 felt a little too barebones but I liked it enough to want to play through 4A and, well, I liked early-game enough and the story is definitely more in-your-face compared to the previous gens. And some of the missions in 4A were a step-up from 4's, which is to be expected. And my favorite thing, the arena, came back so naturally, I had to play through it before I could even progress any further.

That was a mistake.

Y'see, in the Armored Core games, there's a shop where you could buy new equipment for your mechs, ACs/NEXTs, to use in combat and the arena tends to be an exercise in "How can I cheese these encounter?/How should I build my AC/NEXT to take on this dude who uses six guns at once?" but... you don't get much to play around with without playing the story first. The shop was empty when I first started 4A until I actually started doing missions.

Speaking of missions, I liked some of the early missions/NEXT battles, they were pretty fun to zip around in! But... well, I started to loathe the late-game missions due to the sheer difficulty spikes. One mission would be absolutely easy while the one afterwards would be a complete nightmare to play, even with the "optimal" build.

Even late-game missions where you had to fight enemy NEXTs became an exercise in frustration! Even with the best stuff I could find (I didn't even find out about the busted Kojima (yeah, i know) missiles until I was at the very end!), it was very much a fight against an AI who had infinite energy, infinite ammo, and seemingly infinite Primal Armor, it felt like it was less about skill and more about luck at that point.

And there were times I missed the optional parts when I kept getting stunlocked by rockets and missiles to the point where I absolutely started hating the game. At least the Souls games, where stunlocks on players is king, gave you a quick out! In Armored Core, you'd still be left hanging on slivers of HP that, for some reason, the missiles can't quite breach thanks to your PA but you still get stunlocked anyway.

But when the game had its high points, it was a brief glimpse at how perfect it could've been, barely getting by on whatever was left of your armor but managing to complete the mission anyhow or zipping by lasers from an Arms Fort only to put it to a swift end with a strike from your MOONLIGHT laser blade.

But, in the end, I don't have a very high opinion of Armored Core 4. Had I played it first instead of Armored Core 1, I might've appreciated it much more but playing it after finishing up the first three numbered games just made me appreciate the slower combat so much more, although that one had issues as well.

That is not to say that Armored Core 4 and For Answer is bad. There's a lot of things I genuinely like about it. I just don't think or don't know if it's even a good fit for me. I like the high-speed gameplay but at the same time, dealing with enemies that are essentially hopping around like they're playing a match of Quake 3 Arena is exhausting. (which is ironic because that's most of the arena opponents in 2nd and 3rd gen arenas)

[mytragedyperson]

My OCs

TW: towards the end there are mentions of a lesbian being outed, homophobia, murder, kidnapping, child experimentation, and trauma.

So, for a while I've had a group of OCs that are, like my main characters. Not just one or two either. Basically what I'm posting here is the bases for my OCs. So, whenever I go to write a story with them, i start with this and then change their personalities and backstories as needed. I figured I could put that basic information here and ask the tumblrverse to send me questions and stuff about these characters. This is so I can deepen their characterisation. They're not limited to a high school setting. That's just so I have some frame of reference for a timeline for these characters. Some have more information than others, because some of these characters I've had longer.

Also, if any of you have read or do read my Girl meets World x OCs story, the Serena Willis and Mason Lane in that story will probably have different personalities to the Serena and Mason described here, because they're in the Girl Meets World universe.

You'll see most of them kinda revolve around each other. These characters weren't made for a specific story. They're almost placeholders. They just kinda exist in my head and jump into any scenario i need. So here is the most basic barebones information about each. It's not a lot of information.

Hayley Riley is a bisexual woman who has blonde hair, hazel eyes, and caramel-colored skin. She is confident, though cold, distant, and uncaring at times. She is playful and sarcastic around her friends and is a good listener who gives good advice. She is protective and the most likely to get into a physical fight, though her words can be just as hurtful. Hayley can be very guarded around people she doesn't know well. She is attracted to both men and women, with a preference for someone's personality over their appearance.

Teagan Jane (TJ) Smith is an energetic, outgoing, tomboyish girl who is playful and enjoys pranking people. She is protective of close friends, romantic partners, and family members. She is a lesbian and doesn't get along well with her homophobic mother, though she has a very good relationship with her dad. She is clumsy and has red hair and grey eyes.

Alice Michaelis is Teagan Jane Smith's (TJ's) best friend. The three have been friends since they were five years old. Alice is fairly quiet but confident, graceful, and loves reading, especially fantasy books. She is polite, friendly, and distant unless around her friends, family, or romantic partners, with whom she is more playful. She is smart, peaceful, sweet, and caring, and the least likely to physically fight someone, preferring to use her words. She is attracted to men and women. Alice has dark blue hair, light blue eyes, pale white skin, and a gothic, doll-like appearance.

Ryder is an emo who has been friends with Hayley, Alice, and TJ since middle school. He's very guarded, moody, and sarcastic towards most people, but can be slightly more open and playful with his close friends and twin brother, Oliver. He's protective of his friends and Oliver and is willing to fight, like Hayley. He's also the second most likely to fight in the group. Ryder is attracted to both men and women but doesn't engage in casual hookups or dating just for the sake of it. He has black hair, blue eyes, pale white skin, and an emo look and style.

Aiden has been friends with Hayley, TJ, and Alice since middle school. He is friendly, responsible, and the voice of reason in the group. Aiden is the peacekeeper, keeping the more chaotic members of the group from going too far. He is the best listener and the best at giving advice. He’s protective but less likely to physically fight than the rest of the group, except Alice. He prefers to deescalate conflict, both within the group and outside it, and is unlikely to be actively rude or mean on purpose. Aiden is smart, kind, and one of the more open and trusting members of the group. He has light brown hair and brown eyes. Aiden is also the most athletic and sporty member of the group.

Mason is the final member of the friend group of Hayley, TJ, Alice, Ryder, and Aiden. He joined the group last, moving to the small town they live in during their freshman year of high school (or equivalent age in non-high school settings). Mason is very energetic, outgoing, playful, and jokey. He is the biggest prankster of the group and often teams up with TJ to prank the others. Mason is the most rebellious member of the group but is not mean or rude. He is the most open and trusting member, friendly to anyone who isn’t actively being mean to him or his friends. Mason is the “golden retriever” friend—energetic, slightly forgetful, and airheaded but not completely dumb. He has green eyes and his hair is naturally dark brown, but he dyed it purple with Alice's help. Alice naturally has blonde hair, which she dyes dark blue.

Reece is the golden boy of the school, with blonde hair and blue eyes. He's very athletic and is the captain of the football team. He's also very smart and one of the top students in every class. Reece is rich and popular, known for his kindness and friendliness towards everyone. He's always willing to help others and is often tasked with showing new students around the school. He used to be friends with Hayley, TJ, Alice, Ryder, and Aiden in middle school but gradually stopped hanging out with them as much before high school. They are still civil with him, but he's no longer really part of their friend group. He briefly dated Hayley in middle school, but they mutually broke up, deciding they were better as friends. He currently dates the golden girl of their school, Everley.

Everley is the golden girl of the school, with blonde hair and green eyes. She's very athletic and the captain of the cheer squad. She's also very smart and one of the top students in her school. Everley is rich, popular, kind, and friendly. She's always willing to help and take on additional responsibilities. She was never a member of Hayley, Alice, TJ, Ryder, and Aiden's friend group. Everley is currently dating Reece.

Serena Willis is the best friend of Reece and Everley. She has black hair and blue eyes. She's rich, athletic, and smart, like Reece and Everley, but isn't as friendly or helpful. Serena can be mean, rude, and snobby at times. She is a closeted bisexual who pretends to be straight and is also fairly cunning. Serena used to be friends with Hayley, Alice, TJ, Ryder, and Aiden but gradually stopped talking to them, like Reece. Serena and Reece have been friends practically all their lives as their parents were also friends. Serena used to have a secret crush on Hayley in middle school but never told anyone. She is currently dating Jason McCall. Serena is the vice captain/co-captain of the cheer team when in a high school setting.

Ryder and Oliver are identical twins with a close brotherly relationship but have very different personalities and friend groups. While Oliver is polite and friendly towards Ryder's friends, Ryder is much more dismissive of Oliver's friends and doesn't really talk to them. When he does interact with them, Ryder treats them similarly to how he treats anyone who isn't Hayley, TJ, Alice, Aiden, Mason, Oliver, Serena, or Reece—sarcastic, moody, kind of rude, and generally uninterested in talking to them. Oliver has the same black hair, blue eyes, and pale white skin as Ryder, but his style is much less emo. Oliver is more open and friendly, outgoing, nice, and popular. He has a much cheery disposition compared to his moody brother. Oliver generally likes people and is not rude, mean, or moody. He can be playful but isn't really sarcastic. He's more likely to light-heartedly tease and joke than make witty remarks or sarcastic quips. Oliver is one of the nicer members of his own friend group, being the second nicest. Oliver is athletic and on the football team.

Jason McCall is the popular bad boy and heartbreaker/player of the school/town. He's very flirty, playful, and confident. Jason is also athletic and is on the football team. He is dating Serena and is friends with Oliver, Ryder's twin brother. He has a twin sister named Jasmine, who is also in his friend group. Jason has a rebellious streak and can be cruel at times. He is attracted to both men and women but only dates women, as he doesn't want anyone to know he likes both. He has dark brown hair, blue eyes, and is muscular and athletic looking.

Jasmine McCall is Jason's twin sister and is friends with Jason and Oliver. She's very much the popular, cool girl—cool, calm, and collected. Jasmine is friendly towards most people and can be a flirt, mostly with guys but occasionally with girls. She's a loyal and trustworthy friend and sister who jokes around a lot and can be sarcastic. Jasmine tends to hide her emotions unless she's around her friends. She is generally nice but can be a bit mean and manipulative when she feels threatened by or jealous of someone. Jasmine has dark brown hair and grey eyes. She is on the cheer team when in a high school setting, making her quite athletic.

Carson is friends with Jason, Jasmine, and Oliver. He's a flirt and a heartbreaker who doesn't care about his partner's gender and is unashamed about his heartbreaker ways. Carson is very confident, chill, and relaxed. He doesn't really care about anyone who isn't his family or friends but remains popular due to his charisma, charm, and humor. He's protective of his friends and is very playful and jokey around them. Carson is on the football team and has light brown hair and green eyes.

Carly and Melissa are friends with Jasmine, Jason, Oliver, and Carson. Carly and Melissa are also cousins.

Carly is an outgoing, bubbly, girly girl who loves hanging out with and meeting new people. She loves fashion, gossip, and makeup. Carly is very sweet and friendly, being the nicest member of the friend group. She is a massive social butterfly and has brown hair and brown eyes.

Melissa, her cousin, has black hair and green eyes. Melissa is not as girly as Carly and is the biggest rebel of their group, though she isn't really mean. She is sarcastic, playful, and sassy. Melissa is protective of her friends, especially Carly, and can be quite distant and cold toward those she doesn't know well.

Both Carly and Melissa are athletic, popular, and on the cheer team. They have a close relationship as cousins.

Yes, most of these characters are attracted to both, this is mostly for shipping purposes, so I can have them get with anyone.

Additional information:

I go back and forth on the reason, like whether it's just rich girl problems or more traumatic and it generally depends on the story, but Hayley's parents aren't really around a lot and her house is the one they usually have, like, sleepovers at her house and stuff.

In a supernatural world they are the following:

Hayley is a vampire witch hybrid (born a witch, turned into a vampire)

TJ is a demon

Alice is a fallen angel

Ryder and Oliver are vampires

Aiden is a werewolf.

Mason is a magic user (Witch/Wizard/Sorcerer, either way he was born with magic)

Jason and Jasmine are werewolves because Teen Wolf + McCalls = I now have to make the McCall twins werewolves.

Carly is a witch werewolf hybrid (mum's a witch, dad's a werewolf, born both)

Melissa is a witch vampire hybrid. (Mum is Carly's mum's sister and also a witch, dad is a vampire. In my suprenatural AU, Vampires can be either born or turned but it is hard for vampires to have children and so most vampires are turned, not born)

I haven't really decided what Carson, Serena, Everley and Reece are. Kinda like the idea of Serena being a siren or mermaid but, like, in a H2O just add water way, where they can walk on land but if it rains bam, mermaid tail, because that's comedy folks.

Everley, Reece and Carson I don't know. I kinda want them to be something I haven't mentioned here. I'll probably do some supernatural research to find something, maybe in the faefolk area for Everley and Reece? I don't know. I feel like i used to think of Carson as a werewolf vampire hybrid but i have enough werewolf and vampires so i think I'll change that after some research.

I tagged them with first and last names. Anyone not with a last name I haven't decided yet. I'm sure i did think if last names for all of them but I can't remember some of them.

Sometimes I make the fallout between Serena and the others messy with the backstory that Serena outed TJ as lesbian, which resulted in TJ's mom kicking her out and living with Hayley instead.

that's not always canon though

TJ does usually end up living with Hayley either way.

Hayley's parents (if they're alive) are cool with TJ living with them.

Whenever I think of them with superpowers, it's usually the Hayley crew as villains, and the double J squad (Jason and Jasmine) as heroes.

the Hayley crew were kidnapped and experimented on and trained. They eventually became more powerful than their captors and killed them to escape and were labelled as villains ever since

Oliver was at a friend's house or something when Ryder was kidnapped and thought he was dead

Hayley was five and watched her parents get murdered before she was taken

TJ was probably sold or given to the people experimenting.

Sometimes, my characters get to just live happily and be chaotic. Other times i give them serious trauma and then make them suffer.

[whumpster-fire]

"True except this is a real company"

Not as far as I can tell unless something really, really weird is going on with this company.

They have a website, yes. But it's extremely, extremely barebones for any business website, let alone "one of the world’s leaders in transport fuels."

There's nothing here but an About page, which contains nothing but stock photos and vague stuff, and a "contact us page."

Our work drives social and economic development as well as human progress, by enabling access to energy and the benefits of modern society to the millions around the world who rely on Oilshore.

They're describing themselves like they're an established and fairly large business, but aside from the website and the TikTok page I can't find any online presence. No Indeed, no Linkedin, no Glassdoor, no locations on Google Maps, nothing. Surely this company is hiring, somehow?

But I did manage to find an "Initiatives" page on Oilshore.net, (with no apparent way to navigate to it from the home page) which looks like this:

From here we can get to:

Wait a minute... the text is identical. We can also get to a "Take Action" page

The donate button goes back to the home page, the "Volunteer" one seems to go to a form.

For comparison, here's a real corporate website, from... Oilshore. Or rather, Integrated Oilshore Services Nigeria LTD. Note the vast difference in how much content there is on the real one. Oilshore.net is the web design equivalent of the Tumblr bot accounts' profiles: just enough substance to vaguely resemble something real.

I'm guessing the TikTok user committed to the bit by making a real website for the skits, or paid someone to do so (evidently not very much). I'm hoping it's that and not some weird scam to try to get people to give it their contact info via the "Contact Us" form or email address.

Dying at this TikTok video

[mad-hatter5709]

Okay so occasionally I'll come up with ideas. And even more occasionally I'll start to write those ideas. I'll make a timeline (which is not actually a timeline, it's just a dot pointed list of things I want to happen really, so more of an outline but I named it timeline on the word doc so), and I'll make a character sheet with everyone on it (also dot pointed and very basic). So the timeline is usually maybe 50-75 words, real barebones concepts really, and depending on how many characters I decide to write (the most recent one has 17 established characters with an extra background character that has like 12 words written about it) and how much background I come up with for each character, the character sheet can be anywhere from 100-450 words.

Now, the real reason I'm making this post. I am enrolled in an English course so I don't have to take it next year, coz in my college once you get your English and math tick you don't have to do them again. One of my assessments was an imaginative piece somehow relating to one of the texts we'd covered. Now, my current stories have 3k and 2k respectively, both not even near the middle. They're going to be long. This professor has the absolute audacity to say that this needed to be a max of 800 words, and ask for a 200 word outline. Needless to say, I did not stick to the word limit with my first attempt, which spawned the 2k wip. I asked if he would look at it to tell me how to shorten it, telling him the word limit and he told me to start over, and that he wouldn't even acknowledge any attempts unless they were under 1k. Reasonable, obviously, and I managed to keep my final product under 1k words somehow, bullshitting my way through with literally zero knowledge about the texts we had gone over. I did pretty well I think, I got a B for that assignment.

And anyway, the thing is, he asked for a 200 word outline. I couldn't submit a character sheet, since I just used the same one I used for my first wip since I'm really fixated on these ocs, and obviously I couldn't submit my 47 word actual outline, so I just.. didn't submit it. He didn't even comment on it being missing. Which, awesome, I didn't even get points taken off for it. That's the big that I really wanted to post about really, this got so long and kinda off topic honestly-

[sillyfudgemonkeys]

How are you going to handle SMT Nine protagonist's gender choice also swapping the roles of some supporting characters? Baraki & Sumire, Mubiora & Miranda. I know it's probably a long way off for the new wiki, but it's something to think about. I don't like the old wiki's solution of just making them share pages.

Ahhhhh NINE....... Oh! It looks like there's a "MOVIE" on youtube now (of the male side?) well at least that's more info than like a decade ago.

Yeaaaaaah, I hate these guys sharing pages. TT0TT Even if it's only minor differences, they each deserve their own page (or sub page, in terms of adaptations). Like imagine if they were making Hammy and Minty share a page???? I mean like, ignoring SLs and NPS, and just playing P3P barebones on her route, it's like 95-99% the same as the male's (assuming you are also making choices that are as close to him as possible). But that'd be INSANE to make them share lakdsjka *sobs*

So I made the pages now, info being put on there is going to be a bit scarce (unless other people do it first~! 030 Again my priorities are in what I know. So I'm prioritizing P4/3->Adaptations->Spinoffs->P5 related things->P1/2->DDS or Raidou is what we are looking at, and that includes things from chars to summaries to personas/enemies to items, but that's what I'M prioritizing to write because that's what I'm most comfortable with, I'm not against other's getting a jump on other things XD)

Anyway, as for the chars...... hmmmm. Basically my rule-well format is

For Chars: Character-Main Page, Adaptation of Char-Sub Page (that way you can always redirect back to the main page), if there are two (like male/female MCs) they both get a main page and are linked to each other (but only adaptations of that gender are linked)....

Here it's easier to show you, I did this for SMT if Hero/Heroine:

It's easy to get to the other MC easily, but this way it's not clogged up/confusing on which sub page is related to whom.

Only the Hero/Heroine are main pages, everything else is a sub page that links directly back to the main page.

With SMT NINE Keis tho.......they have a canon name like Tatsuya. In which they are default named Kei but can also be changed. So it looks like this:

as of right now, I don't know any adaptations, so no sub pages (besides a placeholder gallery)

I'm not sure if I should keep it Male/Female in the link, or if I should make it Hero/Heroine. They're like one of the few dual MCs, and the only ones with canon names that are the same (from what I can tell/remember at this moment).

As for Baraki, Sumire, Mubiora, and Miranda..... waaaaaaah. TT0TT They all get their own main page. u_u See below.

Good, now if there are differences......they can be sorted a lot better. If it really is just a copy paste job that Altus did with pretty much no differences? Then we'll make a note in the opening paragraph. (I wouldn't know, I know next to nothing about SMT NINE TT0TT) Or we can always merge pages (only if there is no difference tho, I'd rather have too many than too little but that's just me).