#well it allegedly exists i mean

[crysdrawsthings]

Have just finished Veilguard and genuinely had a blast with the game, subjectively very fun to play, objectively... Could have done a handful of things better, but still, I think, a solid action-adventure RPG.

Absolutely loosing my mind over just how both obsessed with Rook Elgar'nan is, but also about his temper tantrum over being the goddest god to ever god.

Biting him. Chewing him even, like Lusacan chewed Egg

[sunderwight]

A fun prospect for Superhero-themed SV AU's that I don't often see is genre dissonance. Like, Luo Binghe as this edgy 90's style antihero who just straight up kills his enemies and sleeps around and is driven by selfish motives (revenge, ambition, etc) rather than altruistic morality, vs Shen Qingqiu as this kid-friendly supervillain who is "evil" mostly in terms of aesthetics and his ability to make inconvenient problems that are reasonably safe for child heroes to solve. Something like Punisher vs Team Rocket in terms of vibes.

Maybe the reason they meet is because some big publishing house akin to Marvel or DC just bought up the rights to whole bunch of older, discontinued comics titles, and decided to do a Justice League/Avengers style mash-up with a bunch of nostalgia properties and their most recognizable heroes and villains. Which means lots of crossovers condensing several titles into a handful of series.

Luo Binghe's origin always features him as a teenager, so he reboots as the youngest Avenger-equivalent team member in the new continuity. Even in this reboot, however, the writers still mostly go the gritty and dark route with his plots and stick to the same key developments -- his abandonment as an infant, his adoptive mother's tragic death, his tough life on the streets, abusive mentors and backstabbing "allies", and so on.

But Luo Binghe's life suddenly starts experiencing periods of dramatic change in his life when he's brought in for appearances in the lighter, friendlier world of the Junior Heroes continuity. After all, he's a natural choice for tying the two continuities together thanks to his youthfulness. Luo Binghe isn't consciously aware of the fact that he's moving between different titles and different writers. All he knows is that sometimes, when he hangs out with the bright and talented Ning Yingying, he's drawn into "conflicts" with Shen Qingqiu -- the kind of "villain" who will call for tea breaks, never actually hits anyone when he shoots his ray gun, leaves clues for all of his crimes, and can't seem to stop from imparting genuinely helpful advice in between his witty quips and taunts.

When Luo Binghe fights Shen Qingqiu, somehow he never actually gets hurt. Neither do any of his friends. The world in general seems brighter and lighter, as if there is some secret barrier protecting everyone from all the evils Binghe knows only too well exist in the rest of his life. Luo Binghe is increasingly convinced that Shen Qingqiu is the source of this mystical safety net. After all, for an allegedly powerful genius who is able to fool half the world about his wicked aims, he's never won a single fight against a kindhearted but somewhat ditzy teenager and her ragtag bunch of friends!

So what's he spending his actual energy on?

Luo Binghe is pretty sure it's keeping the real evils at bay. Making himself the biggest bad in town, and in doing that, making it so that the "biggest bad" is nothing worse than a slightly judgmental teacher in a pretty costume.

It's not long before Luo Binghe doesn't want to go back to the Justice League equivalent, to his world of misery and strife, even after his visits with Ning Yingying are supposed to be over. Especially as the global stakes of various heroic activities start getting higher, and it becomes clear that the boundary between Shen Qingqiu's safe world and the grimdark reality of Binghe's usual life are getting thinner...

[arabian-batboy]

Its disturbing how Zionists are trying to so damn hard to convince the world that Palestinians are currently on a huge raping campaign on innocent women and girls everywhere, even though there are literally ZERO evidences so far of ONE case of a Palestinian raping or stripping any civilians (and I mean real evidence, not bigots saying its true on twitter), they simply willed it into existence by merely saying it over and over again and thinking that's enough to make it into a real concerning fact

But do you know what has been proven as a legitimate fact for decades on the other hand? Thousands of Palestinians men, women and children being systematically violated and raped on a regular basis by Israeli settlers with no consequences or sympathy from the international community.

Like we literally have videos of Israeli soldiers on camera laughing about how many Palestinian women they have raped and multiple photos and videos of Palestinians being stripped naked and beaten by soldiers. Right now there's even a video of Israeli soldiers pissing on a dead naked Palestinian man on twitter which isn't being shared around or talked about half as much as much that one video of one Israeli woman allegedly being "stripped" to a bra and shorts, even though it has already been debunked by now that she was already wearing just a bra and shorts when she was captured and that neither she nor any other Israeli hostages have suffered any kind of sexual abuse by Palestinians (as you can see by how good they're being treated in this video)

It's really remind me how White supremacists in Europe have started this propaganda that Muslim refugees shouldn't be allowed Asylum because they're here to rape European women and that rape rates in Europe will sky-rocket by their mere existence, even though again, there are zero evidence of refugees committing sexual crimes (or any crimes) on a higher rates than local citizens. In fact, in some European countries and the US, it has proven that Muslim-majority neighborhood actually have the lower crimes rate compared to their counterparts.

One thing is clear here, it seems that it doesn't matter where they live, all White supremacists (especially Zionists) have the same exact trick when shit hits the fan and its: claim that "savage brown men are coming to rape your delicate white women! So you need to kill them before that happens!" each time the people they're oppressing are standing up for their human rights.

-

Palestinians made a document that contains templates for letters to US, UK, & Canadian politicians, media outlets, and companies in relation to current events in Palestine as well as petitions & other resources. If you live in any of these countries then please select a template, edit it to your preference and send according to the instructions on the relevant page.

Here is a link to it (please share it): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-RUOHHiEtr7uoclQgWN-tCWOihnHIp5hym89aNePi_E/mobilebasic

Aside from that, please protest, support the BDS boycott and spread awareness as much as possible.

[undreaming-fanfiction]

What I Wouldn't Do

This fanfiction is a Valentine's Day exchange gift for the lovely @henderdads. Cass, Eddie absolutely hates Valentine's Day, but for Steve? Well. He's willing to make an exception. Have an amazing Valentine's Day, you deserve it so much!!

Sometimes, it is difficult to reconcile several different truths in our lives. 

Eddie currently has this dilemma. 

Truth A: Steve Harrington, Eddie Munson’s boyfriend, allegedly loves sappy romantic things, Valentine's Day included.

Truth B: Eddie Munson, Steve Harrington's boyfriend, feels like if the world ever has to end, it should do so on February 14th, for this is the worst day of all days, the day of heart-shaped chocolate that tastes like crap, couples exchanging sweet words and bodily fluids, sometimes even semi-publicly, and don't even get him started about that horrible romantic music. 

After swearing on the Munson doctrine he won’t sell his soul to consumerism for anything and anyone but Steve, Eddie Munson decides to ignore Truth B. Steve Harrington deserves the best Valentine's day in the history of this idiotic holiday and Eddie has a hunch, a massive, Everest-sized hunch, that in all of his previous Valentine's days, Steve was always the one to do all the work. His beautiful and brave people-pleasing boyfriend. 

Then Eddie realizes another very uncomfortable truth. He has no idea how to celebrate Valentine’s Day. He spent the twenty one-ish years of his existence avoiding the holiday, so now he has to do some research. 

He starts small. When they walk together in the Hawkins center, careful not to touch or hold hands because Hawkins still remains a backward hellhole, he notes what Steve looks at. If his eyes linger on a certain flower for a few seconds, he makes a mental note. A mental note means in Eddie's case that he repeats the name of the flower ad nauseum, quickly excuses himself and scribbles it onto his forearm not to forget. He even buys a permanent marker for this. He can't forget anything, not when it's important for Steve.

When Steve asks about the scribbles, he claims it's for the next campaign. He even draws a sword and a shield next to the notes to avoid suspicion.

He asks many questions, most of them under the pretense of helping Gareth with his dates. "I swear, Steve, when he's lovestruck, he gets completely stupid. Not stupid stupid, Gareth's smart, but he can't hold rhythm and we need him to hold it, he's our drummer! So save this suffering aspiring rockstar and tell me, what do you think is the best type of chocolate? Milk chocolate? Okay, and is that like, universal? Did your previous dates like it? I see, a majority then! Sooo...are you a part of that majority?" 

Very smooth. 

See, Eddie doesn't give a flying demobat about chocolate types, he's more into hard candy. He doesn't like cut flowers, they die anyways because you cut them, how is that fair to that flower, huh? To die for being pretty? And of course, he hates the whole EXPECTATION of Valentine's Day. 

But the more he asks, the more he finds out, he doesn't see it as participating in the mindless machinery of lovestruck idiots. Instead, he sees the flush on Steve's cheeks when he talks about dark chocolate with dried raspberries and how his parents once brought it back from dad's trade conference, how it was love at first taste. He scratches out the idea for a bouquet of flowers when Steve mentions he’s always hated them because the flowers are so beautiful and vibrant, but they’re cut for an obligation in their prime. “It sounds stupid when I say it,” he chuckles, “but I want them to live until they’re ugly and withered, you know? They’re worth way more than their looks.”

Eddie could kiss him right there and then. And he does. 

He brings it all together, prepares all of Steve’s favorites with a silly twist because it’s Eddie, and Eddie lives for silly things. It really needs to be his favorites because Steve once admitted to him that most people with the exception of Robin and Dustin don’t really know what he likes, they just assume. And Steve is happy that people even thought about him, he thanks them and treasures those things that don’t mean anything to him. To Steve, being thought about is enough. 

Well, not to Eddie Munson. 

He asks Steve not to plan anything for their Valentine's Day. Or more precisely, he asks him to stay free and available and not worry his beautifully hairy head. He knows that if he didn't say this, Steve would have gone above and beyond for him, he would have likely taken Eddie to a concert with music so loud he’d get a migraine, but he’d suffer through it. So Eddie has to stop that from happening.

On the actual day, Eddie prepares everything. He sends Gareth ("You owe me so much for this. SO MUCH, MUNSON. I actually wanted to watch this tonight!") to rent Steve's favorite movie and goes himself to get access to the Hawkins High with…almost completely legal means, just a little bit of bribing here, some promises for a lengthy D&D campaign there, and of course lots and lots of nougat. 

He gathers everything in his van, waits for the kids and the janitor to get out and then starts setting the scene. 

There are two more incompatible truths that Eddie Munson grapples with: 

Truth A: Eddie Munson fucking HATES the Hawkins High. He wants it to burn down in flames, with only the theater room staying intact. 

Truth B: Steve Harrington sometimes wistfully mentions how he wishes he could have dated Eddie Munson in high school. How they’d share lunches, trade secret kisses in the hallways. He wishes himself and the world had been different. 

And so Eddie Munson grits his teeth, walks those cursed hallways he only managed to escape a few months back and counts on Robin Buckley to deliver his invitation with flair. “Extra points if you get him a trumpet solo, Buckley!” 

Robin apparently delivers because only half an hour after the expected invite, as he is smoking his fifth cigarette - don’t blame the guy, he’s nervous! He’s got a big date! - Steve arrives with a smile that’s equally excited and nervous. He keeps running his fingers through his hair and overall looks just biteable. 

Steve walks up to him and brushes his fingers against Eddie’s wrist, discreetly as they have established. It’s their own version of a kiss. “I thought you hated Valentine’s Day?” he asks and he looks so apologetic that Eddie promises to base all villains in his new campaign on all the people who ever made Steve feel he wanted too much. 

Eddie glances around, deems it safe and pulls Steve into an actual kiss. "It might be Valentine's day for you, Steve. For me, it's the "Steve Harrington Appreciation Day." He winks at Steve and relishes in the slight blush that has crept into his cheeks. “The name is already registered and all. No changes possible or accepted. Follow me, big boy.” 

Steve laughs when he sees a set cafeteria table with something that brings back so many memories. How did Eddie get two portions of school lunch?! The man has to be magical, he decides. They eat together, chat about their day, and then Eddie decides feeding each other is off the table because they’re giggling so much he almost stabbed Steve with the fork. 

They walk the hallways together, hand in hand, and Eddie sometimes turns around, sticks his tongue out at an imaginary girl and sneers “back off! He’s mine!”. 

Steve turns after Eddie and nods. “What he said,” he whispers and squeezes Eddie’s waist. 

Eddie then hands Steve a sports bag he stashed in the changing rooms and winks at him. “What are you waiting for, Harrington? We have some balls to toss! Baskets to score. That.” And before Steve has a chance to protest, he gets his own bag and starts changing into those awfully familiar PE shorts in all their green and white glory. 

Steve just watches him, mouth hanging open. “Now I get why I never saw you in these,” he mumbles as he also starts changing. “I would have realized I’m bi like, at that moment.” 

But Eddie just laughs and pulls his hair into a loose bun. “Oh, Steve. You have no idea what those shorts on you did to the little closeted me. The thoughts they gave me.”

“Lucky for you, baby,” says Steve and pulls Eddie to his feet, “this time you’re allowed - and strongly encouraged - to both watch AND touch.” Then he cocks his head to the side and adds: “Well. If you score at least one point.” 

Eddie tries. Fails. Tries again, even with Steve helping him. Eventually, they settle for a quick game of tic-tac-toe which Eddie wins and happily squeezes Steve’s butt. 

Their final destination is the only class they ever shared, history. All desks are empty, except for one - the middle one in the second row, where Steve used to sit. There’s dark chocolate with dried raspberries, Steve’s favorite, and a pot of flowers. Yellow, another favorite. 

“The lady in the flower shop said they should live, like, really long,” shrugs Eddie and moves the chair for Steve so he can sit down. “I forgot their name the second I got them, but Buckley knows and she was asked to deliver a booklet with how to care for them.” 

Steve drags him down to his level and kisses Eddie, deep and long. He’s either crying or laughing into the kiss, maybe both. “I don’t know what to say,” he whispers into Eddie’s cheek. “All of this…is right. It’s me. You remembered.” 

“Eh…kinda. Tried to.” Eddie gives up and lets himself be seated on Steve’s lap. “Actually, I had a small…cheat sheet. Let me show you.”

Steve watches as Eddie takes off his bracelet and watch and sets both on the desk. He gasps as he sees a coiling pattern around Eddie’s wrist, something that looks like a dotted or scratched tattoo all around, but that’s not it. Because then Eddie moves his wrist closer and he can read all the words on Eddie’s skin. 

DARK CHOCOLATE WITH RASPBERRIES

NO CUT FLOWERS! YELLOW IS GOOD

COFFEE WITH ONE DROP OF MILK

NO ICE IN DRINKS - TRIGGERS MIGRAINES

BELTS AND SHOELACES - GOOD GIFTS TO WEAR

FREDDIE MERCURY

GOOD OLD FASHIONED LOVER BOY

NO KETCHUP! 

STRAWBERRY ICE CREAM

These and so much more. All of Steve’s favorites, all what made him feel like himself, forever preserved in Eddie’s skin. 

He buries his head in Eddie’s shoulder and holds him so tight Eddie has trouble breathing, but then he decides that oxygen is overrated. “You’re so crazy,” sobs Steve into his shoulder. 

Eddie laughs again into the quiet of their former school. “I know.”

“And I love you so much.” 

He kisses Steve’s forehead. “I know. And I love you too. That’s why I had to do this, you know. Because even when I’m old and ugly, just like these flowers will be one day, when I’m senile and can hardly remember my own name, I will look at my hand and I’ll know all that is important.” 

Steve holds him even tighter if that’s possible, but maybe oxygen is needed just a little. Eddie gently kisses Steve’s head again and whispers: “We’re not done yet, love. Can you let me go so I can play us a movie? Something nice.” 

The arms crushing him loosen their hold and Steve briefly turns away to wipe at his eyes. “Sure. Sorry, I just…this is new for me. But good. So good.” 

“You deserve the good. All of it.” Eddie means it. And if seeing Steve appreciated as he should have been all of his life is redeemed by something as mundane as ignoring some truths about himself? Eddie is ready and willing. 

As he puts Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom into the VHS player, he realizes something terrifying - he’s actually LOOKING FORWARD TO THE NEXT VALENTINE’S DAY. 

Oh well. Time to adjust the Munson doctrine. After all, it might become a Munson-Harrington doctrine one day, so it deserves some revision.

[some-teeth-in-a-trench-coat]

I think I need to accept that I'm not knowable and not unknowable but a secret third thing and I need to romanticize, idolize, and fetishize that third thing because I think it might be the default state of anything real anyway

ever since I was a little girl* I knew I wanted to be something I could explain to people in a single sentence and be understood

*who wasn't a girl and knew that it was something else instead but at the time in many ways he was only almost not a girl, but now is fully not a girl and entirely a type of man but separately and only additionally is several other things partially which do not add up to a second whole but in no way complete the man who is already an entire thing of its own

[engeorged]

The Sugarman’s House

A Halloween sequel to Obi’s Place, Santa’s Otto and prequel to Aster’s Maze

As it’s Halloween, I thought I’d tell you the story of one of my near misses in my search for Obi. You’d think by now I’d have learnt my lesson. I mean, if chasing down fae-related clues across multiple countries isn’t a red flag that my life has taken a bizarre turn, I don’t know what is. But there I was, chasing another clue like some kind of enchanted scavenger hunt. This time, it was a tip I’d received in a seedy little café in Strasbourg, where a man with a thick German accent and a glint in his eye mentioned that if I were truly looking for the fae, I should check out a market in Munich. He said it as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, like I’d find the secret to magic between a bratwurst stand and a booth selling antiques.

So, off to Munich I went, because at this point, I was following even the faintest whispers that might lead me to Obi. It wasn’t that I’d given up on finding more practical clues; it was just that nothing else had panned out, and desperation can make even the most ridiculous leads seem plausible. Besides, the idea of magic hiding in plain sight among lederhosen and steins of beer was almost charming.

The market itself was sprawling, a maze of colorful stalls and wares that seemed to stretch on forever. It was the kind of place where you could find anything from hand-carved wooden toys to dusty antiques, and probably a cursed amulet or two if you knew where to look. But that wasn’t what I wanted. I wandered through the stalls, trying to seem casual while discreetly searching for…well, anything that felt off. As I walked past a bakery the smell of the pastries made my stomach rumble but I didn’t come to have a snack, I had to find something. I didn’t have to look for long.

Amid the piles of yellowing postcards and forgotten family photos, one card stood out seemingly calling to me. I mean literally calling, I’m pretty sure I heard to shout my name! Its edges were crisp, and the colours were strangely vivid for something allegedly old. It depicted a charming little house, tucked away in a forest, with icing-like snow on the roof and a glowing warmth emanating from its windows. The scene looked more like a holiday card than a genuine photograph, which should have been my first clue that it was a little too perfect. It had the title ‘Der Zuckermann’s Haus’ on the bottom in a neat rectangle. But what caught my attention was the writing on the back, penned in elegant, old-fashioned script: Für den, der wirklich sucht—“For the one who truly seeks.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity. “For the one who truly seeks,” huh? If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear someone was mocking me. But I knew better than to dismiss a clue when it practically fell into my lap. Sure, it sounded ridiculous, but I’d chased stranger leads. What’s one more mad quest in a forest when you’re already balls-deep in fairy tales?

The back of the postcard had a smudged postmark and what looked like a set of coordinates scribbled in the corner. I pulled out my phone, plugged in the numbers, and found that they pointed to the edge of the Black Forest. “Great,” I muttered, “just where I wanted to go—deep into a dark, possibly cursed wood.” Still, there was a tugging in my chest, a feeling that this was the kind of crazy I needed to embrace if I ever hoped to find Obi.

I found myself at the edge of the Black Forest, a strange calm settled over me. There was a stillness in the air, as though the world had paused just beyond the tree line, waiting for me to take the next step. It wasn’t just the chill that ran through the air; it was something deeper, something that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I couldn’t help but think that if magic existed anywhere, it would be in a place like this—a place that seemed to hold its breath, as if it were keeping secrets.

I took one last glance at the postcard, then tucked it into my pocket. “Here goes nothing,” I whispered to myself, and stepped into the forest.

The deeper I ventured into the forest, the more the air seemed to shift around me. There was a damp chill that crept through the trees, but I could also feel a warmth radiating from somewhere up ahead, like the promise of a fireplace at the end of a long walk. I’d been wandering for what felt like hours, and I could feel every step. My legs ached from navigating the uneven ground, and the extra weight I’d picked up from the last year wasn’t helping. My growing belly had rounded out somewhat and I had noticed that my shirts were starting to feel a bit tighter around the middle. The irony wasn’t lost on me—here I was, searching for the fae that made me fat with a lot of extra fat they had put on me.

As I trudged further into the woods, the scent of something sweet floated on the breeze. It started out faint, just a hint of something spicy, but as I followed the trail, the smell grew stronger, richer—almost decadent. I could practically taste the caramel in the air, the warmth of cinnamon and cloves wrapping around me like a soft blanket. It felt like the woods were trying to lure me in deeper, coaxing me forward with promises of warmth and sweetness.

Then, I saw it.

The house came into view as I rounded a bend in the trail, and for a moment, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. It was beautiful—picturesque, even—like something you’d see on the front of a biscuit tin at Grandma’s. It had steep gabled roofs, tall windows with little wooden shutters, and ivy crawling up the sides in a way that seemed almost too perfect. As I drew closer, however, I noticed the details that weren’t quite right. The walls didn’t look like wood at all, but a dark, rich brown that seemed almost edible. I squinted and stepped closer, peering at the surface. It wasn’t wood—it was fucking gingerbread. The entire house was covered in thick layers of icing, with candy canes lining the corners and massive gumdrops studded along the roof’s edges. I even spotted what looked like strips of marzipan wrapped around the window frames.

This couldn’t be real, could it? Who would build an entire house out of sweets in the middle of the Black Forest? It was absurd, and yet there I was, standing in front of it, breathing in the intoxicating aroma of freshly baked gingerbread and sugar.

I circled the house, looking for a way inside. The front door was made to look like a giant chocolate bar, with squares that seemed ready to snap off. I tried the doorknob, but it wouldn’t budge, and the windows, though invitingly decorated with thick icing, didn’t give me any way to see inside. If there was any sign of magic or fae, it was well hidden. But then again, in stories like this, magic often required a little… participation.

I glanced at the wall next to me and reached out, breaking off a small piece of gingerbread. It crumbled in my hand, still warm to the touch, and as I brought it to my mouth, the flavors hit me in waves. The sweetness of the icing blended with the deep, spiced richness of the gingerbread. It wasn’t just the taste that overwhelmed me; it was the sensation of warmth spreading through my whole body, as if the bite had ignited some kind of inner glow. I hadn’t tasted anything so comforting, so perfect, in a long time.

Encouraged, I broke off another piece, this time from one of the candy canes lining the doorway. It was surprisingly soft, and when I bit into it, the peppermint flavor burst across my tongue, refreshing and invigorating. I couldn’t help but take another bite, and then another, sampling different parts of the house as though I were at a dessert buffet.

But as I continued to eat, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched. I paused, a piece of chocolate-coated marzipan halfway to my mouth, and glanced around. The clearing was empty, and the only sounds were the wind rustling through the trees and my own heavy breathing. Still, the sense of being observed lingered, like the hairs on the back of my neck were trying to warn me of something I couldn’t see.

I hesitated, then shrugged it off and took another bite. If this was some sort of enchanted test, I figured I’d already thrown myself into it by eating half the front porch.

I was just reaching for another piece of candied fruit embedded in the windowsill when I noticed him—a figure standing at the edge of the clearing, half-shrouded in shadow. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a surprisingly muscular frame that looked almost out of place in the delicate light of the forest. His dark hair fell in thick strands, just long enough to brush against his collarbones, framing a face that was both rugged and striking. His eyes, a vivid shade of purple, gave his nature away and they seemed to glow faintly in the fading light. There was an intensity in his gaze, something that made my breath hitch and my pulse quicken, though I couldn’t quite say why.

“Hey,” I said, swallowing the bite I’d just taken. “Do you, uh, live here?”

The man’s expression didn’t change, except for a small, closed-mouth smile that tugged at the corners of his lips. There was a mystery to that smile, as if he knew something I didn’t—a secret that he had no intention of sharing.

“Right,” I continued, trying to fill the silence. “I’m, uh, looking for something. Someone, actually. Maybe you could help?”

Still, he said nothing, just stood there watching me with those strange, captivating eyes. It was unnerving, but I found it hard to look away. There was a power in his gaze, like a magnet drawing me closer, making it difficult to think clearly. I felt a strange flutter in my chest, a mixture of curiosity and… something else.

“Okay, well, if you’re not going to say anything,” I muttered, glancing down at the piece of gingerbread in my hand. “I guess I’ll just—”

“Eat.”

The command hit me like a physical force, reverberating through my whole body. It wasn’t just a suggestion; it was a deep, urgent compulsion that I couldn’t resist even if I’d wanted to. The word echoed in my mind, sinking into my bones, filling every crevice of my thoughts. Without thinking, I brought the gingerbread to my mouth and took a bite, then another, and another. I couldn’t stop. It was as though my hands and mouth were no longer mine to control.

The flavors seemed to grow richer with each bite—caramelized sugar, dark chocolate, buttery cake—melding together in a symphony of sweetness that was as intoxicating as it was overwhelming. I felt a warmth spreading through my chest, trickling down into my belly, which had already begun to swell slightly from all I had eaten. The sensation was… familiar. Comforting, even. But as the moments passed, I could feel my stomach pushing against the waistband of my jeans, the fabric beginning to strain.

I tore off a piece of peppermint railing, biting into it eagerly. The coolness of the mint mixed with the lingering spice of the gingerbread, and I could feel my body responding, a heaviness settling in my limbs, my movements becoming slower, almost languid. As I continued to eat, my belly pushed out further, pressing against the front of my shirt. I could feel the buttons straining, the fabric pulling tighter and tighter, until finally, one of them popped loose, flying off into the underbrush with a soft ping.

I paused, just for a moment, my hand hovering in front of my mouth with another chunk of gingerbread. “Is this… some kind of test?” I managed to ask, my voice thick and heavy. But the man—whoever or whatever he was—only watched, that same enigmatic smile curving across his lips.

I took another bite, then another, unable to stop myself. The swelling in my stomach grew more pronounced, a deep, full feeling that seemed to fill every inch of my being. My shirt strained and stretched over my expanding middle, and I could feel the seams digging into my skin, cutting across the surface as my belly rounded out further. It wasn’t painful, exactly—more like a slow, relentless pressure that was both unnerving and oddly pleasurable.

The man’s smile deepened, and his eyes gleamed as if lit from within. He took a step closer, his presence somehow filling the clearing, making it feel smaller, more intimate. “Eat,” he repeated, his voice soft and smooth, like velvet sliding over my skin. The word wrapped itself around my thoughts, dissolving any hesitation I had left. I ate for what felt like minutes but must have been hours judging by the size of my gut. This man had to be one of them, and there was only one way I would find out. I took a deep breath and leaned in, tearing off a chunk of chocolate-coated marzipan from the doorframe. As I chewed, I could feel the weight of my belly pressing outward, stretching the skin taut and forcing my waistband to dig deeper into my sides. Another button popped, then another, until the front of my shirt hung open, exposing the round curve of my stomach.

I reached out again, this time for a piece of glazed fruit decorating the roof’s edge. I didn’t even bother to question the absurdity of it anymore. I was lost in the rhythm of eating, the compulsion to keep going, as my belly continued to swell, heavy and distended.

The figure’s voice seemed to deepen as he spoke again, a low murmur that sent a shiver down my spine. “Come inside.” There was no room for resistance in his tone. I obeyed, my legs moving on their own as I followed him through the front door, which swung open as if by magic.

Inside, the air was heavy with the scent of freshly baked pastries, chocolate, and cream. It was as though I had walked straight into a bakery’s dream. In the center of the room stood a long, wooden table, and it was covered end to end with cakes, tarts, pies, and other treats. Rich chocolate éclairs, fluffy cream puffs, golden-brown strudels glistening with sugar—every imaginable dessert was laid out before me, and the sight of it made my mouth water, even though my stomach was already straining from all the gingerbread I had eaten outside.

“Sit,” the figure commanded, and I found myself dropping into the chair at the head of the table. Without hesitation, my hands reached for the nearest dish—a slice of dark chocolate cake that oozed rich ganache with each bite. I ate greedily, as though I hadn’t eaten in days, and the compulsion that gripped me grew stronger with every mouthful. My belly pressed outward, swelling more with each decadent morsel I consumed, and I could feel my shirt tightening again, though there was hardly anything left of it to hold me in.

As I continued to eat, I felt an odd mix of sensations stirring within me. There was a familiar enjoyment—something about the way my stomach filled and stretched reminded me of those strange, thrilling moments back at Obi’s place, when I’d let myself indulge in ways I never had before. But there was also a creeping dread in the back of my mind, a small voice whispering that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

I swallowed the last bite of a sugar-dusted pastry and reached for another slice of cake, but then I noticed something in the corner of the room—a large, brick oven, its iron door glowing faintly red as if there were a fire raging just behind it. The sight of it pulled me back from the fog of pleasure, and for the first time, I started to question what was happening. Why was this here? Why was I here?

I glanced back at the figure, my hands trembling as I set the plate down. His expression hadn’t changed, but there was something darker in his eyes now, a glint that hadn’t been there before. His smile widened, revealing a set of teeth that were far too sharp, too large to be human.

“What… what is this?” I managed to gasp, my voice weak and unsteady.

The figure took a step closer, and when he spoke, his voice was smooth as velvet. “You are the feast,” he said simply, his words curling around me like smoke. “You are the source of power I need—the nourishment that fuels me.”

I tried to push back from the table, but my body felt heavy, sluggish. My belly was huge now, pushing out over the waistband of my pants, which had long since torn open under the strain. The exposed skin was taut and round, flushed red from the pressure of being so full. I struggled to stand, but the weight of my gut made it difficult, almost impossible to move.

“More,” the figure commanded once more, his tone sharper this time, edged with irritation. The word cut through me, sinking in deep, and I felt the compulsion return, stronger than ever. My hands reached for the nearest pastry, and I stuffed it into my mouth even as my mind screamed at me to stop. Each bite seemed to add more to my already swollen middle, my skin stretching to accommodate the relentless expansion. I could feel my belly pushing against the table’s edge, the wood digging into the taut flesh, and still, I kept eating.

I tried to form a coherent thought, but it was hard with the sensation of fullness drowning out everything else. “Why… why me?” I mumbled through a mouthful of cake.

The figure’s smile was all teeth now. “Because you were willing,” he said. “You sought indulgence, and now you will give me what I need.”

Panic surged through me, and I pushed harder against the chair, the table, anything to get away. My gut was enormous now, ballooned out in front of me, hindering every attempt I made to rise. I felt the sweat prickling on my skin, my breath coming in ragged gasps as I stumbled to my feet, finally managing to break free from the spell enough to back away from the table. The figure’s eyes followed me, his expression calm and almost amused, as though he found my struggle entertaining.

I glanced around wildly, and that’s when I noticed that the walls of the house seemed to shimmer, as if they were not entirely solid. The bricks that I had thought were gingerbread now appeared more like plaster, the sugary decorations fading into ordinary paint. It was then that I realized the true nature of my surroundings. The whole place began to dissolve, fading away into the familiar sights of a bakery. The table of cakes and pastries became rows of bread loaves and buns, and I was standing behind the counter, surrounded by shocked customers who stared at me in disbelief.

I blinked, the haze in my mind clearing just enough for me to take in my surroundings. The gingerbread house was gone. I was standing in the middle of a bakery, surrounded by rows of bread, pastries, and wide-eyed customers who looked at me as if I’d just sprouted a second head. My head was still spinning, but I recognised the place almost instantly—it was the same shop I had walked past earlier, back at the market in Munich. Somehow, I had never left.

I glanced down at myself, trying to make sense of what had just happened. My shirt was, hanging open to reveal a round, bloated belly pushing against the waistband of my jeans. It wasn’t as grotesquely swollen as it had been in the enchanted cottage, but it was still painfully full, bulging outward in a way that made each breath feel tight and shallow. The skin of my stomach was flushed red, covered with a light dusting of hair that trailed down from my chest. I could feel the cool air of the bakery against the exposed curve of my belly, the bottom of my shirt riding up to reveal just how far I’d expanded. I must have looked ridiculous.

My hand instinctively reached for my back pocket, where I found the postcard—the very one that had led me to the Black Forest in the first place—crumpled but still intact. I pulled it out, staring at the faded image of the gingerbread house and the cryptic words on the back. It was as if the whole experience had been a waking dream, conjured by nothing more than an old piece of paper and my own curiosity. But the tightness in my gut told me otherwise. I hadn’t imagined any of it.

I scanned the bakery for any sign of the figure—the man with the purple eyes who had commanded me to eat. For a moment, I thought he might be gone, but then I saw him outside the shop, standing just beyond the glass door. He was exactly as I remembered—tall and handsome, with that same closed-mouth smile that seemed to hide far more than it revealed. His eyes glinted with a faint purple hue, and there was a hint of amusement in the way he watched me, as if he found my confusion rather entertaining.

I stumbled toward the door, my belly jostling uncomfortably with each step, but just as I reached the entrance, the figure’s image wavered like a heat mirage and then disappeared altogether, leaving only the reflection of the empty street beyond. I stared out into the marketplace, the postcard clutched in my hand, and felt a strange mixture of relief and dread.

The reality of what had just happened—or what I thought had happened—was slipping away from me, fading like a half-remembered nightmare. But the ache in my belly and the taste of sugar lingering on my tongue were all too real. Whatever magic had been at play, it had left its mark on me. And as I turned away from the door, I couldn’t shake the feeling that this was far from over. There were still answers I needed to find, and this time, I would be more careful about what I chose to taste.

For more of my stories click here

[bonny-kookoo]

Jungkook

+1 Chance | Short/Oneshot

In which some people get an extra life.

Tags/Warnings: pro Esports!Kook, Teenage crushes to ???, SFW, Short, Open ending, all around fluffy

Length: 2.2k Words

A/N: Yes I'm still writing on existing stuff dw. Just a random valentines day drabble. Not proofread.

—--——--——--——--——--🩷--——--——--——--——--—

You met Jungkook in summer, many years ago, when the sun was hot and your friends turned out to be nothing but situationships.

You’d been seeing the hints of their friendship not being of honest nature for a while now- but as a young girl barely about to graduate a year later, you didn’t want to be alone during your allegedly best years of your life. So you ignored the warnings one after another, always found excuses as to why their behavior was totally justifiable and normal, even if deep down you knew that you were just trying to convince yourself of that.

And then, you met him- a guy showing you honest kindness for nothing asked in return.

It was hot, sun burning, and you’d tried to get out the pool- but your small strawberry floaty had kept slipping from underneath you, making it hard to find the strength to get out of the large pool in your ‘friend’s’ backyard by yourself- when suddenly, a hand had grabbed the red item to keep it still, so you could properly hold onto it for a moment.

“Here- let me help.” He’d said, black nail polish chipped. And you’d taken on the help, too tired to really care about the fact that your friend had told you to just ignore her brother’s ‘weirdo friends’- him clearly being one of them. “Want me to help you get out? The sun is pretty hot right now, you should get out soon.” He had worried a little, and you'd nodded, pushing yourself up on the ledge after having let go of the floaty, finally having been able to escape the pool with his help, as he made sure you wouldn’t slip or end up back inside because of your strength leaving you.

You weren’t sure back then where your friends even were at that point. But somehow, it was like a moment of realization- a clear sign you couldn’t ignore any longer. “your uh.. friends went to watch a movie upstairs now, in Kate’s room..” he says, watching you sit down in the shade, drying yourself with a towel you brought.

“..thanks.” you’d mumbled. “I.. Probably should go home now.” You’d shrugged, feeling ashamed and embarrassed to ever having trusted these people at all. All they did was use your kindness and clear need for just someone to talk to and befriend- and you’d willingly accepted that, blinded by the glimpses of happiness they’d made you feel every now and then.

They knew how to manipulate you- keep you happy and clingy enough with occasional treats never given too often.

“I mean.. I can drive you. It’s late.” Jungkook had offered you. “But we’re also missing a fourth player for mario-cart right now, down in Kate’s brother’s room.” He’d jokingly told you- something that had given you hope.

“..but won’t it be weird?” You’d worried. “They don’t know me.”

“Well, everyone’s a stranger when you first meet them.” Jungkook had laughed, as he gave you a towel from close by, both of you having slowly walked back into the house. “I’m Jungkook. Just in case you didn’t know. “ He’d introduced himself, smiling like he’s the sun itself.

And little did you know that on that day, as you gave him your name, you both also set the foundation for much more than just a friendship.

—--——--——--——--——--🩷--——--——--——--——--—

“So you two have history?” Your friend asks, sitting across from you on your hotel room floor, both of you occupied with making sure your freshly applied nail polish dries well. You’re on a weekend trip for just the two of you, to take some time off the stressful life and to nourish your friendship a little.

“Not really.” You shrug. “I wouldn’t call it that. More so.. An awkward friendship when I was younger, before I moved away.” You answer, explaining your situation as to why Jeon Jungkook, one of the current top e-sports players had greeted you when you randomly ran into each other today in the hotel hallway.

“Oh, so he was the guy you had a crush on when you were younger?” She teases, never forgetting anything it seems like- not even a random confession during a childish game of never-have-I-ever. “I knew it. Damn, you were so close! Imagine your life if you’d bagged that guy.” She swoons, having made it known time and time again that she wouldn’t pass up any opportunity to ‘get her hands on those abs’ if she ever had the chance to do so. You know this is simply a joke, but still, her words do make you think.

How would your life have turned out if you got with him?

Would he have chosen to go against his parents’ advice to just keep his hobby as, well, a hobby, or would he have accepted their wishes to instead study something more steady, to earn a position in a stable company? You’ll never know- but despite that, its still interesting to just humor that idea for a moment.

“Hey, maybe there’s still tickets for the tournament!” Your friend chirps up, having noticed her nailpolish having dried by now, phone fetched and disconnected from the charger as she swipes and inputs her passcode to unlock it. “Or I’ll ask if we can have my brother’s tickets, since he didn’t go..” She mumbles, texting him most likely now.

“It’s.. I don’t know, we wanted to go out for dinner though.” You mumble, checking your polish for any imperfections. “You don’t even like gaming that much.” You also add, teasingly so. She rolls her eyes.

“Just cause I don’t play them, doesn’t mean I cant enjoy watching someone play them instead.” She argues. “Also, you can watch the game- I'll watch the pretty boy.” She winks, making you laugh with her, when she receives a text, phone falling out of her hand for a second before she can pick it up again. “Oh- he said we can have them!” She chirps up, clearly excited. “As far as I know they’re free seating- so if we’re early, we get to choose where we wanna sit and watch.” She explains, texting him some more while you contemplate.

This is dumb. He probably has a girlfriend, a life of his own, hell- you have a life of your own now, far away from him. There’s no reason for you to try and test your luck like this, but you’re also a fan of the game he’s competing at. So, maybe..

Yeah. You’re totally not doing it for him. You’re just going to watch the gameplay.

What’s the worst that can happen?

—--——--——--——--——--🩷--——--——--——--——--—

It’s not even the next day yet, but you already see him again.

On your way down to the reception desk, mission clear in your head to muster up the courage to ask for another pillow instead of sleeping uncomfortably like this, you’ve barely exited your room when your eyes meet again in the hallway.

He says your name. His voice has gotten deeper after all those years, you notice. You nod, and he smiles, the turn of the corner of his mouth pulling your attention to the twin piercing he has placed there, silver rings piercing right through his skin. “It’s been a while.” He offers, hands in the pockets of his pants. He must’ve been out with his teammates, smell of faint cigarette smoke clinging to him as you walk a bit closer.

You nod. You feel awkward, all dressed down like this, having gotten reader for bed hours before, trying to find sleep without the extra comfort another pillow would bring you. “how are you?” He asks, and again, you nod.

You hate this. You’re still terrible at talking to people. “I’m good.. and you?” You answer, avoiding eye contact. Of course he’s obviously doing good- great even, about to bag thousands of prize money tomorrow when he’ll surely win the tournament.

“Good. Great even, now that I.. anyways, do.. What’re you doing here?” He wonders, clearly happy to initiate smalltalk. “vacation or work?”

“vacation. With.. a friend of mine.” You tell him, toes digging onto the fluffy slippers you brought on this trip for yourself. “like.. a girl’s weekend.” You explain, and he nods.

“Yeah.. guess you gotta leave the men at home sometimes to unwind.” He jokes.

“hmhm. Well, she had to- I don’t, you know, have anyone, so I’m flexible.” You tell him, and that seems to make his eyes sparkle almost like you’ve challenged him. Which you didn’t- so why does he look so energized now.

“Cool! I mean.. yeah.” He nods to himself, before he seems to realize something. “Oh hey, if I interrupted you or I’m holding you in a conversation, don’t mind me! You look like you were on your way somewhere-“ he starts, pointing down the gall to the elevator. “But uh.. if you wanna go down, there’s a bunch of drunks down in the lobby, just a warning.” He offers, making you deflate.

“Oh.” You hum, defeated. Well, maybe you cal roll up your sweater or something.

“If you.. I can go with you, if you’d like.” He offers. "I’m still pretty fit. Still boxing. So.. I can be your meat-shield basically.” He jokes, making you giggle, his eyes brightening up at the sound and sight.

“I.. that would be nice, actually.” You accept, and he happily walks next to you into the elevator at that, faint music drowning our the heavy buzzing of the mechanics.

“so uh.. how’s your family?” He wonders. “is your dad still making your mom’s life harder every day?” He jokes, but you shake your head, smiling fondly.

“No, they surprisingly settled these days. They’re.. on a trip themselves. For valentines day and all.” You explain, and Jungkook nods.

“romantic.” He teases, and you giggle, nodding along.

“they.. ask about you a lot. It’s kind of funny.” You tell him. “I can only ever tell them what I see online though.” You shrug.

“You.. know what I do?” he wonders, and your eyes widen as you look at him.

“are you kidding me? You’re the top player at my favorite game.” You say, making his expression moron into one of both wonder- and slightly bashful.

“I uh.. didn’t know. Guess I’ll take that as a compliment.” He laughs it off. “I.. have a tournament actually, tomorrow.”

“I know.” You nod, elevator doors opening. “I’ll be there. With my friend.” You say.

“Oh wow.” He chuckles. “I better win, in that case.” He.. flirts? As he walks towards the reception desk with you- drunk group of friends luckily only being loud, but not aggressive. “where will you sit?”

“its.. free seating, so I’m not sure.” You mumble, before you ask the lady at the desk for another pillow for your room number.

“I could probably reserve some good seats.” He says, and you smile.

“You really don’t have to.” You reassure him, when he suddenly asks the lady for something else as well- a flower from the last bouquet left over from the hotel’s valentines sale for the guests. She happily gives it to him, free of charge, before she tells you that housekeeping will bring you the pillow shortly, before she resumes her own work again, letting you and Jungkook walk back into the elevator.

You’re not sure what you think of this- but junkook has liked flowers back then, so why wouldn’t he still like flowers now. Or, maybe he’s staying here with his girlfriend, and he’s just wanting to gift her something on his way back to her- it’s valentines day, after all.

“I’ll.. can I have your number? To text you where you’ll sit tomorrow.” He asks, and you nod, walking into your room to fetch your phone, showing your number for him to type into his own, screen cracked a little in one corner. “awesome. Now then, the only thing I gotta do is..-“ he starts, slipping the phone in the pocket of his pants. “-ask you to be my valentine?” He wonders, holding the flower out to you. "Don’t have to say yes. I’m a big boy, I can take rejection.” He jokes.

“Can I.. ask why?” You wonder, and he grins, shrugging.

“I feel like, maybe the universe is trying to tell me something.” He simply answers. “..giving me a second chance, to ask you out for real this time.”

“wait.. you mean-“ you stammer, and he nods.

“I had.. kind of a huge crush on you back then. And, seeing you again.. it all just.. flared up again. Exactly the same way.” He confesses. “I’m not.. asking for something big. Just one date- and we’ll go from there.” He asks, and you slowly take the flower from him, smile on your lips as you think about his words. Fate, huh? A universe’s second chance? What are the chances?

You decide you don’t care.

“okay.” You answer him,-

And his eyes sparkle brightly, while he smiles at you like you’re the sun.

—--——--——--——--——--🩷--——--——--——--——--—i

[creature-wizard]

What the Project Monarch alter programming conspiracy theory is (and what it's not)

When I talk about alter programming conspiracy theories, people often get confused as to what I mean, so I figured I'd write a post to clear things up.

First of all, I am not saying that DID systems can't be indoctrinated or conditioned the same way literally any other human being can be, or that abusive people would never try and manipulate or exploit specific alters. That's not what I'm saying at all.

What I am talking about is a set of alleged practices first described by a number of far right conspiracy theorists, who claimed that the CIA was operating a program called Project Monarch, which was allegedly part of Project MK-Ultra.

Now, the existence of Project MK-Ultra is very well-known. The CIA did in fact conduct unethical human experiments in an effort to actually practice mind control. However, it didn't work out because drugs and the human brain don't actually work the way they thought they did. It's worth noting that these experiments were in part fueled by a fear that Russians were already masters of mind control, because as far as they were concerned, communism had to be more than just a political ideology that was at odds with America's own capitalist system; it had to be something so evil that it could only be forced on people using the most diabolical of methods. They were terrified that American POWs were being turned into Manchurian agents, and they figured that if this a thing the Russians were doing, then they should try and take advantage of this, too. Again, Project MK-Ultra was horrible, but it didn't produce the results they wanted, because Manchurian agents are nothing more than the fever dream of a terrified western capitalist.

Meanwhile, there is no evidence that Project Monarch ever existed. None. Nada. Not a shred. Despite allegedly being practiced by thousands of people in all levels of society since at least the mid-20th century, not a single piece of primary literature or documentation has ever turned up. Keep this in mind going forward.

If you've never heard of Project Monarch before, here's the gist of this conspiracy theory: Supposedly, Nazi scientist Dr. Josef Mengele wasn't actually performing eugenics experiments, and the Holocaust wasn't actually about genocide at all. It was actually a cover for mind control experiments. After the war, Dr. Joseph Mengele was brought over to the US in Operation Paperclip, where he taught the CIA everything he knew. Project Monarch was established by the CIA in order to plant programmers and programmed slaves everywhere in society for the purpose of establishing the rule of the New World Order, which had supposedly controlled Nazi Germany and had now infiltrated the US government. Supposedly, one of the New World Order's big goals was to destroy American conservative Christianity, especially Protestantism. Literally anything that a white American Protestant hyperconservative would find objectionable was supposedly the work of the NWO.

The alleged practices conducted under Project Monarch were broadly labeled "trauma-based mind control," or TBMC. While some people today use this term to refer to any form of punitive conditioning, the term originally had a very specific meaning. Let's talk about how TBMC in its original context allegedly worked. The basic concept goes like this: a very young child (sometimes even a baby) will be put under brutal torture in order to force them into dissociation. If the procedure is successful, the victim's mind will split and form a number of completely blank alters. Somehow, the programmers know which blank alters are potentially useful for programming, and which aren't. Each usable alter will be programmed with a code or trigger that will allow programmers to access the alter (force it to front) later. Supposedly, the host alter will have no memory of any of this.

During each programming session, the victim will be tortured into a dissociative trance, and the desired alter will be accessed. At this point the alter will be taught (typically as traumatically as possible) whatever they're supposed to learn, like how to assassinate someone, how to do complex mathematics at superhuman levels, or how to pose as the perfect Christian housewife.

So theoretically, someone who's basically your regular churchgoing mom could be sent a greeting card with a picture of something like a cute little Scottish terrier, have her assassin alter triggered, and go kill some local politician with some futuristic piece of technology that makes it look like he just died of natural heart attack.

Allegedly, millions of people have been programmed like this, and the average Monarch slave has an average of 1000 alters. Meanwhile, the supposed symptoms of alter programming are so broad that just about anyone with any kind of trauma or mental health issue could be diagnosed with it, and there is nothing they could do to falsify it.

Again, there is literally no evidence that Monarch programming is real. Josef Mengele was not brought to the US in Operation Paperclip; he fled to South America and died in Brazil. The Nazis (including Mengele) were very much all about those eugenics, and claiming otherwise is laughable. Not a single group, institution, or individual has ever been found in possession of programmers' manuals, nor in possession of the codebooks and books of programming records that supposedly (and would have to, if this was really happening) exist out there. Not a single person claiming to be a deprogrammed slave has ever demonstrated any of the numerous skills they were supposedly trained to be hypercompentent in.

Additionally, once you start digging into the actual sources of this conspiracy theory, you start seeing the exact same tropes that feature in The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion and early modern witch hunt manuals. They've been given some updates to resonate with the fears of post-WWII American WASPs, but it's ultimately the same scapegoating and fearmongering that sent millions of people to their deaths.

It's obvious that most of the people who believe that Monarch programming exists haven't actually read works like Trance-Formation of America by Mark Philips and Cathy O'Brien, and They Know Not What They Do: Illustrated Guide To Monarch Mind Control, The Illuminati Formula Used To Create A Total Undetectable Mind-Controlled Slave, and Deeper Insights Into The Illuminati Formula by Fritz Springmeier and Cisco Wheeler. If they did, they'd be pretty hard-pressed to deny that these books are some of the most hateful garbage ever written. These books are chock full of xenophobia, racism, and a general hatred of anyone who isn't a hyperconservative Protestant. Pseudoscience and pseudohistory are rampant throughout, as are now-failed predictions about the alleged future plans of the New World Order.

Some people out there have asked me, "well, what about this other person talking about it?" I promise you, the stuff they are talking about ultimately comes from these books, which were published throughout the 1990's. This includes Unwelcome Ozian, whose books Chainless Slaves and Rules of Programming contain text that's straight-up copied from some of these books. People like Dr. Alison Miller and Dr. Ellen Lacter cite Svali, and Svali's own work describes the exact same NWO conspiracy theory as the works of Springmeier and Wheeler.

I encourage anyone who isn't likely to get triggered by talk of extreme violence (including sexual) to actually read these books so you can see for yourself just how bad they are. A huge part of the reason this conspiracy theory has so much traction is because few people actually know where it comes from, and just how completely ridiculous the whole damn thing is. Just about everything QAnon was on about is packed into these books.

And finally, while dissociative amnesia does indeed exist, we also have evidence that people can confabulate memories of events that never actually happened. Rock-solid evidence, in fact. This is literally what happens every time someone goes under hypnosis to try and remember a past life, and "remembers" a past life in the medieval period filled with anachronisms and historical misconceptions. If you'd like to see some extremely obvious examples of memory confabulation for yourself (some of which don't even involve hypnosis), you can click here and here.

(By the way, the terms "RAMCOA" and "OEA" were created by the ISSTD, for the purpose of making these types of conspiracy theories sound respectable within legitimate psychiatry.)

[vashtijoy]

Hi, hello,I would like to know something for science. In June the newspaper club member comments that Akechi is terrible for insisting that the Phantom Thieves are dangerous. One of the answers Joker can give is "He's too pretty to be wrong." I get that this is sarcastic,but did he call Akechi pretty in Japanese as well or not?

Hello! Thanks for your ask!

イケメン無罪 ikemen muzai He's too pretty to be wrong. Cute guy, not guilty.

Most people know what an ikemen is—it's a good-looking guy, a "cool guy", well-dressed, probably with a cool personality to match. Akechi's Detective Prince mode is a good example. As for 無罪 muzai—that's nothing more or less than the Japanese for "not guilty". So Joker did call him pretty, right? Well...

what is ikemen muzai?

Allegedly a spin on the Chinese concept of "patriotic innocence" (in Japanese 愛国無罪 aikoku muzai, "love of country, not guilty", popularised by Japanese reporting of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China in the 00s), ikemen muzai is an ironic saying that means someone's not guilty of whatever terrible crime because they're cute. It seems to be a youth culture/fandom culture thing. Many in Persona fandom would say that Akechi is a good example.

Note that again. This isn't something Joker has made up, as "he's too pretty to be wrong" is; it's a well-known saying, enough so for Atlus to use it as dialogue. Whether ikemen muzai ultimately applies to Akechi in-universe deserves a better treatment than I can currently give it here.

so not gay, then?

We-ell. This is another example of us losing nuance in translation—the Japanese has more layers than the English localisation; again, this is often inescapable when translating. It's very common in P5.

Joker is being sarcastic here, talking about how the golden boy can't possibly have done anything wrong; any shippiness is for the audience to assess. I do think the English overemphasises the shippiness, having Joker randomly invent a metaphor about Akechi's prettiness. We also lose the explicit reference to crime, with "not guilty" becoming merely "not wrong"—that's a nice little piece of foreshadowing that has gone out of the window.

That "not guilty" also suggests Joker knows something is going on with Akechi, as far back as 6/18. Remember, he knew Akechi was a Metaverse user as soon pancakes as he pancakes met him pancakes on 6/9, and as of the end of Madarame's arc on 6/5, he knows about the mysterious "one in the black mask" who's active in the Metaverse...

It's tempting here to overemphasise the additional nuance. But double entendres exist in Japanese too. Joker really did call Akechi cute. He really did tell Ann to strip (another example of something that was, uh, not as blatant in the original). And so on, and so on.

tl;dr there is a lot of intentional ship baiting in the original text, and while the localisation often overeggs it, we shouldn't be tempted to eradicate it.

revision history

click here for the latest version.

v1.0 (2024/02/09)—first posted.

[hetalian-veteran]

You want to know what I think is one of the craziest bits of fanon in the Hetalia fandom?

The existence of the 2p! characters. Or rather what we did with them. Here's what I mean.

The 2p! characters started off as recolored drawings of the main characters by Himaruya, where he also created gender-bent designs of the main cast, along with alternate coloring. He allegedly joked and said that they looked like they could be part of an evil organization or something.

He also did some possible alternate sketches of some of the other characters but never finalized them. These characters started to be called 2p! characters, as in "second player", like in a video game.

But what's truly insane and all-around amazing is what the fandom did with this information. Because we didn't just sit down, look at the drawings, churn out a few fanarts, and go along our merry way.

Oh goodness no...

We took these sketches by Himaruya and ran with them.

Next thing you know, the fandom began creating their own versions of the 2p! characters, even taking the gender-bent recolors and swapping their genders back to better resemble the main cast, but not exactly. We even created personalities for each and every one of them. While there are common personality traits shared by many of them, they are also incredibly unique with their own personality traits and quirks.

And the personalities we've given to each character were done by the fandom largely agreeing on certain information. Some examples are...

2p!America is a vegan, animal-loving delinquent.

2p!France is a clinically depressed smoker and alcoholic who believes love is fake.

2p!Italy has the persona of a mafia boss and is lowkey a sadist.

2p!England is a happy-go-lucky baker who makes sweets that may or may not contain human remains.

And the list goes on and on. We've made our own designs and personalities that the fandom largely has agreed upon, and these alternate versions of the characters are so dang popular that they might as well have their own fandom. Which, to be honest, they do.

They're so popular that they even have their own fanarts, fanfictions, cosplays, etc.

The Hetalia fandom literally went off and created its own sub-fandom. And this isn't the only sub-fandom that's branched off of the main Hetalia fandom. There's plenty more out there. The reason the 2p! characters are so wild to me is because the fandom really did take a handful of official and unofficial drawings with no canonical ties and went off to the races with them.

I'll probably go over different parts of Hetalia fanon and the sub-fandoms that branched off of Hetalia, but I needed to talk about the 2p!s, because their existence is just wild to me.

And I love them.

[thirstandfurious]

Straightwashing The Picture of Dorian Gray?

Two days ago, the Internet discovered a prospective Netflix adaption, that of The Picture of Dorian Gray into a tv show The Grays. (Deadline)

As the title entails, Katie Rose Rogers (writer) has made the choice to give the protagonist of Wilde’s novel a brother. She allegedly decided not to add a new Gray but to turn a pre-existing character into a relative of the oh-so-famous Dorian Gray: Basil Hallward.

The painter of the cursed portrait that contains and manifests all of Dorian’s flaws and villainy, the adoring artist infatuated with his muse and his beauty, one of the characters often analysed in queer studies of the novel, will be turned into Dorian’s brother.

Narrative license is a common occurence in the art of adaptation, but the writer’s choice raises some issues on the Internet considering the original novel, its impact on its author’s life, as well as its importance in the field of research and its role in representing queerness in history.

The Picture of Dorian Gray is an 1891 work of literature written by Oscar Wilde. The novel, itself derived from an early novella-length work, tackles the moral descent of Dorian Gray as it never takes shape on his forever-young angelic face (and thus going against the belief of physiognomic degeneration of its time) but instead taints a portrait made of him by a friend—the aforementioned Basil.

Connoisseurs and those less interested in the works of Oscar Wilde tend to know at least two things about the author:

one, he wrote Dorian Gray;

two, he was a homosexual.

It is no secret that his novel is submerged by the homoerotic feelings the characters harbour towards one another. While the characters do not overtly engage in romance—a feat which would have led to a bigger scandal than it already was—they do present characteristics that are outwardly associated with queerness. Be it Lord Henry and Dorian Gray taking on a mentor/mentee approach close to Greek pederasty (educational), or Basil and Dorian adopting the artist and muse situation-ship often reserved to male artists and their female objects of inspiration and idolatry, the male/male relationships in the book deviate from normative Victorian masculine and homophile behaviours and extend into unspoken homosexual territories.

In the case of Basil, transforming him into Dorian’s brother means erasing the scandalous and ambiguous relationship between the characters that is often read as being one of the many reasons behind the decay of the portrait, by denoting the repression of nonconforming identities. Basil is written as admiring the beauty of Dorian: he considers him his own personal muse, the driving force behind his art, one that cannot be beaten and that pushes him to be a greater artist. He is as enamoured with Dorian as the Pre-Raphaelites were with women.

In the uncensored version of Dorian Gray, made publicly available in 2011, Basil says quite explicitly to Dorian Gray:

"It is quite true I have worshipped you with far more romance of feeling than a man should ever give to a friend. Somehow I have never loved a woman.” (The Guardian)

In the version commonly read by the general public, Basil also tells Lord Henry (about Dorian Gray):

“I find a strange pleasure in saying things to him that I know I shall be sorry for having said.” (Chapter 1)

This simple sentence reveals an unusual relationship constituted of deviant expressions of sentiments between Victorian men.

In the Basil/Dorian relationship, the latter is feminised through his position as Basil’s muse, he becomes an object of desire and obsession, then an enactor of violence through his ever-lasting youth and beauty, making him a relative of the femme fatale type.

Erasing the grey area between the two characters diminishes the complexity of Wilde’s work as a public critique of Victorian gender roles and morality, especially in light of his own trial and prison sentence for which the homoerotic subtext has been used as proof. This raises the issue of straightwashing and how easy it is to erase queerness in the entertainment industry to accommodate to an heteronormative vision.

——————

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/apr/27/dorian-gray-oscar-wilde-uncensored

https://deadline.com/2024/08/dorian-gray-series-netflix-katie-rose-rogers-rina-mimoun-greg-berlanti-1236045373/

https://www.history.com/topics/gay-rights/oscar-wilde-trial

[yuri-is-online]

Reading the Room at a 5th Grade Level: MC's Curse and Taiga's Memory Issues???

Hi. My name is Yuri and I am an idiot. You see, when I downloaded Tokyo Debunker and I saw what happened to the MC I was confused. "Why did everything go red?" I asked myself. "It's like we were in another dimension!" I unhelpfully said at some point probably. Well I finally googled the name of the station the MC said "was not her usual stop" and guess what? I should have done that way fucking sooner because it's related to a Japanese urban legend, much like Takeru in Episode 2. And helps me with what I noticed yesterday while I was re-reading the Hotarubi episode.

This post contains spoilers for Hotarubi's Episode, viewer discretion is advised.

When the MC is contacted by the spirit who allegedly curses her she is riding the train home from a concert. She receives a text message from someone with a spider lily profile picture, in English their user name is "Mina." Before we are confronted by Mina, the conductor announces that the train's next stop is Kisaragi Station, a station that dear reader, does not exist. It's also extremely famous! But I am not smart or up to date on horror things so I didn't know (⁄ ⁄•⁄-⁄•⁄ ⁄) so sorry if this is all stuff you guys already knew.

Kisaragi Station

The original post about Kisaragi station was, as best I can tell, made on a site called 2chan, which is a Japanese anonymous forum. I was able to find a post about it on r/nosleep from 2019 which claims that people started posting about it on reddit in 2010, and another post on Quora translating a thread that was posted to twitter. There are a few common themes to the urban legend, but there are three I find particularly relevant to our situation.

The station is believed to be on the border of our world and the "other world." It is possible to leave the station, we will get into how in a moment, but attempting to leave it by following the train tracks will get you killed. Especially if you attempt to cross through the train tunnel, that will take you across the point of no return. The original post describes hearing the sound of drums and bells, similar to a Japanese festival, that get louder the closer you get to the tunnel. Accepting rides from people in the vicinity of the station will also kill you. Cell service is active in the area, but you aren't able to find location information and people will not be able to find you. The anomaly on the train we see isn't tied to Kisaragi Station as far as I can tell, and I have been combing through various yokai to see if I can find anything like it but so far I haven't had much luck.

Back to how to leave the station, you have to light something on fire. Specifically something that causes smoke. Paper seems to be the most common suggestion. It's a small detail, but since the game starts with us seeing the school on fire I thought it was an interesting thing to note.

I added Taiga into the title of the post as in the translated twitter thread, the concept of memory loss the longer you stay in Kisaragi is brought up. We never actually see Taiga leave the station, and the MC only leaves it because Haku does something with his artifact. In Episode 5 Haku says he was not using his stigma to put the children's spirits to rest, implying that spiritual energy adn stigmas are different powers he can use. I am going to propose something kind of crazy at the end of this entire post about Haku, but for now just dealing with the facts presented in game he specifically says he "cordoned off" the area. Does he mean that he took the train to Kisaragi station? Or was MC always going there? And if he was the one responsible for doing that then uh. How did Taiga leave the station and get back to Darkwick? Was he trapped there and did he wander around for a long time, doing permanent damage to his memory in the process? Or am I over thinking this and he lost track of the anomaly and lit something on fire so he could leave. I like the idea of him lighting the station on fire and the ghosts asking him to leave, but that's probably not what happened lol

Red

When the train reaches Kisaragi Station in game, the color pallet swaps to red. Much like it does in Episode 5 when MC receives a certain visitor:

We learn later on that this is Zenji, and that Zenji is dead. MC seems to be reacting to his presence and I would like to think that the color choice is deliberate. If we go back to Episode 2, Takeru only has light amounts of red shading around him in his comic panels, when he kills the streamer and when Alan beats the shit out of him are two that immediately come to mind. Interacting with him does not turn the world red like interacting with Zenji or Kisaragi Station does, further strengthening Leo's conclusion about him being a Talupa and not a ghost as this red tint seems to be used for when MC is interacting with the spirit world. Which I am once again asking, how did Taiga get home from Kisaragi Station? Did he carjack a Taxi ghost?

This raises some questions about the anomaly that cursed MC. Is it a ghost and is it something unique to Japan? And if neither of those things are true then why was Haku there? I can think of two reasons for him to be there: the first is if he is there to keep an eye on Taiga for Cornelius/the Institute because Sinostra is on probation but they need him (he was specifically assigned this mission because of how aggressive he is) or it was meant to be a Hotarubi mission because it fit their criteria but Haku couldn't handle it so they arranged for Taiga to come along with him. That last thing is sort of countered by Haku saying that he doesn't think Hotarubi would be able to help with the MC's curse, but he could be lying about that I suppose.

Anyway who wants to hear my really stupid out there reason for why Haku is there-

The Part of the Show Where I do a line of coke Cope

So hear me out, what if Haku's stigma is time travel. So in this post on the subreddit donsaadali suggested that the powers you pick from in the personality test are powers the ring could give MC. I had the thought before that maybe it was a list of stigmas that the various characters had completely forgetting about the time travel line. But it does sort of fit with my line of thinking: make people follow my orders? That's Jin. Elemental powers? Towa. The others: extreme luck, never having to sleep, shapeshifting, and gravity control aren't ones that we have concrete information about but I am tempted to say that "extreme luck" could be Taiga, as turning things into ammo struck me as a quality of his artifact and not his stigma but I'm not really convinced of that. Anyway, if Haku can time travel, he could go back in time, pick up MC, and bring her back to Darkwick even if that's not what happened in the first place and Taiga was the one who brought her back the first time! But why he would do that is lost on me. Well not completely lost, I do think he wants to "help" her but with what and why is not something I have a theory on just yet.

To be clear, that was just me spitballing. I do not really think that Haku's stigma is time travel, there isn't enough evidence for me to think that. I do think that if there is a timeloop going on he is probably aware of it, but again. I don't know why.

Sources

Translated original post (x)

The above post also has a youtube video linked at the top if you want an audio version of the post and some other train related stories

Translated Twitter thread (x)

Shitty r/nosleep post (x)

[stemmmm]

Close to a year and four rewrites later, I present to you...

Stem's Thoughts on the Game Design of Harvest Moon on SNES

I’m not going to lie, if you don’t like farming sims, you won’t like this one. At their core, every farming sim (at least in the rpg genre) is nearly identical, and that’s because of this game. In a way, I might dare to say that Harvest Moon for the SNES is the perfect farming sim because it has every one of the usual elements in their most simplified form and it just works straight from the get-go. It works so well in fact, that after this game came out in 1996, four more entries to the series were released before the year 2000.

If you are someone who does like farming sims, I can’t recommend this game enough. It’s simple and to the point, with a fast pace and enough random events and points of intrigue that the game kept me relatively engaged for my whole playthrough.

Also, by nature of this being the first game and therefore hard to cover concisely and by nature of taking so long to write this... it's long as hell! Enjoy! :) <3

I can’t say my appreciation of this game doesn’t come with a few caveats. I’ve intermittently played HM games all my life, starting with the GameBoy port (GB1) all the way to Pioneers of Olive Town, so while I don’t know exactly how the series has evolved, I’ve seen it at some of its earliest and at its latest. My vague childhood memories of GB1 (a game I didn’t own and didn’t play much of) were that it was pretty sparse and bland, so knowing that this original game was allegedly the same thing but with a little more content, I was expecting the bare minimum. I was prepared to never even be able to leave my farm, but the first thing the game did was shuttle me off to the nearby town and blocked the exit until I talked to everyone there. 

(Maps of the town, mountain, and farm via The Spriters Resource)

You learn everything you need to know about the game right here at the beginning; Firstly, that this town is small as all hell and has hardly anyone in it aside from the five girls you can marry and their immediate family members. The next thing you’ll learn is that there’s a fence on your farm, and you need to be taking care of that. Of the few repetitive lines of dialogue any given person in town has to share with you on any given day, a fair amount are devoted to reminding you to fix your fence, to make sure it’s in good repair. There was just a big storm so watch out! Remember to check it every day! Are you chopping enough wood? Because you’ll need it for that fence!

I’m being dramatic of course, you aren’t reminded about it that much, though the thin variation of dialogue means it comes up a lot. The emphasis on your fence does exist, and it isn’t for nothing: while it doesn’t matter as much if all you do is grow crops– if you keep animals, the game tells you that the ideal thing to do for yours and the animal’s happiness is to put the animals outside to graze. Animal feed bought from the livestock shop will keep them fed, but it's nothing compared to fresh grass grown on your farm. You can’t even buy animals without a certain amount of grass planted! And sure, you can cut the grass to store for later, but it’s at its best straight out of the ground. However, the way the game is programmed, the animals only eat when the day rolls over, so putting animals outside for the day and taking them in at night isn’t an option, and on top of that, there’s things that come out at night that can hurt your animals. This is where your fence comes in.

The Utility of Fences

At the entrance to your farm is a cluster of buildings: your house, a small lumber shed, a barn, coop, and silo, a tool shed, and an old, dried up well. Just barely surrounding all of these is a little wooden fence that looks more like a row of upright logs than anything else. Despite this farm having presumably been abandoned, the fence is in perfect repair. You’ll quickly discover that the fence as it is won’t work out; there’s hardly space to plant anything within it, and with the well dried up, you’re forced to hop it to get to a water source to fill up your watering can. It’s pretty clear that you’ll need to expand your fence, and it’s easy to do with all of the tree stumps littering the massive field that it’s blocking off. 

On top of needing to expand the range of your fence, the individual planks eventually will rot away and leave useless stumps. They show up more frequently after rain or a large storm. The posts don’t rot away completely so they have to be manually removed, but replacing them is as simple as smashing the old post with a hammer or ax and popping a new post in its place. It becomes a very natural part of your daily routine to run a lap around the farm’s perimeter before you go to bed to make sure everything looks safe and secure. It’s a good way to ensure your animals are put away and debris is cleared out, too! It slotted very nicely into my daily schedule until a certain point.

With how much time you have to spend hopping over the logs to get to the rest of the area too large to fence in, you might be tempted to leave one out of place for easier traversal. When night comes, it’s clear why that would be a mistake. Sometimes when you go to bed, you’ll hear your dog barking. It’s a small detail, one that took me a long time to notice because I didn’t always play with the sound on. There are wild dogs that prowl around the wilderness surrounding your farm, and only at night do they dare to come close. Your dog, if left outside, isn't able to do anything other than warn you of their presence if they show up. There’s nothing to notice during the daytime if it happens, unless you happened to leave one of your animals outside. There was one night that I left my chickens outside, having thought my fence was in perfect order and repair. I went to bed and heard the dog barking, followed by a horrible crunch. When I went out in the morning, I saw where my chicken had been before, it had been replaced by a pile of feathers. On the north side of my farm was a rotted fence post I’d failed to fix. 

The Reality of Fences

After losing my chicken, a cluster of pixels on my screen it may have been, I didn’t feel comfortable leaving my animals outside. I didn’t want to take a risk again, the sound and sight of feathers was upsetting enough. On a more logical note, the chickens didn’t even lay eggs if left outside so there was no value in it. Cows were a pain to put back inside the barn too, because of some silliness with the game’s collision. As much of a disappointment as it was to not have my animals roam around, it was just easier. At the time, I was focusing on upgrading my house anyways, so I didn’t have time to take care of my animals outside where time would pass when I could use that time gathering wood, and everything I had was being saved up for the house so I didn’t have any extra materials to repair my fence with. My fence was all rotting away. Because it was inconvenient for getting to my crops, I started smashing all the old posts as they went, too. That’s when I noticed something: the wild dog wasn’t coming anymore.

I didn’t pay much attention to it until I was looking up a completely different mechanic and discovered a forum explaining how the fences were broken. Rotted posts attracted the wild dog, they said. It didn’t matter if you had gaps in your fence, or even a fence at all–in fact no fence was the best kind to have because the mere existence of posts that could rot was a liability. 

I was hesitant at first to test this concept, after all there wasn’t much I could gain from it. My chickens wouldn’t lay outside, and my cows would be too challenging to get back in if the forecast called for rain. The thing that got me to finally try it was when I was trying to hatch more chickens. My coop felt like a nightmare to navigate due to its current population. I wanted less animals inside that I had to feed, so I threw a couple chicks outside–they weren’t laying yet anyways. Lo and behold, the dog didn’t come. More days passed and more animals were left outside, and it never came. My fence had rotted until there was nothing left at all. No dogs could ever come to my farm again. And I realized that the game’s own insistence on its mechanics was all a lie.

How You’re Told To Play - How The Game Lies

Of course, my animals didn’t stay outside. For a minute it was fun having a crowd of cows milling about while I tended to my crops, but letting them wander free and uninhibited made it impossible to find and milk all of them without any trouble, and there were the rainy days to watch out for. After the novelty wore off, they went back inside and stayed there. The thing is, that didn’t make a single bit of difference in how much they liked me compared to how they were living in the barn. On top of that, they didn’t seem to care whether I was feeding them grass or store-bought food either, though I mostly stuck to the grasses since they were cheaper and easier to get. Nothing about how I was told to care for animals really mattered past feeding them every day, petting it and maybe brushing it, if it was a cow.

It gets worse. The most basic aspect of the game is the fact that time passes. The story takes place over 2 and a half years, running through each day until the end, and these days last from 6AM to 6PM according to the game’s own internal time setting. After 6PM, all of the shops aside from the bar will close and you lose the ability to sell anything as you’re told it would rot in the shipping bin overnight, so there’s nothing to do but sleep until the next day. Issue with this is that when the days stop at 6PM… they just stop. Time doesn’t flow anymore. The game doesn’t give you any kind of clock to know the exact time it is until after you’ve upgraded your house, so all you have to go by before that is the color of the environment and whether or not your character has played an animation to eat something (you’re automatically fed when you wake up, at noon, and at night). I discovered this because I was curious if I could actually see the wild dog by staying out, and left the game running for probably 20 minutes in real life only for nothing to happen. Because of the time freeze, the time after 6PM actually becomes really valuable for farm logistics. You can’t sell anything, no, but you can pull up all the weeds on the farm, water your crops, fix your fences, feed and care for animals if you hadn’t already, and harvest wood for fences and house upgrades which would have taken a lot of valuable time to get during shipping-hours. The only thing that gets in the way of doing all that is you running out of energy.

Your energy is what allows you to use your farming equipment like your ax or watering can. Running out of it doesn’t mean you fall unconscious or anything, but your character will play an animation of them stumbling over and will fail to use any tools. The most obvious fix to this is to simply go to bed, as sleeping gives you a full recharge. You can also, however, recharge it by going to the hot spring on the mountain, or by eating food bought at the restaurant in town or foraged for in the forest. You can’t tell easily how much is refilled, as there’s no visual indicator like a health bar, but you’re able to eat more than once, and jumping into the hot spring seems to count whether you did it or not more than how much time you spend in there, so you can hop in and out a couple of times and call it good. 

Individually, time freezing at 6PM and energy being endlessly replenishable aren’t bad things. Even together, they’re not the worst. Having free time to focus on profitless chores is nice, and I think it’s important to be able to replenish your energy in case you have a limited amount of time to do things like for example, cut all of your grass before winter kills it. What makes an exploit out of these is the fact that the resources in the forest will never run out. Every time you re-enter the forest, all forage items and tree stumps are respawned. The infinite amount of forage makes for infinite energy refills, and could also make for an incredible money exploit if you didn’t have a very limited amount of time to ship things. You don’t have a limited amount of time to cut up tree stumps though. If you wanted to, you could run up to the forest after 6PM, chop every stump, then simply reload the area, and everything’s back. You can get all of the wood you would ever need to fully upgrade your house in one night. It’s a bit of a grind to do all at once, but it’s a grind you’d be doing over time anyways. It’s not the worst exploit in the world, since you still need money to pay for the house upgrade, but arguably because of how you have to focus your energy elsewhere for most of the game, the wood is the harder thing to get. Additionally, when the game has very little to do in both fall and winter due to the lack of crops, this exploit takes away just about any reason to play those two seasons other than to take care of animals. It’s an optional exploit of course–as all exploits are–but once you learn about it, it’s hard to resist the desire to get the grind out of the way all at once and mess up the pacing of the game.

The Charm of the Game

Learning that the fences were completely broken as a mechanic was a huge disappointment for me. From the moment I got a grasp on how the game was supposed to work, I wanted to eventually surround my whole field with fencing and keep my animals outside so I would have some life on my farm while I worked. I didn’t just want this, I was excited for it! This was something I’d never done in a farming sim that didn’t already manage putting animals in and out for you like Stardew Valley or newer Story of Seasons games do. My routine is always the same: I go into the barn and coop to tend to each of my animals, I take care of my crops outside, then run straight to town to talk to everyone, and go to bed. The change in routine that would come from taking care of the animals outside and patrolling the fence every night felt fresh to me. It made me feel that even though this was the first game of its kind, it was different and required new things of me. But in the end, I played it exactly the same.

Harvest Moon is still very different from all of the games that followed it, though. In many ways, it’s because it has less “stuff” in it– both in terms of items and things you have to do. But I wouldn’t say that it feels incomplete. Harvest Moon runs over the course of 2 and a half years before your work is evaluated. Until that happens, you have the ability to farm four different crops, you can raise both cows and chickens, you can upgrade your house to have more features, upgrade your working tools, build relationships with the townspeople to a small extent, go to town festivals that happen each year, and you can get married to one of the five girls living in town with whom you can have up to two children. Everything that you would come to expect as a fan of games like this is already here from the very first iteration. The most notable lack this game has, and one that seems to be completely unique to this game, is that there aren’t any crops in the fall or winter, which means that unless you have animals, there’s a whole half of the year that you don’t have anything to do. The game is clearly aware of this though, because in an average playthrough, this is where you’ll start to run into the story events.

There isn’t much of an overarching story in the game, past the general concept that you’ve run away from home to work on an abandoned farm. The conclusion rests on how good of a job you actually do. In between those two points are smaller events, usually tied to when you get tool upgrades or special ones for each of the romantic interests. The first event you’re likely to run into happens on the very last day of summer, where one of the woodsmen comes to your house in the morning to ask if you’re okay because he heard a huge crash at night and you should check your farm. What I found was that a tree in my field had fallen over, and its remaining stump had a big empty hole in it. When I inspected the stump, I was suddenly underground in a cave filled with loud and industrious music, and I was faced with two, little green people–Harvest Sprites, though I don’t know if they’re called that yet here. One asked me if my scythe worked well, and when I said yes, told me that they had made it and that I should check my shed tomorrow for a better one. Other tool upgrades are obtained in similar fashion; one comes from feeding a starving sprite a mushroom and another comes from another hole in the farm opening up to reveal another part of the cave system that has a couple of hints on how to unlock other things. 

The events for romantic interests happen at less scripted times, as they’re tied to how strong your relationship is with each girl. Each girl only has one event, and it only triggers when your relationship is high enough that you would ask her to marry you. The events usually take up a whole day, and don’t necessarily add much to each character. Ellen’s revolves around how she’s no good at keeping pets– something established on your second day at the farm when you get your dog from her, Eve’s hammers in her fraught relationship with her grandpa, and Ann’s is about losing the chicken weathervane, or “weathercock” which sits on the roof of her workshop and goes missing every time there’s a storm. Conversely, Nina and Maria’s scenes bring up entirely new events that bring up a number of questions while providing no answers. Nina disappears while looking for a medicinal plant because her mother is apparently sick, and Maria vanishes for days until you find her hiding away with the woodsmen for some reason. All of these events, whether they share new information or not, manage to add some greatly appreciated depth to each character by giving them more room to speak and be sincere than their short and repetitive day-to-day dialogues do.

The dialogue in this game is simple, to the point, and sparse– probably because there was only so much memory that could be reserved for approximately 15 people who all have multiple lines of dialogue, and only so much money to pay someone to write more. There is simple dialogue that doesn’t tell you much more than “hello, how are you” would, more dialogue that I’d label as tutorial text, and a few lines that I truthfully couldn’t understand well because of the sub-par translation this game received for english. The dialogue that exists to inform the world really manages to create a unique vibe though. Nina’s dialogue, almost always about plants, goes into forays about how they’re creatures with wills to live, too. Ellen’s uncle who runs the ranch shop tells you that it’s much better to feed your animals fresh grass if you try to buy any from his store, and if you decline to purchase he laughs as if he’s won something. There’s even dialogue referencing the silent player! Multiple lines exist to comment on him not paying attention, and inspection prompts have people telling you not to touch something rather than being an item description. It was the last thing I expected, to get the same level of personality out of the main character as I did from each of the girls, albeit very subtly. He went from a kind of nothing, self-insert into being what I perceive to be a hyperactive boy, akin to a border collie who was let out into a field of sheep for the first time–the exact kind of person crazy enough to take on an abandoned farm and succeed.

It’s these short little character details that bring life into the game. Each day, you’ll really only see one line of dialogue from each character, be it new or old, with that dialogue usually only changing if there’s a change in season or festival coming up. The repetitive, pretty mindless routine of the game can turn into a sort of meditation if you let it, where you spend your time working thinking about the folks in town and what they had to say to you the previous day. The developers took this concept in stride and gave the side characters loads of dialogue about life, about God and religion, and about… very basic morals, but morals nonetheless. It’s a children’s game after all. When you take the thoughts, questions and prompts the characters give you back to the farm to do your long and tedious routine, you have to ask yourself– what are you working so hard for? For the feeling of accomplishment? Recognition from your peers? For the sake of some higher power, if you worship one? For me personally, it was to write this essay, but it was also for a good grade on the high score screen at the end, so to be honest a lot of this stuff was lost on me until just now when I was reviewing the game to get screenshots.

Setting The Standard - Why You Should Play HM SNES

You may read all of this and still think, well, it doesn’t sound like the game has much in it. And you would be right, it’s a very small game, but it’s also extremely quick. On average, my days only lasted about three minutes of real life time. Everything flew by, and I think I finished the game in 20 hours or less. I barely got a chance to notice that there wasn’t much going on because every second of my day was spent busy doing something, and when I wasn’t busy, the break was appreciated. I didn’t start to run out of things to do until I was finished with the second year, and when I looked up what I needed to do to get a decent ending, I was already most of the way there. It was easy to push through those last two seasons to get to the end, and it was so, so worth it. 

As I mentioned earlier, the game ends with a high score screen, meaning it has to track all of your accomplishments. These include, but are not limited to: the number of things you ship, number of each crop you grow, number of animals you have and how much they like you, how upgraded your house is, who you married, how much all of the girls in town like you if you didn't get married, how many kids you have (which basically equates to how long you were married), your happiness score (increased by going to festivals and decreased by having animals die), and how many times you’ve pet your dog. In addition to these being tallied up and presented to you, you get special cutscenes not just for each one of these accomplishments, but additional ones for if you managed to do even better! I got a cutscene for having a cow, followed by one for having lots of cows, followed by yet another for having cows that loved me! Watching them play one after the other felt like taking a victory lap even without getting the best possible result. Seeing all of my numbers come up at the end made me want to try again to actually get those other cutscenes, not to get to see them, they’re so easy to find on Youtube, but because the game made it feel like an accomplishment! If I weren’t following this game up by immediately playing its GameBoy port, I absolutely would have started a new file right away. I’ve been playing the Harvest Moon series since I was a little kid and this was the first time I’d actually managed to beat one of these games. I struggle to think the finale of any game following this will feel as good as this one did.

I started writing this whole thing about the fences because it was an easy and silly entry point to get into my core issue with the game, and so I could have an opportunity to dig into game mechanics and the way the knowledge you have of them will completely alter your playstyle, because that’s all fun and interesting for me to talk about. Another reason why I focused on that was because it was near impossible for me to pick any kind of focus point when talking about this game. After all, I’m trying to study a whole series of games that spans multiple decades, and this is not only the first game in that series, but a game that created the whole genre of farming sims and defined that genre so thoroughly that you can see its DNA in every single game that followed.

 I didn’t expect much to come out of my experience with this game. My expectations for it before I even picked it up were that it was going to be basically featureless, as informed by my experience with one of the first games I ever played as a child, Harvest Moon GB, which I will get into next. This game was not that at all. I think that everything it did manage to get working right came together just about perfectly. Harvest Moon is exactly what it wanted to be, and where it wasn’t, it lied about how it worked to try and make you play the correct way anyways. When I believed that lie, my time playing was even more enjoyable. Maybe if farming worked just a little bit more like how you’re told it’s supposed to, and if there was just a little bit more story, those would cover the things I felt wanting for the most. But maybe a little flexibility and ambiguity is a good thing. Maybe actually maintaining a fence is just too hard, and maybe if the girls were more fleshed out, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy filling in their gaps in my head.

There are many more things I could say and wanted to say about this game, but this has grown far too long already so I'm cutting myself off here. I'm sure my later entries aren't going to get near this length. If you managed to get to this point, thank you so much for reading!

[winter-sol]

leviathan vs. leviathan?! (or an idiot's internal struggle)

word count: 2,4k

pairing: GN! reader / Leviathan

contents: ! nsfw minors DNI. pathetic and jealous levi, begging, praising. handjobs. a light crossover with what in hell is bad? featuring its Leviathan as a fictional character.

Leviathan, as the pathetic demon he is, gets terribly jealous over WHB!Leviathan while you play that game. You are willing to reassure him he's the only one for you.

also at ao3 here 🖤

There was a limit to how long he could endure watching you so engrossed in that damn game. The game with the fictional -and inferior- versions of themselves, the Seven Rulers of Hell. How could you be so interested in that when he is right there?!

He could guess that, in some way, it’s a compliment, considering it would mean your attraction to him transcends the limits of reality and made you want to install the game and meet that Leviathan.

…That Leviathan.

Blond, light-colored eyes, a sensual and mysterious gaze that leaves on their knees anyone who has the bliss to look at his graceful and erotic figure, wearing a tight and elegant black suit. He looks nothing like the disgusting and socially awkward otaku he is, the real one.

“Mmm… So, if I level this up I can get that skill… I see.”

While he observes you from the floor cushion, he thinks immediately you’re only pretending to be interested in the gameplay instead of the demons, his insecurity and envy overflowing and shamelessly escaping his control. He should pretend as well, pretend he’s fine with it. But in that moment, he simply doesn’t care.

“Ahhh, there it is! Hey, Levi, you wanna take a look?” You ask innocently, thinking that he also feels curiosity at it when in his insides he only wishes that shithole of a game never existed in the first place. Fuck them. Fuck that… sexy imposter, he bets he could never summon Lotan and destroy the entire Hell or Celestial or Human Realm.

“Nope, pass.” He says in an indifferent voice as he pretends to focus his attention in an allegedly more engaging game in his console. His pout still goes unnoticed by you, so you insist.

“You gotta be kidding, you really don’t wanna meet your alter ego? He even has completely voiced lines! His voice actor apparently has experience doing these kinds of things, hehe.” You say as you stare at your phone’s screen, with your arms propped on the edge of the bathtub, poking out slightly, while you await your demon’s answer.

“Nope, not interested. I’m grinding so leave me alone.”

His curt tone now actually grabs your attention back to him, and there’s no way you can ignore his expression. He’s literally huddled up in a ball, sulking and avoiding at all costs looking at your direction. You find it hard to contain your laughter in that moment, but making fun of him may not be the best decision. This is the Avatar of Envy.

Smiling to yourself, you get out of his bathtub and move closer to him, laying down behind him and draping your arm around his waist, pulling him into a hug. Without expecting the sudden physical contact, he makes a little jump at your action. “H-Hey! What are you doing?! Get out and stay over there with your little game, since he clearly is a better Leviathan than me, right?”

He must be joking… Is he really that obvious? Now you can’t hold back the laugh, but you do the effort to make it look like a silly, flirty giggle.

“Levi~ What are you saying? No matter what, I only want you,” you tell him in a sweet voice while you nuzzle your cheek against his shoulder, his back still turned on you.

“Don’t lie. Deep down, you’d like me to be like that, don’t you?” A tinge of sarcasm is found at the end of that sentence, jealousy fueling his words as he keeps going. “He’s sexier, his voice is more attractive and deeper, and he looks absolutely dreamy. Aaand he totally must have a better body, obviously, ‘cuz he was created for that. Oh, and he doesn’t have this horrible tail I grow in my demon form. Does he even have demon traits or is he just a pretty boy with horns? Hmph.” He scoffs and continues, “And I bet he wouldn’t info dump you or make you all bored with my stupid animes all the time. And he doesn’t have a 2D waifu or husbando since that’s totally disgusting and unattractive, right? Also-.” You can’t help interrupting.

“What the fuck, Levi” You feel like cringing at his rant a little bit but now you’re entertained. “Have you really been staring at him that much? Wow, I mean, I thought you didn’t care about him at all.” You finish that sentence with another giggle, knowing you could be entering more dangerous territory with the teasing, but deciding to test your luck and see how he takes it.

“N-No!! Don’t be ridiculous! Aghh, you normie,” he says grumbling. Mmm… You figure you’ll have to convince him otherwise before he sinks in his bad mood even further.

You reach your hand to his chest, caressing lightly above the fabric of his hoodie, and you get your lips close to his ear. “You seriously believe those pixels are better than you? When you’re this amazing, Leviachan~” You purr his name while you press your fingers over his thick muscles, wanting to emphasize his body’s appeal. “No one makes me feel like you. No one ever will. You’re the only one for me.” You finish with a kiss directly on his neck, sensing how he shivers at the gesture.

“H-Hey! You’re trying to make fun of me?”, he says with a confrontational voice, but you know it won’t last long if you play your cards well.

“No, love. I mean it. You want me to prove it to you?”

You embrace him from the back with both of your arms, sneaking your hands below his clothes. You rub your palms over the hot skin of his torso, fondling him without any subtlety in your intentions, desire starting to flow through you while you cover him with pecks on his nape, his neck, and his shoulder.

“Ngh!” Leviathan responds immediately at your ministrations, air escaping through heavy, ragged breaths while you delight with his reactions. His sensitivity is adorable.

One of your hands travels to his v line, sensing the hard muscle there in direction to his crotch. Expectant, you follow the trail and slide your hand under the hem of his sweatpants that are already flaunting his quickly growing hardness through the fabric. An exciting sight, indeed, that you only want to put your hands onto. And as much as he tries to play difficult to get, he’s easy when you know what to say, where to touch, how to fire his own want too.

You decide to continue with the sweet nothings. “How am I supposed to look elsewhere, hmm? Please tell me because I couldn’t if I tried.” Your hand palms his length through his underwear as he gasps, trying to fight his urges and wanting to prove you wrong even though it’s almost impossible for him now, not when he can feel your touch so vividly, so irresistible.

“A-Ah…” A moan comes out finally as you reach under the fabric and fully grab his erection, your own composure faltering at the sensation of his scorching skin of his long, thick cock.

“Levi.” You say in a low voice while you circle your hand around it, gripping it greedily and dragging it down in a slow, tormenting movement. Your voice is almost a whisper, deviously teasing him “I bet you’re bigger than him”. He shivers at the touch, gasping as your grip goes down, then up, torturing him in a delicious, slow pace. You always enjoy taking your time when it comes to feeling all of him, as much as you can. No one else can have the honor of touching the Third Ruler of Hell like this.

As if awakening something feral in him, a growl comes out while you keep working him with your hand, desire pooling in you as you feel his frame stiff. Before you can continue, he grabs your wrist and turns his head to your direction.

“Prove it”, his voice is hoarse while he looks at you from above with serious, lust-filled gaze that fails at hiding his true desperation. The sunset in his eyes almost nonexistent as black engulf his aching stare. “Show me I’m the only one you need.” You notice him gulping, and conveying his own longing, he gives up his dignity in a low, weak voice “...Please.”

You smile viciously at the display, grabbing firmly the base of his cock and pulling a grunt out of him.

“Of course, love. You’re the only demon for me, Leviathan.”

You kiss under his jaw, licking that sensitive spot for him while you start a quicker pace. A sweet groan echoes through the spacious room, and his body tenses as your grip twists, giving a circular motion that only makes him fall deeper into delirium, a touch so delicious he melts into it, resting his body against yours while his legs spread giving you more access to anywhere you want.

“That’s it, sweetheart, you like this, don’t you?” Your sultry voice makes him shudder, completely surrendering himself to you. In this moment, he couldn’t care less about the other Leviathan, fuck him, he doesn’t even exist but he does, he does and he’s right here for you to take as you please. 

“MC…! Yes, yes, I like it, please,” he cries out, feeling his toes curling at the buzzing ecstasy that fills him violently, your other hand rubbing his nipples under the hoodie, pinching one and gently fondling it after, turning him into a bigger, hungry mess.

He suddenly wonders if you’re even comfortable, his weight resting more on you as he squirms, but any thought dies when your thumb rubs the slit of his dick, eyes watering at the pleasure that defies his own self-control. “Fuck, MC, ahh!!” he whines while precum comes out, making your movements smoother as the strokes only grow harder and faster.

You are delighted by his sounds, possessiveness and power clouding your mind with the desire of him to beg you more, to beg for you to own him and show him he’s the only one. He still gets like that, insecure and jealous over the most stupid things, but you’re ok with it. You’ll reassure him as much as he needs. If that’s the kind of partner he needs, you’ll gladly be that.

“C’mon, baby, tell me, what do you want from me?” You sound playful and delirious yourself, marking your words nibbling his neck again afterwards, starting to abuse the red skin in there. He cries at the bite, closing his moist eyes and his hips moving with increasing frenzy.

“MC… Please, keep saying it… Say you love, say you need me, ah! As much as I need you… please…”

There it is. More begging. It sends electricity through your own body, and you let him fuck your hand as he cries out. You’re as desperate for him as he is for you, and you can only obey him.

“I love you, Levi.” A hungry adoration can be heard in your words, your whisper loud enough for his ears only. You bite his shoulder while he erratically rocks his hips into your hand, searching his own selfish pleasure and bringing himself at the edge of his release. “Come for me, love. You’re mine, mine, mine… I need you, only you.”

Those final words are too much for him, a loud moan resonating as he spills his orgasm on your hand, flows of cum leaking and making the last drags thicker and strained, as he finally collapses. His mind is still on the clouds, vision white as he slowly starts regaining his consciousness. His body starts relaxing, still in your tight embrace, and his breathing is gradually becoming steady once again.

You kiss his jaw, his lobe, and his cheek while you wait for him to recover his senses, soft pecks tenderly awakening him from his intense climax.

“…MC… You’re amazing… hehe.” The light chuckle that decorates his voice at the end makes you smile at his sincerity.

“You are amazing. Now give me a kiss, love.”

He shifts and gets on his side, finally facing you properly. He complies and kisses you gently, a wave of affection and unreleased want filling you as his soft, moist lips presses against yours. You smile into it, letting it grow more passionate in an intimate moment of calm and blissfully quietness. The movements of your mouths are languid, lazy, as you enjoy tasting each other.

After a while, you both part and regain your breathing. The tension between your legs is starting to rise as your own hunger remains unattended. You decided to tease him some more in order to get what you want from him.

“Levi… I need you…” You lock your eyes on his, eager arousal filling your thoughts of getting to claim him one more time.

He widens his eyes as he gets the meaning of your words, smiling and pecking your lips once again. “Yeah… Let me do it for you.”

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

As you two hide under the cozy blanket, he admires the way the voice actor seems to be giving his all in the porn scene of the game happening in that instant. “Wow… this is hot, I give them that.”

You enjoy how he’s finally open to try the game and share this… unique situation with you. You chuckle, “I told you, you wouldn’t hate it. Besides, take it as a compliment, you’re so cool you inspired this little guy to exist!” You scratch the imposter demon through the screen, red lines appearing on his skin as the sound of a breathy moan comes out. “Look, he’s into pain like you sometimes.”

He gives an exaggerated noise as a complain. “H-Hey! That’s… Wait, how would they even know?! It’s just a coincidence… Right?” You laugh at how he ends up admitting it.

“Yeah, but an incredible one.” You say as blond Leviathan whines while you keep stimulating him. You try to give your Levi the phone. “Here, do something to him too.”

He looks at it for a moment, contemplating his options. “Mmm, I don’t know. Wouldn’t that count as some type of masturbation?”

You burst out laughing at that.

“Hahahaha! Holy shit. Maybe? I don’t know, you aren’t him, so...”

“Yeah, I don’t know, it’s kinda weird? Doing these things to this 2D version of myself?”

“…You’re really saying that as if you haven’t jacked off to multiple hentai games before. The audacity of this pervert.”

He looks at you with a horrified expression. “Shut up!! That’s totally different! It has nothing to do with myself! It’s with other characters.”

He really has no shame anymore.

[project-sekai-facts]

Treekasa Glue Theory Revised (Treekasa Super-Glue Theory):

Without treekasa, there would be no Proseka Ugly Sweater Contest. Which would make Ugly Sweaters non-canon. That would mean Yuuki never bought Mizuki one, and if she didn't buy Mizuki one, Mizuki could wear one and be made fun of by Ena. If Ena couldn't make fun of Mizuki's ugly sweater then Mizuki would never buy Ena one. And if Ena didn't get one, she would never post a picture of it. And since the Sweater was ugly, she would have lost lots of followers, which would make her depressed, and in turn, make her join N25. If N25 didn't exist then Kanade never started composing, which means her father is fine. If her father was fine, Kanade would never need a housekeeper, meaning Honami would be unemployed. If Honami was unemployed she could not buy all those Apple Pies, which would make her very sad. It would affect her drumming meaning that Leo/need would never perform and eventually dissolve. If so happened then Shizuku would totally quit her job meaning MMJ never got together. It would also make Saki very depressed and possibly very ill, meaning Tsukasa would have to take care of her. If Tsukasa couldn't attend rehearsals, since he was taking care of Saki, Wonderlands x Showtime could never perform well. This would make Emu quit trying to save the park and thus Pheny Wonderland would be destroyed. That would mean Kohane and An never got their date on Time To Hang Out which would make them depressed. This would be the end of Vivids, and, in turn, Vivid Bad Squad. Thus Count Pearl would never, allegedly, swallow a glue stick. The end of VBS would make Minori sad since she is a friend of Kohane, so she would also be sad. Minori would turn to YouTube and make videos explaining how to make glue. Saki would use these tutorials to make her photos stick to her album, but this means Haruka is too busy helping her make memories, so she could never help Airi and Shizuku get together. Airi would then be also very depressed. So thank you Treekasa for your Ugly Sweaters, for Nightcord being a thing, Honami buying apple pies, Leo/need existing, Wonderlands existing, Phoenix Wonderland existing, Vivids, Vivid Bad Squad, Count Pearl swallowing glue. And everything else in the universe

(No timeline was distorted; No stretches were made; Only canon information in game was used; and no assumptions were made in the production of this theory here)

😭😭 i like this one it's funny

[vintageseawitch]

this is what i think of when third party voters go around acting morally superior because they don't want to get their hands dirty like the rest of us. they're toddlers having temper tantrums because instead of using the system in a way that could benefit them in the long term like the extremist Republicans have been doing for decades, third party voters refuse to participate in local civics & then claim the entire country is already fascist. they're so cute in their naivety if they think the US can't get any worse.

what the fuck do you think will happen if you try to protest against a government with a military as massive, lethal, & expensive as ours. who do you think will be sacrificed first? oh what's that? crickets? thought so. i'm a white woman but i will absolutely use my voice to point out leftists can be racist as fuck & the anti-blackness in your spaces can be absolutely fucking wild. not everyone leftist is white, but many that are can be pretty problematic.

if you think i'm selfish then fine. if you state that you would gladly exchange my life for a Palestinian like one of you said in a comment to me a few weeks ago then fine. i'm out here fighting to make sure the people who live here in this country don't experience our own Holocaust.

if you have a problem with people wanting to fight this while claiming you're anti-genocide, you're a fucking liar & a hypocrite. you won't know what the fuck to do in a true fascist country. i don't doubt there are pockets of fascism already existing here but you thinking it's already the worst it can be is as infuriating as people who think the government is creating their massive hurricanes using weather machines. you sound just as childish & delusional. you already sound like children because you will never take responsibility for your choices if it ends up helping him win.

jill stein's campaign is a sham. she is deliberately running as a spoiler. she's a wealthy white woman who lives in a mostly white affluent neighborhood. she's going around lecturing black people about white supremacy. she is getting funds from Republicans as well as help from trump's lawyers. Lockheed Martin has given her money. she's involved in shady as fuck index funds for companies that harm the environment. she only started talking about Gaza during this election cycle to hit you in the feelings so she can bank on it. she made a whole stink about needing a recount, raised a bunch of money for that, & then that money disappeared who knows where. do you all hear this? do you care? no, you're just like maga with their orange Jesus. you don't give a FUCK about stein's red flags because she's "different."

if Harris loses & you blame anyone but yourselves, you're cowardly traitors who threw us regular Americans to the wolves because of your precious fucking principles. history has shown time & time again that protest voting typically allows something worse to take control. it's hardly ever beneficial to the people. you're vile. you don't want to make this world a better place by allowing so many near you to suffer & die. if both sides are the same then please tell me you're okay with another trump presidency. or just shut the fuck up.

i look forward to more potentially heartwarming messages saying that my life doesn't mean shit from people who allegedly are against the death penalty & are pro-human rights 🥰

please vote, don't stop talking about Project 2025, etc. i hope enough of us vote in a way that these pathetic third party voters don't gain any kind of traction. at this point i'm just angry at their hypocrisy when they don't even listen to other protestors who live here & are begging them to not vote third party. i refuse to listen to y'all not take responsibility for your part. Project 2025 will hurt us all but apparently you're okay with that or you think it's already here. smooth brain takes all around. anyways good luck & stay safe to anyone who votes blue 💙