#weird to post this to tumblr but i wanted to ramble about them

[sewersewersewercouch]

Microphone and ADHD: yet another very rambly analysis

GUESS WHO’S WRITING LONG TUMBLR POSTS ABOUT MIC AGAIN!!!!

i’ve been trying to formulate this post in my brain for a while and i’m finally writing it. I should add a disclaimer here: while i’ve done my own research for this, i’m also mostly writing from my own experience, which a) obviously every case of adhd is different, and b) while adhd is my only diagnosis at present, there are various other things that i’m questioning and in the process of being evaluated for which might also bleed into my experiences with adhd. If there are any issues please feel free to point them out! Also i don’t want to imply that if you don’t have adhd you can’t relate to mic, i’m just discussing the things i personally am seeing in canon. Also also, if this is weird and disjointed and rambly, well, you signed up to read a very long post by someone from adhd about blorbo from their shows.

I think what first comes to mind with Mic and ADHD traits for me is her impulsivity. This is something we see trip her up again and again—for example, when she yells at Fan in Tri Your Best, not considering how the noise could boost him into the air and ahead of her, or in Mazed and Confused, when she calls after Knife in the maze without realizing that Test Tube is in there as well. (And yes, she didn’t hear Baseball say that Test Tube was in there, but if she’d thought before she’d acted she might have considered looking around to make sure there were no Bright Lights missing as well.) Hell, another example I noticed was that during Mine Your Own Business, when Taco and Knife are arguing, Mic physically shoves Knife into the gem, and like, not gently, either—he slams into it pretty hard. It’s been pretty well established at this point that Mic is very averse to physical violence, and she definitely wouldn’t do anything like that intentionally, but the fact of the matter is, when she’s stressed like that, she just kind of makes a snap action without using her head.

This also ties into my second point, her difficulties with emotional regulation, which is something that’s very common with ADHD. I kind of struggle to describe how this shows up in Mic, because honestly, a lot of her seemingly overblown reactions are more of a “straw that breaks the camel’s back” type of situation where she takes so much shit from her teammates that obviously, who wouldn’t be upset? However, I do think it’s fair to say that she’s someone who’s quite easily frustrated, and can have a tendency to lash out quite harshly when she’s in this state. For example, in A Kick In The Right Direction, she’s pissed off about being relegated to goalie, which is fair, but she takes this out on Dough, who wasn’t involved in this decision, just because he happens to be near her, and she’s, like…pretty mean about it, too? Like, when he says he’s bored she says “so am I but not enough to talk to you” and then later flat out tells him to jump off a bridge. Yes, this second one was after he was distracting her and the Bright Lights got a goal past her, but still, it does feel like a pretty dramatic reaction. Especially as in general, Mic’s demeanor is friendly and outgoing, she clearly is someone who cares a lot about others’ well-being, and she’s just a nice person all around, but when something gets under her skin she’s immediately on the defensive and says stuff like this.

Also, just in general, Mic is very outwardly emotional. It’s one of the ways the narrative contrasts her with Taco, who for much of the story is incapable of giving up her facade, whereas Microphone is incapable of not wearing her heart on her sleeve. You can usually at any given time tell from Mic’s expressions and tone exactly what she’s feeling. This is especially noticeable as she’s frequently in a position where she has to lie, and she is…not good at it. Some of the time she falls back on the aforementioned defensiveness—for example, in Alternate Reality Show, when Suitcase asks what she’s painting and she replies, “Uh, zilch! Why are you picking today to talk to me for the first time ever?” and when Knife immediately after asks why she was late, she says, “I got other places to be? What’s it to you?” A lot of the time, though, she just gets all nervous and awkward. Adorable, undeniably, but not helpful when she’s in the position she’s in. (I was very charmed to find that she keeps this trait even after the game, what with her telling Taco to act natural and then going “Heyyyyy!!!! I, uh, found someone! :))))” as if that’s at all acting natural. Never change.) Mic feels everything very strongly, and she can’t naturally hide that like Taco can.

I also wanted to bring up Mic’s extreme sensitivity to negative feedback, or what’s often referred to as Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria—which, yes, I know that isn’t actually technically a diagnostic trait, but I would say it’s kind of an offshoot of emotional dysregulation combined with a response to being ostracised for being neurodivergent in a shitty ableist world. A lot of the time when Mic shows the traits I’ve mentioned here, and they trip her up, her teammates show her very little patience and compassion. (Baseball and Nickel are particularly guilty of this—Cheesy does it as well, but he also apologizes to her and it seems like they get along afterwards. Baseball, however, will be on thin ice until I hear a goddamn apology from him.) And while she tends to respond to their disparagement with anger externally, as mentioned above, it also clearly really upsets her in a deeper way. For all the amount she takes it out on others, she takes it out on herself tenfold: look at the words she uses to describe herself in her diary. “Annoying, harmful, random, useless, insignificant, loser.” This treatment, along with her previously mentioned sensitive emotions, make her very reactive to any form of perceived criticism or failure. Even in the finale, when she’s been through her own arc and had a while to heal from the toxic environment of the show, the image shown in the red line game shows that this is still what upsets her the most—the idea of being ignored and rejected by others.

I think this also goes the other way—she’s so sick of being disparaged that it turns into a desperation for approval and connection. This is kind of the foundation of her entire arc. I noticed this one moment in Mazed and Confused, where Taco offers to help her out and Mic says “Really? You would help me out?” as though she’s completely shocked by the idea of someone offering her help. Which makes sense—the only person who’s actually been there for her is Soap. And one could ask, why does Mic stay in her alliance with Taco? Clearly she realizes, deep down, that what she’s doing is unethical. Mic is someone who has a strong moral code that I think in most circumstances she’d care about more than the money. (Yes, I know, I know, the twist, but it’s been proven several times that contestants are more than capable of putting other things above the game. Look at Marshmallow, Clover, Lightbulb, and obviously, eventually Mic herself!) But I don’t think what keeps her pushing her cognitive dissonance down is actually anything about the money. It’s the approval she gets. Baseball, who as I’ve said is normally quite hard on her, compliments her when she does something right as a result of her cheating, and in so doing cements in her mind that cheating=people liking her. She also gets approval from Taco, which fuels this even more. And as this alliance goes on, it transforms into…well, I don’t know if I’d call it a friendship, per se, but it seems that Mic really does value Taco’s company and wants to connect with her on a more personal level, rather than just as a means to an end. This just muddies matters further, as Mic now has not only approval at stake, but also one of the few actual relationships she has in the game. It takes Taco killing two people in front of her for her to decide that’s not worth it.

I think I maybe got a little sidetracked from my point there, as I am very much wont to do, but I think this leads Mic to display some kinds of masking behavior. One facet of this is politeness/friendliness—and this is not to say that Mic isn’t genuinely an outgoing, friendly person. In my own experience, masking isn’t as cut and dry as “not acting like yourself”---rather, it’s often more putting certain, more socially acceptable aspects of one’s personality forward and suppressing the less acceptable ones. Her politeness also comes off as very stilted to me. For example, in Theft and Battery, where she says, “Guys, not to sound rude, but didn’t MePhone5S and 5C just try to kill MePhone4? Didn't this guy create them? Why would he support us if he just tried to kill us?” It seems like a weird thing to have to tack “not to sound rude” onto—it’s a completely valid and truthful point. But she’s so used to being perceived as rude that it seems she feels like she has to say that. There’s also another example I already talked about in a different post but will go back over here—in Mine Your Own Business, when Mic and Taco are trying to sneak past Knife, but Mic sneezes and then follows it up with “Sorry! ‘Scuse me!” Which, as Taco points out, isn’t something people normally do. And immediately Mic falls back on her other defense mechanism, lashing out. If you listen to what she’s saying when they’re arguing, it’s “What was I supposed to say, ‘bless me’ and bless myself? You’re the one who’s always trying to be proper, what’s your problem?” I think this moment says a lot about her—when she knows she’s messed up, she tries to cover for it with politeness, but she also doesn’t quite get the social rules right. It’s very much something that’s put on, not that comes naturally to her. (This is where I realized she has many parallels with my other favorite Cabby, but that’s a whole different can of worms.)

However, she also masks in kind of the other direction, that is, putting others down to boost herself up. The Grand Slams are not the healthiest of teams, to put it lightly, and Mic mimics the behavior she sees in others that brings them social success. For example, when she jokes to Baseball about not wanting to “pull a Balloon—” Balloon being unpopular as he is, she knows other people will find mocking him funny. And it works! Baseball laughs! She tries this again later, when she says to Knife “talk about emotional baggage” in regards to Suitcase, but this time he doesn’t respond well. Mic seems genuinely surprised at this—this method has worked for her before, so she’s put off by the fact that it doesn’t work this time. And I should say—this isn’t something Taco tells her to do. She does it entirely of her own volition.

Actually, looking at this more, it seems more like part of something she mostly does during her alliance with Taco—an unaffected, jokey front she tends to put on when she’s lying or messing with people, to…limited success, as discussed earlier, but I think she also uses it when she’s lying to herself, or trying to convince herself that what she or Taco is doing isn’t wrong. I had a few examples in mind. The first is in Kick the Bucket, right after the Nickel and Balloon double elimination, when she says, “Well, ha, what a lively experience! Well, not much to gain from sitting around and doing nothing. See ya!” It’s oddly nonchalant when clearly everyone around her is upset, and we see her look concerned for a second beforehand before she goes into this. I interpret that as her…kind of seeing that what just happened messed things up for a lot of people and that it was her fault, but she’s not ready to accept that truth yet. She also uses this affect throughout Mine Your Own Business—both with Taco, as an attempt to get her to open up, and with Knife, I think in some ways trying to mimic what Taco did to recruit her in order to do the same with him. Neither of these are successful. Knife being Knife, he’s someone who’s very able to see right through people (figuratively speaking, that is, because now people can literally see right through him! Get it? Because he’s a ghost? Please imagine the sound of Cheesy slapping his knee from somewhere in the distance). He plants seeds of doubt in Mic’s mind by telling her about Pickle—and she’s still not ready for those seeds to grow, but they certainly are there. In fact, the next time we see her use this behavior, it’s in Hatching the Plan, when she jokes that Taco will “inevitably drop me too or whatever.” She says it casually, but clearly what Knife said is still on her mind, and she’s trying to convince herself that what happened to Pickle won’t happen to her even though she doesn’t at all believe herself. I also think looking at this behavior has really clarified my view of her in the movie—at first I was frustrated at how she seemed much more calm and collected than I would have expected her to, both about the general horrors happening to everyone, and specifically about Taco. I talked about those criticisms in another post, and I do still stand by them to some extent, I would have written her differently. But I don’t think it’s as incongruent with her character as I did before—in fact, I think there’s plenty of precedent for her masking like that in situations of greatly conflicted emotion. (Oddly enough, I think it’s something she has in common with Taco, but Taco’s just better with it.) I kind of doubt she was quite mentally ready to reconnect with Taco yet, but in such a dire situation she doesn’t have time to process all that, so she just kind of shoves that to the back of her brain. Not to say that I don’t think she genuinely cares for Taco, but I do think there’s a lot of processing she hasn’t done yet about her that will hopefully be a topic of discussion later please please please AE please for me???? Anyways, I do think this is a response to her aforementioned emotional dysregulation tending to create problems for her, and it’s definitely a masking technique in my eyes.

I also want to touch briefly on Microphone and Soap’s friendship, because while it’s not evidence for my point exactly, per se, I do think it’s relevant. While unfortunately pretty stereotypical representation, I would say it’s generally considered true that Soap is coded as having OCD. Now I’m not going to say that all neurodivergent people can easily be friends with one another, I know that’s not true. However, looking at the scene we see with the two of them in Rain On Your Charade, it certainly plays a part in this specific friendship. Mic helps Soap cope with her compulsions, and Soap is the only person at this time who really values Mic and doesn’t see her as a burden just because she’s accident-prone.

One minor thing I also wanted to point out was how it’s pretty common for people with ADHD to struggle with controlling our voices, including the tone, speed, and…well, volume. I can’t count the amount of times I’ve had people tell me that I’m talking loudly and I didn’t even realize it. I trust I don’t have to explain how this point is relevant to Mic, and it does very much fit.

There was one specific line that inspired me to write this post, from Everything’s A-OJ: “I’m trying harder than anyone else, so why do I always lose?” One of the diagnostic traits for ADHD is described as making “careless mistakes” in activities, and I never have particularly loved that phrasing. It may look careless on the outside, because it’s often mistakes that other people can easily avoid, but when you have a disorder that affects your attention, impulse control, memory, executive function, et cetera et cetera et cetera, you doing your best might look like someone else half-assing it. Not to get too personal on my blorbo post, but I keep thinking about this one teacher I had in middle school who, when I messed something up in a class, said “oh, that’s such a Clonnie move!” I’m sure she doesn’t remember that, but I do, because when you hear over and over again that people associate you with making mistakes, that shit sticks with you, and eventually when nothing you do helps you start to feel like you’re the mistake. That’s why Mic as a character resonates with me so much. God willing AnimationEpic will bring my girl back because I would like to see how Mic heals from that mindset as time goes on and where she goes from here.

[baked-bread]

how many times do your headphones have to break before you can consider replacing them? i swear to god that i've superglued these like five times now and one side just broke off again. i've replaced the padding (fell apart) and the cable (cat chewed them), too. these things are bleach stained, the button for bluetooth is becoming less reactive, and the replacement padding (from a broken pair of sony headphones from childhood) is in poor shape, but they work and sound fine, so idk >_<. they're expensive headphones ($100 CAD) that i've had for years + are a hand-me-down, so i kinda wanna keep repairing them until the speaker blows out or something

[serotonin-dose]

AsaDen x Metaphor Re:Fantazio

[made-my-peace-with-all-the-bad]

There’s no feeling quite like wanting to talk to someone about random things in your life but feeling like there’s not really anyone you can do that with :/

[graysanatimony]

I think me watching the stožice thing is a health hazard

I kind of keep forgetting how to breathe

Two-ish hours of that is definitely not healthy

[svtskneecaps]

feel like the global tasks sweep strat should probably be nerfed somehow. my thought would be, give each team an individual ten minute overall cooldown on global task claims. that is to say, a certain team can only claim one global task per ten minutes. say, deliver gas masks, and then in ten minutes you're allowed to deliver tea, and then after another ten minutes you can claim hot chocolate.

another teams would be able to claim a global task for bananas during this time, and their own ten minute cooldown would start.

(the global tasks can either keep their individual ten minute cooldown [i.e. after tea is claimed no one else can claim tea for ten minutes] or a slightly shorter cooldown, say 5-7 minutes)

when a global task is claimed, everyone is notified, right? if not, in my hypothetical, they will be.

then, a team trying to sweep six tasks at once would actually take sixty minutes to do, allowing another team to swoop in and have a chance to stop it in cinematic, entertaining fashion rather than tubbo having to grind resources and then log out in front of the merchant to counter this, which is boring for everyone (including the person delivering). plus, if a team cuts it down to the last second and ends up getting delayed, they physically wouldn't have time to make a delivery, meaning even being a BIT of a nuisance could be a viable strategy, even if you can't manage to kill; if you can STALL you could still wreck their plans.

that's my dream anyway idk i'm not a game designer. just think it would be interesting for most players

(i elaborate under)

red team would have to shake up their strategies, which is fun since they're a team that kinda has to rely more on strategy than outright brawn (overall the team's pvp can't be relied on unless they have carre or phil, as seen today when pierre, bad, and etoiles attacked phil cellbit foolish and baghera, and cellbit and foolish both died to etoiles in the attack, despite it being a 4 on 1 at the time. baghera was killed by bad soon after. phil was the one to get the kills. the first day, when blue attacked [niki, tubbo, and bad as i recall] carre got both kills)

the other teams would then still have a way to stop a global sweep since a sweep would have to start earlier, allowing not only more time to arrive at global to pvp about it, but ALSO allowing another team to swoop in and steal the goal out from under the team again

i'm gonna use it in a scenario bc i'm badboyhalo and i can't stop myself from making examples:

so, tonight, if the proposed cooldown was in place, bad and tubbo would both still had roughly 17 minutes when red team would have HAD to start the sweep process if they wanted all six global tasks: 1 hour until the server closed at absolute MINIMUM. more for safety's sake.

therefore, in this scenario, there's a lot to happen

blue team could wait at globals, knowing red will probably try this strategy, and attempt or perhaps SUCCEED in killing red. if they kill red entirely, the operation is a wash; red doesn't have to gear to come back from scratch and take out blue team, and even if they could, the travel time to return to globals alone would mean they wouldn't get all the global tasks, potentially meaning they don't take the lead. if blue team is unable to kill red and dies themselves or has to retreat, but succeeds in delaying red, red would face the same problem.

if red sends in all of the task items on one person, and that person dies, even if the rest survived, blue could loot the items from that person and would be able to either use the items themselves, if green is currently the owner, or could run away with the items, effectively wasting red's time and again, meaning they wouldn't get all tasks claimed even if they were able to overtake the runner and reclaim their items.

i'm unclear what would happen if red divided the task items between them since it seems like the person claiming the task doesn't have to have all (or any? again, unclear) the items in THEIR inventory in order to claim so long as a teammate is nearby with the items in their inv (evidence: pac's vod "voltei... o que tá acontecendo no QSMP?!" at roughly 3:00:00; tubbo claims tea and tea is taken out of pac's inventory. i don't know the limits of this strategy)

blue team also has time to swoop in and steal a global task out from under red during this time. say, if red team had claimed the task for 10 tea leaves, upping the price to 15 tea leaves, and then blue team snuck in and claimed the task and set the price up to 20 tea leaves, (since the proposed 10 minute cooldown on claims would be TEAM LIMITED; red's cooldown applying to red only and so on). if red waited until the last second, they wouldn't have the time to reclaim this task even if they did have the resources, possibly forcing them to start their sweep earlier to counter this possibility, at which point team members who had logged on earlier and are out of time by the end of the night, OR members who live in time zones that don't allow them to stay up until server close, may have an easier shot at participating in defending against a global sweep.

all of this DIRECT CONFLICT would make for good audience entertainment and heighten the stakes of an attempted global sweep, since it would practically have to be one team defending globals for an hour while they pipe all their resources into it, knowing that if they die another team could easily swipe their task resources and use it themselves (along with the rest of their gear). it makes it more interesting, while still mostly viable.

plus it would force more strategizing for red team which is maybe just a personal plus, i just really like seeing people planning both in advance and in spur of the moment. it's really satisfying to see how a plan comes together and succeeds or fails; plus, since red team is the main team using this strategy at the moment and their main draw and strength as a team is cohesion and communication this would be completely fucking riveting for me as a viewer so maybe this is just a personal thing. but i really really think it would be fun

but again, i'm not a game designer, or a qsmp player, or a qsmp admin, or honestly even really a gamer? so maybe i'm off my rocker and out of my gourd and this isn't viable or balanced in any way shape or form but YKNOW what is this blog except putting stupid thoughts into the void and seeing if this time the void spits back hate mail so. i'm folding this into a paper airplane and throwing it into the abyss. hopefully it made sense.

k love you appreciate you getting this far, have a good week!!

(i hope your team gets a win in dramatic fashion and celebrates together!!! i hope they come together and unleash a plan so spectacular it takes the server by storm!!! i hope it's so good it becomes a vod you go back to even years in the future!!!! i hope you have a good week!!!!!)

[icewindandboringhorror]

Baby boy brother birthday photos from last year that I just realized I never uploaded!

[blighted-lights]

I feel like your approach to criticizing a certain fandom was the wrong way of doing it. Don't get me wrong, you are a hundred percent right about the lack of representation for certain characters. But you had to have known that you would've gotten backlash for insinuating that the only reason that content is being made is because people are... misogynistic? The characters are well-written; that's why they get attention. The women are also well-written, you're right! But instead of getting mad at the people who enjoy specific characters, you could contribute to what you want to see in the fandom. Make fanfiction, make art, talk about your favorite ships, talk about your favorite characters, talk about the head-canons you have for them, connect with other fans of those characters, make AUs with them, make the fandom you want to see! But I don't know what you were expecting when you come out and say in the tags "you must be misogynists for liking these characters and you must be awful people for playing around with AUs" even though every fandom on this website does that. That was hostile and was only going to get a hostile response in return especially when you specifically put it in the tags for fans of those characters to see. Because it reads as you insinuating that fans of these characters existing is why you don't get any representation of your favorite characters. Or, alternatively, that everyone only likes certain characters because they're misogynists who hate women characters. People make content of them because they like them and because they want to make content of them.

Want more content of the things you want to see? Pay or support the artists and writers who make that content or start making it yourself. Its not helpful to complain that some characters get more attention than others but then make no attempt to contribute to it in any meaningful way. You cannot just get mad at people for liking characters and expect the fandom to magically decide its going to give you the content you want.

This is a long-winded way of saying you are correct in that the fandom seems to hyper-focus on some characters over others. But the way you approached that discussion was combative, hostile, and unhelpful, and you're not going to motivate a community into making content by being passive-aggressive to the people making the content they want to make. Be the change you want to see in the fandom, or support the artists and writers who make the content you want to see.

Its like... You can't complain your garden isn't growing if you're not watering it and not adding seeds, and instead are blaming everyone else for having plants in their gardens that you don't like.

anon i dont know how to tell you this but if you felt the need to write a five-paragraph essay talking about how i need to be nicer to other people when i am pointing out misogyny in a fandom space then, well... actually, i dont know what to tell you other than the fact that i was trying to be aggressive and im not going to be civil about misogyny. my post wasn't made in the hopes of getting people to make more content of the women in borderlands because that would never in ten fucking million years work. it was not a constructive post. you are assuming i have some sort of goodwill about this and i don't. i wanted to be an asshole because, surprise, i am an asshole. funny how that works.

you are also pulling so much of this out of nowhere and putting so many words in my mouth that i dont even know where to begin with it?? i mean this in the kindest way possible nonnie but. this is a wild response to make when all i said was essentially "wow it sure is weird that the majority of content made for bl is focused on only three men when there's a full cast of amazing women to look at" and then "its also weird that people are making aus to erase the canon abuse and exploitation of a CHILD in order to make jack a good father". but thanks for the essay, nonnie. i guess.

[jack-of-aces]

I don’t believe for a second that the “grimace birthday shake” campaign backfired in the slightest and that’s the hot take of the night.

[trashcreatyre]

Hey guyss uhmmm!!! Please don't use my exact tags when reblogging my posts!! Or at least write like '<prev tags' after. People don't do it often but still!! Please and thanks!!!

[withercat1]

Some observations about Mouthwashing

Spoilers ahead!

Ok so this game has got me so hyperfixated that I’m using Tumblr for the first time in like a year just to keep a tab with the Mouthwashing hashtag open so I can refresh it throughout the day and see what people are posting. That and my tab full of Danny AOD gifs. Anyway.

So I wanted to share some things I’ve noticed because I haven’t seen anyone else mention them and I want to seem smart and observant.

First off is the name Curly. Like it’s kind of a weird name. It’s unclear whether this is his first or last name because the writing on his id card is so burned and so cursive. It is worth noting that Curly is an actual name, meaning “strong man” or “great strength”. What stands out to me though, is that Laika, the dog who was sent into space, was actually named Kudrayavka originally, which means “Little Curly” (and a little fun fact, Laika means “barker”). Thematically, both of these make sense. I don’t know which one was intentional, if either. It’s entirely possible Curly as a name is a reference, or just a name the devs liked.

Secondly, Anya’s design is based off of Shelley Duvall in The Shining, most recognizable to most people for the scene where she’s hiding in the bathroom while Johnny breaks down the door. That being her most iconic scene really reminds me of Anya’s deal with doors, being unable to lock the door to her quarters, and then locking herself in medical while the others try to get her out.

Thirdly, and the one I find most interesting, is one of the videos that plays on the tv after the storage room is opened. It’s about atoms, and states that atoms make up everything, like shoes, and ships, and sealing wax, and cabbages, and kings. I don’t know if this video was chosen by the devs specifically for this quote, but for the purposes of my rambling I’m going to assume it was. This quote is a direct reference to The Walrus and the Carpenter, a poem by Lewis Carroll.

The poem is hyperlinked above (hopefully, Idrk how to use Tumblr), but I just want to post the segment that the quote from the video comes from.

“The time has come,' the Walrus said,

      To talk of many things:

Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —

      Of cabbages — and kings —

And why the sea is boiling hot —

      And whether pigs have wings.'”

To briefly summarize the whole poem, though I highly recommend reading it for yourself as well because it’s really good, the Walrus and the Carpenter come across a group of oysters and ask them to join them for a walk. The oysters do, and the Walrus and the Carpenter walk with then a bit, before finally stopping, where the lines above happen. Right after this, the oysters ask to take a break, and the Walrus and the Carpenter agree to let them have the break - because they plan on eating the oysters. “And why the sea is boiling hot,” I believe, refers to the oysters being boiled in order to prepare them for consumption.

The Walrus says he pities the oysters, and wipes his tears away, while actively partaking in the consumption of the oysters. The poem ends with a statement that all of the oysters have been devoured.

So! Let’s focus on the Walrus here. Someone who leads innocents astray, boils/cooks them, and then eats them, all the while crying about how awful it is while doing nothing to abstain from eating them. Sound familiar? Sound like that guy we all hate? Little bit! I don’t know if it was an intentional bit of symbolism or not, but it’s super big brained if it was.

That’s all for now but I’m sure I’ll think of some more things later. I love this game. If u made it this far I really appreciate it, feel free to comment and let me know what you think

Also let me know how to tag a post as spoilers properly, I seriously do not use this site

[carsickcrow]

drew them dancing :( and at a party!

the most recent manifestation of my malevolent hyperfixation has been just straight up imagining a version of the story where i am a 1930s private eye in arthur’s place. love arthur and i wouldn’t want to replace him but. yeah. this is what my brain does sometimes. thought up a me-version of him and i was thinking about the backstory and how i wouldn’t be british obviously that’s one difference but also more relevantly even if i was a cis man in the 1920s-30s i can’t imagine myself getting married and having a child like arthur did so. had to make up a replacement for bella lester so me-arthur lester can have a tragic backstory. and i did, her name is ellie and she’s great but now i think i just straight up have an original character that’s just. a regular woman from the 1920s. this is all very embarrassing, exposing my daydreaming habits and all but! the reason for this long winded explanation is that i drew this ellie character and it turned out really good and i wanted to post it but i didn’t know how to be like. here’s a woman i made up and she’s. not actually a character from malevolent at all but malevolent is the reason she’s in my brain

[boltwrites]

I haven’t recently thought about Hugh Jackman but this Movie has recently given me hunger™️

Reader/Logan fic hurt/comfort where Logan knew reader in his world (but reader never met Logan in their world) and tries to ignore them out of guilt but reader is persistently trying to be friends w him. Eventually Logan opens up about what happened in his world with reader…

A/N: so uh. i originally wrote this as headcanons in bullet point format but tumblr didn't like it so i had to redo some shit and uh. anyway. it's not my normal fic quality so i'm sorry for that.

in other author's note news - lmk if you want the recipe.

You smiled at Logan across the table as Wade rambled on about something or other. You didn't know him - well, other than what Wade had spouted off about him before inviting you to this make-birthday party after the first one went to shit - but you wanted to.

You didn't exactly know why you wanted that. Maybe just curiosity? Wade did say he'd be living with him for the foreseeable future, and as his neighbor, you should introduce yourself and be friendly, right?

But it was kind of more than that. He was hot. definitely, very hot. Maybe not your usual type - you weren't typically into older men. But there was just something about him. Something magnetic.

Either way, he'd definitely avoided you at that party. spent most of his time sulking in the corner, talking to Al or sometimes Colossus.

You'd walked up to him, smile on your face, and introduced yourself. He'd barely looked at you.

"Nice to meet you," he'd replied, his tone gruff and dismissive. By the way he spoke it sounded less like it was nice to meet you and more like you were inconveniencing him with your mere existence. Like he'd been dreading the idea of you coming over and introducing yourself.

"Wade says you helped stop the time ripper," you tried, willing yourself to ignore how shitty he was treating you. Wade had mentioned that this man - Logan - was a little rough around the edges. rude. A drunk, even. Maybe he just wasn't good with people in general.

"Yep," he replied, shooting you a glare over the glass of - was that pure fucking bourbon? - he was sipping out of. You tried your best not to let it get to you - but you also knew how to take a hint. He wasn't interested in talking. That shot straight to your stomach like a bullet made of embarrassment and guilt, but whatever.

It's fine. you were younger than him by a decent margin. He could probably tell just by the look in your eyes that you were interested in him as more than just a friend. He probably just wanted to shut that shit down as quickly and efficiently as possible. You weren't gonna blame him for that. You've done the same for several weird men in the past - including Wade, before he got the hint and the two of you became fast friends. You weren't necessarily interested in being his post-Vanessa rebound, and he respected that.

So, that's fine, you'd just be nice to Logan. He could be your friend, too. He was rooming with Wade and Al, after all. It would be good to make friends with him.

"Hey!" You smiled when he opened the door a few days after the party. You stood there, hands currently occupied by a tin foil-wrapped package.

"What do you want?" Logan asked, looking you up and down with more paranoia than you'd expected. You thought that maybe he was just uncomfortable with your advances, but this time, it was like he was searching for something. What, you didn't know.

"I just wanted to give you this," you replied, thrusting your gift into his hands - the smooth glass of the pie mold contrasting with the brief brush of his calloused hands. You tried not to shiver.

"It's a pie," you continued on, even as Logan stared off into the distance, at something you couldn't see. "When I saw what you were drinking at the party, I thought you might like it. It's a family recipe. Pumpkin pie with a shitload of bourbon. As a welcome to the neighborhood kind of thing."

You offered him an awkward sort of smile, a little shrug. He blinked, snapping himself out of his thousand yard stare only to glare at you like you'd just offered him a dead animal instead of a home-baked pie. Your blood briefly turned to ice as you wondered if maybe this man was actually sober and you'd mistake the iced tea in his glass as pure liquor. As if Wade ever had that sort of shit in his apartment.

"I-" he looked down at the pie, then up at you, taking a breath as if he wanted to say more, but instead shaking his head, like he was knocking some bit of cobwebs or old dust loose. "Thanks."

He nodded at you in acknowledgement, then slammed the door in your face. Great.

Wade wasn't much help either. He'd returned the pie dish and you'd wrung your hands and asked him if you'd done something that made Logan hate you. The dish was empty, but your stomach churned at the thought of the man just taking a knife and scraping the whole thing into the trash. You'd even made the crust by hand, too.

"Oh, fuck no!" Wade scoffed, shaking his head. "Are you kidding me? Listen, if there's anything I know about our not-so-furry friend, it's that he can put up with a metric fuckton of asinine shit. I mean - he's living with me! Do you know how many times he's used his little clawsies to hole-punch my organs? Like - so many!" Wade waved his arms for emphasis. "If he really hated you, he wouldn't just sulk around about it like a teenager - no! He'd hurt you! Like the kind of teenager that would shoot up their local high school!"

You rolled your eyes at Wade, but you knew that's just how he was. No filter, all idiocy. "Did he - did he at least try the pie," you asked, voice a little more hopeful than you'd meant for it to sound.

"Try it - fuck! That man has full-tilt sprinted at me on all fours and I've never seen him so animalistic. He was eating that pie like it would crawl inside his dick itself and pull out an orgasm. I swear - and may Thor strike me dead and then mourn my fried corpse - that he actually growled when I asked for a slice."

You didn't believe Wade for a second, but fuck. at least that made you feel better. You offered him your thanks and a sweet smile as you received your dish and promised to make him something "Wolvie" wouldn't hoard when you brought something over next. You promised to try your best.

Really, what you'd try your best at was winning this shy Wolverine over to your good side. You didn't want to force him to be your friend, obviously - but if you had made a bad impression, even if that impression was solely based on the fact that you were also friends with Wade - you wanted to make it right.

So you did everything you could. Baked and cooked and offered the results up whenever you could afford the extra ingredients. Made sure to snatch up any packages bound for Wade's apartment so your notorious Amazon thief didn't have the chance to. You even dog-sat that nasty looking creature Wade had adopted - she was very sweet, but you had nightmares about that tongue.

It all came to a head, one day. One day when you almost brained yourself walking up the stairs.

You'd been holding grocery bags - supplies to make your perfected mac and cheese recipe - head down as you ascended the steps. That was, until you ran into what felt like a brick wall. Or, an iron one. Your shoulder smacked whatever it was and you jolted backwards, gasping as you dropped the bag you were holding to cling to the railing-

Only to catch and grip tight at thin fabric as a firm, steel-strong arm wrapped around your waist. You finally caught your breath, lungs filling and then immediately vacating as you locked eyes with none other than Logan.

"Fuck."

Both of you said it. But you gasped, it, breathless and dreamy. Meanwhile he spat it, like he knew something like this would happen, and he'd been planning his whole day to avoid it.

As soon as you found your footing again, he threw his arm away from you like you'd burned him. Like your very existence was offensive to him, somehow. He manages to spin you around as he let go of your waist, disorient you as you sputtered, glancing after him.

The stairs were littered with groceries - blocks of cream cheese, butter, cookies for the crust - fresh fruit for the filling. A bag of sugar had exploded, its contents dusting the next landing like snow. All of this - ingredients you'd bought, with money you'd worked your ass off to afford - and the man you'd been trying to impress stepped in that puddle of sugar, granules crackling under his boot.

You damn near saw red.

"Logan!" you snapped, your voice harsh, crisp as it echoed through the stairwell. Fuck. You hated using that voice - but it made him freeze on the spot.

He turned to look at you - eyes wide, as if he was some child who'd been caught in a lie. But also - that gaze was knowing, somehow. Like he knew what you used that voice for. What it meant for him.

You sighed, tried to regain your composure. It was fine. You were fine. When you opened your eyes, you addressed him with even, annunciated words:

"Why do you hate me?"

Even as you tried your best to dull your voice of emotion, it slipped through. A waved of your throat, the hint of water in your eyes. You hated it - this man didn't hold that power over you. You just - you were used to being liked. That's all.

Logan looked at you like you'd shot him.

"What?" he asked, just as breathless as you felt. You thought you detected just a hint of hurt in that syllable.

"It-it's just-" you tried not to let yourself waver, but you stuttered as you spoke. "I've been trying to just - to be your friend, to be a good neighbor. Like I am to Wade, like we - we hang out, sometimes. But you- you're just - I feel like you've been kind of rude to me."

You sounded like a child.

Logan took a breath. A deep one, as if this were a confrontation that had been a long time coming (which it was) and that he was prepared to have a conversation he'd dreaded (which was really what got you - if he really just disliked you, why would he care enough to prepare something? What was going on?)

He turned around - gathered up all your dropped groceries - and started walking up the stairs, passing you and continuing his way to your shared floor. He'd previously been on his way out, so you didn't do much except stare at him until he was nearly half a flight ahead of you and your brain finally switched on again.

He led you to the apartment he shared with Wade, nodded as he held the door open for you. It felt strange - you hadn't been inside the apartment since the party. You'd always felt too nervous to ask Wade if he wanted to continue your usual game nights. Too intimidated by Logan.

He set the groceries on the counter, and practically sank into the couch. You perched on the chair opposite it, still not quite believing that he had let you in. That you were going to talk. He breathed in deeply, steadying himself before he spoke, eyes still glued to the floor.

"I'm not from here. 'M sure Wade told you that much," he glanced up, only to nod in your direction. You nodded back.

"My world - timeline, whatever the fuck - I killed it. Everyone I loved, everyone I cared about - they all died. Because of me."

You sat in rapt attention as his shoulders tensed, his jaw flexed. This was a lot, for him. You didn't really understand why he was telling you about it, but it was important to him. So you listened.

"Every timeline is different. At least, that's what the science says. Ones that are closer together - might have the same people show up at around the same time. Might be - people I knew. People I - cared about."

Logan glanced up, again. Caught your eyes with his and swallowed harshly.

"You're - one of them. One of the people I lost."

"Oh," you breathed, because now it all made sense. The strange looks, the curt conversations - even the thousand yard stare. You were triggering his memories of a horrible time of his life with every step you took in his direction. And you didn't even know it.

"I'm so sorry," You whispered, trying your best to quell any tears that might form sympathetically. No wonder he kept pushing you away. You were a walking PTSD trigger.

"No-" he gasped, shaking his head as he stood up, like he'd been shocked upright. "No, it's not -"

He cleared his throat, shook his head like he was trying to find the right words.

"I know I was pushing you away. And it is - hard, to see you again. But - I want to see you. I want to get to know you, again," if you didn't know any better, you'd think that there were tears forming at the corner of his eyes.

"You made the pie, you know. The pumpkin pie. I was only there for the one Thanksgiving, but I remember it. You swore you'd cooked off all the liquor, but Xavier made you promise only the adults would get a slice."

He grinned at you, then - wide, real. It was pretty, that smile. You could imagine recognizing it, in another life.

"None of the kids got any. Too good for them, anyway," he took a step towards you, and you rose from your seat, legs only a little wobbly.

"That's good," you breathed, voice as shaky as your knees. "I use vodka in the crust, too."

"I know," Logan grinned, a hand grasping yours, his smile somehow wider than before.

You wondered, as you strode forward into a crushing hug against his chest, if it felt so right in every universe.

[signanothername]

How do you feel about the fandom?

I’m assuming you mean Ut/utmv?

How can I say this in the most gentle way possible hmm..

I genuinely do love the creativity within the fandom, the beautiful art and stories and ideas people come up with, the different interpretations of these characters even when i don’t agree with them or have my own thoughts/opinions, cause that’s what fandoms are supposed to, it’s all of us showing our love for these lil blorbos of ours in each of our own unique different ways

Of course, each fandom has its good and bad side, but to say the ut/utmv fandom is so damn negative to the point it’s suffocating is an understatement

I’m especially weirded out by the pro harassment behavior within this fandom, like, a mf would say “i’m anti harassment!!!!” Then turn around and post/reblog a post with +20 people name dropped to “raise awareness” for whatever little that is worth, you can “raise awareness” by messaging people privately, not make a list where an asshole can easily use it to harass people, and no, saying shit like “don’t harass these people!!!” Does not alleviate any responsibility from you if they do get harassed because of your post

That’s why messages are a thing, and only messaging those who explicitly state they want to be messaged, not jump in into people’s inboxes or messages and telling them shit out of the blue

So many people within this fandom need to learn fandom etiquette, how to mind their own business, and to use the damn block button, you’re uncomfortable with a certain subject? Tumblr has the most handy filtering system, don’t like a person/find them uncomfortable? Block them, blocking them isn’t enough and want to complain? That is what you can use your blog for, feel free to complain on your own blog to your heart’s content (not on other people’s blogs or under their posts if it’s not the subject for it) that’s what friends are for too, go to their DMs and complain till the end of time

Being just a bit bigger of an artist follower wise in comparison to other artists means that I deal with very special cases sometimes, because I’m also puzzled by the way people can get super comfortable with commanding strangers to do things they want or to break basic respectful boundaries like not getting people involved in drama even when they specifically state not to include them (me, I’m starngers, every time I reblog my boundaries post, it’s me implying that I got something that broke my very basic bitch boundaries that day, which says a lot about the fandom, cause i literally only got 4 boundaries stated damn)

That’s why I opt to not get too close to people within the fandom, and am generally careful as to who I let close to me, I’m very certain people might think I somehow have my own social circle within the fandom or have some wide connections they can never get, when in reality I’m isolated af

That being said, idk if it’s young people not knowing any better, or adults who act like children, but the fact harassment is very prominent and also very normalized within the fandom is something that definitely made me seriously think of just getting back to the Transformers fandom (one of the most chill fandoms i’ve ever been part of)

Fandom is fandom, keep it for rambling about blorbos, and learn to mind your own business <3

[notartisticdraw]

wait, if ur not blodthegreatrouge, how come u do pjs daycare stuff when it also had a lot of the controversy on it?

A few reasons, but I can promise you, I am 100% not rouge lmao. I think she's in her early 30s, where I'm currently 19. If you trace my blog through my archive, you can see when I joined years after her initial popularity and how godawful my art was in attempting to replicate her style (since I was even heavily influenced as a child). It's also uncomfortable seeing how much of a pro-rouge advocate I was, but I was 12/13 when I joined Tumblr and began drawing Undertale fanart. This was also far before everyone started calling her out in 2021, when I had mostly forgotten about what happened in her AUs

As a child, I was obsessed with the AU and the characters. They made up an important part of my preteen years, as did several other major Undertale comics (Geno's Christmas Party, Handplates, Aftertale, etc.) despite all of the weird/uncomfortable plots rouge shoved into it. I just knew the majority of it made me happy, y'know?

Anyway, my continuation AU of PJ's Daycare (PJ's Daycare 10 Years Later) does not promote the original material but rather tweaks and continues the story in a way I presume most original fans want it depicted---meaning back to its roots of what it is: a Daycare attended by several of the most popular Sanses as children, and popular shipchildren raising them

I wanted to bring back the old whimsical feeling into it and mold the original material into something better and newer. This includes shifting several parts of the original story like, idk, not having kinder!Fresh's love interest be an actual adult, reworking (or entirely removing) the awful Geno suicide depiction, booting proships out of the AU, reworking the love triangle between Palette, Goth, and Cray since they're all 12 - 13, and a lot of interactions made me really uncomfortable (almost sexual undertones AND THEY'RE CHILDREN), etc.

I get many comments on posts describing it as the fandom reclaiming the media from a bad person and fixing it up, and honestly, this is the only AU I could attempt to fix from Rouge. All her other AUs are far too gone, whereas PJ's Daycare had mistakes but was nowhere near as insane as her other stuff (NaJ, for instance)

Again, my content does not promote Rouge or anything she's done. She's awful and shouldn't be allowed online after the mess she's caused and doesn't care cleaning up. I'm just fixing a childhood favorite comic for myself and the community

urgggg sorry for rambling. its like 7:30 am and I sorta didn't sleep at all so my cranium ain't working 100%. hope this sorta explains things tho

[animentality]

Dude I'm so confused

Why are the redditors refugees here-

Whats up with the tag 196

AND WHY IS EVERYONE BEING SO NICE WITH THE TWITTER REFUGEES CAME WE GAVE THEM HELL (almost)

The Reddit refugees are here because several subreddits have gone private in protest of reddit's new policy of charging third party developers for access to its API.

Hence the term reddit blackout.

196 specifically was a very queer friendly subreddit that had one rule: that you post before you leave. 196 is trending because those Redditors have come here and they're basically sharing their memery here instead as they protest reddit's greed.

As for why we're welcoming them when Twitter refugees were seen with a little more irritation, well.

Think of the culture similarities.

Tumblr and reddit have far more in common than Tumblr and Twitter.

Twitter is about clout and manipulating algorithms and discourse in 280 characters or less. It's about bad takes that reach the right people and it forces you to see things you don't want to see and it's crawling with the worst people imaginable and you're forced to see them, all the time. They also brought bad tagging and 2016 Tumblr discourse with them, because Twitter culture really involves starting fights for clout and braindead opinions that no one really wants to come back to Tumblr culture.

There was a time when Tumblr did the same thing, but worse, with more words...but nowadays, it's really calmed down.

The worst people...went to Twitter after the porn ban. Ironically, it made the site less toxic and hostile.

But then they came back.

And it was like...hm. no thanks. Stay back where you came from.

But Tumblr and Reddit have much more in common.

Both have a more streamlined way of customizing your online feed. You can choose what subreddits you see on your home screen, just like Tumblr only shows you the content of your followers, on your dashboard, and in chronological order rather than what's trending. You can join a very specific weird niche group of freaks with a shared obsession, and not care about the rest of the site at all. You also don't have a character limit on either site, which lets you ramble more and share weird detailed stories.

Reddit might have karma, but like Tumblr, the majority of people are lurkers and not posters. It also allows you to downvote bad opinions, and moderators who have to adhere to certain guidelines of behavior, which means a lot of banning disruptive people.

Granted, sometimes their mods are power hungry, but. You know.

It does more to control its users than Tumblr do, and that's a good thing in terms of keeping toxicity and illegal shit off its subs.

Reddit also has a way more leftwing attitude than you would think.

It has a reputation for being full of incels but I honestly think that's outdated.

It's cleaned up its act quite a bit since the old days.

I see way more vile shit from Twitter and TikTok. Like seriously.

Twitter is crawling with conservative bots and propaganda machines and just outright inflammatory lies. TikTok literally has the worst comment sections I've ever seen, like edgy teenagers cracking racist and misogynistic humor and acting like it makes them different and special. Its algorithm also spoon feeds you garbage and is designed to be as addicting as possible.

At least reddit's culture, while chauvinistic and regressive in certain subcultures, is mostly on the tech positive, atheist libertarian side.

It can be a little pretentious and caustic about certain subjects, and a little full of itself. Some reddits are also very male leaning and disregard female concerns in favor of moaning about how men have it worse than anyone else on earth.

But for the most part?

...well.

I welcome them here, because if they left reddit in protest, then we always support protests. But 196 specifically is also a queer subreddit, and we support that even more.

Plus they're funny as fuck.

What's not to like, really?

You should welcome them with open arms too.