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ninja-knox-ur-sox-off · 17 days

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Alright, here we go

First and foremost I want to talk about what flying bark's animation has meant to me.

In a world where every day I see 2d animation being rejected for cheaper 3d and puppet animation at every turn, Monkie Kid's animation was the one of the first things that gave me hope for the future of 2D animation. I can't tell you how long I've been wanting a 2D animated show, growing up I wanted one so desperately, I craved good animation amongst the stiff 3D and flat storytelling, so when I got it, when Monkie Kid happened, I was so unbelievably happy. It was everything I wanted in a show, gorgeous animation, excellent voice actors, romance free and friendly to my desperate friendship-craving, romance-overstimulated brain and written in a way I enjoyed so much. I struggle to describe exactly how much I’ve adored everything this show has been up until this point. It truly is a masterpiece.

Monkie kid has kept me company during the lowest and roughest points in my life. I got to such a bad place mentally but Monkie Kid’s fast-paced, snappy, detailed, colourful bright animation brought light into my darkest mental times and not only helped me stay connected with people but kept me creating even when I wanted nothing more than to lay on the floor and never move again. I'm aware most of the flying bark team is active on the bird app and none of them are gonna see this most likely but I still just wanted to say thank you. Thank you so much for animating this show, thank you so much for giving it your all. Thank you so much for giving me something I’ve always wanted so perfectly. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for keeping me company at my lowest, thank you for sharing your joy of animation so I could catch some of those rays of sunlight and feel a little of that joy too. Thank you for your positivity and good vibes, thank you.

I know so many people have gotten inspiration from flying bark and I have to add myself to the infinite list. My art has improved so much thanks to their inspiration. My style has developed, I’ve had so much fun, I’ve written some of my favorite works ever based off of expressions that the characters make alone. My last amv I made because I was so grateful for the animation that we'd gotten up to that point. I wanted to showcase, to thank, to appreciate. I didn’t know it would be a goodbye. Words can't describe all that flying bark's animation and even their storyboards have done for me. When nothing could make me happy, monkie kid wormed its way into my brain and somehow kept me in one piece. I know that wouldn’t have been possible without the animation that left me at the edge of my seat, breathless and laughing over how incredible it really was every single time. Every new clip, every new episode I’d pause and rewatch again, I’d rewatch over and over, I’d take screenshots of every goofy background character, I’d screenshot every expression I could, I’d go through episodes frame-by-frame, literally one at a time for hours on end just so i could catch every detail, I’d open my eyes wider and wider to try and take in every bit I could in a way I’ve never been able to do before because there is nothing else out there like monkie kid. There was nothing as fun and as joyful as every single frame that flying bark gave us. And I am going to miss that so much.

The fact that season 4 was a sendoff is so heartbreaking to me, it's hard to describe how devastated I feel knowing something that kept hold of my hand when I was facing hard hard things in my life is suddenly gone. I don’t know how to ever express how important this show has been to me, it’s kept me going and helped me get to a place where I could breathe again. It’s connected me with some of the greatest people I know. It’s given me incredible experiences, introduced me to what animation could be and I can’t lie and say it doesn’t hurt having to say goodbye so suddenly.

I know this isn’t the end of Monkie Kid as a show. I know season 5 is still coming. And I also know Monkie Kid has lost a huge part of what made it unique and special, a huge part of its heart and soul. Without flying bark it feels like half the show is missing and although I hope I can still support the show, no one can deny the cavern-sized hole that is left by flying bark’s absence in it. The animation team has such an incredibly positive atmosphere around them that just absolutely radiates from the things they create. I am going to miss that so desperately in monkie kid. I’m going to support every other show flying bark works on, I’m still going to love their animation wherever it goes, but I am going to miss it in monkie kid like nothing else I’ve ever missed.

I do have some other thoughts regarding the new changes in monkie kid but I wanted to keep that separate from the actual farewell, so that’ll be it’s own post and I just want to end this by saying thanks for everything Flying Bark you’ve been a real one. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You’re already being missed so hard it hurts. Keep those good vibes and keep up what you’re doing. You all really are incredible and an inspiration to artists everywhere. We love this show because of the voice actors, because of the writers, because of the music but a great deal of people loved this show because of you. You’ve inspired a community of artists, you’ve inspired me. Thank you flying bark for everything you've given us, you gave it your all and I’m gonna carry the impact you left on me for the rest of my life.

LOVE YOU FLYING BARK. Here's to a bright future. Thanks for everything <3

#knox rambles #long post #monkie kid #flying bark #gods ima miss them #ive never cared about an animation studio so much in my LIFE #good people will do that to ya #face in hands bro #im a fundamentally different person because of these guys #ough #lego monkie kid #its gonna take me a bit to recover from this one bois

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chrollohearttags · 3 months

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it's ☃️ here again and I have more questions but reverb edition bc I love how 3 dimensional the characters are...

1. Now what is rapper!connie's true IDEALL type (if he actually has one). like he's immediately folding and falling to his knees because she's everything he wants type shit.

2. Do any of the pole assassins ladies swing the other way perchance...? IDK if you mentioned this but i'm getting a vibe...perchance.

3. What are mika and jean's favorite things about one another?

4. How would eren react to being posted on the shaderoom and having them get in his business? I recently saw a video of summer walker flipping the shaderoom off and I screamed ��😭

5. IDK if you didn't go into detail but is sasha an influencer here as well or an artist?

6. Does eren like any other forms of art besides music/writing in this universe? I don't feel EJ is the type to like go walk a museum (or maybe he is) but I feel he definitely holds some appreciation for like visual arts yk??

7. Is influencer!y/n any good at games? I remember you mentioning him being a gamer and I had the idea of him teaching her to play madden or COD or some shit and her being sooo bad to the point where he gets a little upset bc no way you're this bad at the game.

once again that is all the questions my brain has come up with, until next time *fades off into background*

hello again, snowanon!! 🤍 I swear you always come with the best asks. I’m actually working on reverb right now so thanks for this! (sorry these took so long btw!)

1. now Connie isn’t the type of dude to discriminate when it comes to the ladies. He loves them all but he will undoubtedly fall in love (and maybe propose on the spot) for a tall women or BBW. he loves him a girl who’s taller than him or a plus size lady. I’d say his range is anywhere from Meg to Lizzo. But he really just a loves a woman who can make him laugh. Somebody he can clown with.

2. Yes 3/5 do in fact! 😭 our girl (y/n) is bisexual. Eren is honestly the only man she loves. Niesha is pansexual + Syrai is lesbian. Kelley and Brianne have only ever dated men but they’re not against the idea of being with a woman!

3. omg I literally love these two so much and I hadn’t had a chance to elaborate yet but Jean and Mika are each other’s saving graces, dramatic as it sounds. Jean helped Mika stand up for herself when she felt powerless and she helped him realize his dream and that he was worth more than being on the sidelines. I think Jean’s favorite thing about Mika is her determination and how smart she is. If she wants something done, nothing can stop her. She’s headstrong but she’s soft in the same turn. Not in a weak way or that she wants to be babied but she’s so compassionate and emotional about the things + people she loves. As for Mika, she loves how much of a natural leader Jean is. He’s dominating but in the best way possible. He knows she can handle her own business but she doesn’t have to when he’s around. She can be comfortable in her feminine energy without feeling weak. All in all, they just compliment one another so well!

4. LMAO! the day Eren ever ends up on the ShadeRoom, everybody’s getting their feelings hurt. 😭 what makes it so bad is that it would probably be for some dumb shit, like them trying to messy about he and (y/n)’s relationship and now he gotta cuss everybody and their family dog out :(

5. so the next few chapters are going to feature Sasha heavily but my baby is actually Mikasa’s assistant for the time being. Her ultimate goal is to do music, more so as like a country hip-hop artist. She’s basically mentoring under her and Jean both.

6. Eren does have a great appreciation for other art forms. He has a few unique and expensive paintings in his home and he himself loves to draw. Many of his tattoo pieces are artworks of his. He also enjoys stage plays, shockingly! (he’s really a theater kid cosplaying as a delinquent, don’t let him fool you 😭😭) but he enjoys reading from time to time as well.

7. okay listen! my sis be giving it her all to beat this man LMAO. Eren is so damn competitive that he can’t just play shit for fun, he makes everyone want to fight him. But the one game he does NAWT want to see her in is Tekken. That’s been her favorite series since she was a kid and she gives him the work every single time.

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hatosaur · 9 months

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How exactly did you come to love TLOU? I have my own special interests that just happened upon me, so I want to know about how it was for others. also, any other games that you like?

you've asked the golden question so strap in because this is gonna be LONG:

i first got into tlou through part 2! admittedly i didn't play the og first. i did own it at the time because it seemed like one of those games you just gotta play (and i was right) and yknow ellie's gay and i dug that, but at that point i hadn't played it but knew the plot through a cinematic compilation video.

i was intrigued by part 2, specifically because of the teaser at e3 where ellie and dina dance and kiss. though i didn't have a BURNING desire to have the game, me being down for anything gay pretty much what sealed my fate. so i bought the game and played it on my older brother's ps4.

and MAN, was i obsessed pretty much immediately. looking back, it was a fever dream, just me playing the game from the moment i woke up to the moment i went to bed, nonstop...until i reached the point where ellie leaves and i stopped playing, completely distraught, and ended up watching the ending on youtube.

i was pissed, conflicted, legit fell into a deep depression after knowing how the game ends. after that point, because as we all know the shitstorm over the game was not pretty, i lingered on both sides of the fanbase for a while. because as someone who went in for the gay and had to witness the gay be destroyed, i was hurt -- but i realized after seeing anti-tlou2 people talk about their (weird and irrational) reasons for hating the game that i didn't hate the game, i was just that. hurt.

but the game is meant to hurt. there's a reason for the hurt.

and once i looked past the hurt that i felt, i analyzed hardcore, discussed with people (this is the nicest environment to do so), ate up every single detail discovered, replayed, and then i was making art, obsessively so, writing fanfiction, and now it's been 3 years and those fictional fuckers still live in my brain to this day.

and of course, i dove into the og! i remember playing the game while my online lectures (because covid lol) played in the background.

tlou is fully my biggest hyperfixation/special interest to date. i went into how but here's more of the reasons behind it:

i've talked about this a ton before but i love that though tlou has a reputation of being a dark game and people tend to read it as being about "the darkness of humanity", it's really not about that, but love and what people will do for it, as well as seeking and obtaining a purpose, even in the world's darkest conditions.

i love that it's about found family, that joel can't help but love ellie, because at the end of the day, he's not really supposed to be the heartless person he wants to pretend he is, but he's supposed to be a DAD. i love that ellie, despite never knowing the feeling of a parent, loves joel right back. i love that despite disliking him at first, she warms to him so quickly and she wears him down with her stupid jokes and her endearing weirdness.

i love that the themes of love persist through the second game even as it drags the franchise to darker places. that these are the lengths that ellie will go to not to get abby, but for joel. i love that part 2 says, "hey these bitches unhealthy" and that despite love being their motivation (abby for her dad, ellie & tommy for joel, dina for ellie, lev for his mother), it shouldn't be driving them to those ends!!!!

.....anyway for your second question, i'm picky about games but some recurring favs are apex legends, minecraft, breath of the wild, stardew valley, life is strange (watched the playthru only but loved the story sm), tell me why, and i just started horizon zero dawn! the way things are going, i think i'll like it a lot :)

#asks #talkies #not as long as i thought lol i've learned how to not go on and on about tlou unlike in 2020

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sorrelink · 4 months

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Some thoughts about romancing Karlach and what it means to me personally, because I need to get it out of my brain. Under read more for spoilers because some of my friends haven't gotten to play yet.

A little background about me - I have been in a long distance relationship for almost 7 years now, and there's no end in sight, really. Many of my friends are online and I've never had the chance to be even in the same country as them, let alone the same room.

So when you give me a woman who hasn't been able to be close with anyone for 10 years, friend or lover, you bet your ass I went "Oh. Oh no." I haven't been able to hold my wife since September of 2019. Yes, I get to talk to her on the phone every day, play games, do things, but the yearning to be close to her? The anger, the frustration, dismay and dejection that comes with an infernal engine burning up inside? It feels the same, to me.

Well, almost. If I, like Karlach, would be stuck with my wife right next to me and I still wouldn't be allowed to even hold her hand? That's worse. Then again, that's sort of how being in the closet is like -- having to pretend we're galpals and this is all very cis and hetero, while inside I have the rage of a thousand suns because, goddamn, that is my wife and I am her husband and all we want is to live in peace and be happy...

So there are certainly thematic parallels between long distance relationships and Karlach's romance, but there are two details that punched me in the throat personally. 1st, before the first time Tav and Karlach have sex, Karlach is still very worried that she might hurt Tav, which made me remember the first night me and my wife had way back when.

And then, the morning after, you have the option to call Karlach a bird because she's humming. Reader, my wife's nickname is Songbird.

It's a coincidence, of course, but at that moment, I felt as if this was written for me. Out of all people in the world, me.

#karlach #karlach cliffgate #baldur's gate 3 #bdg3 #just some thoughts i wanted to get out of my head

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rolling-restart · 28 days

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Hello! I know it’s been a hot minute since Desecration has been updated and I hope this doesn’t come across as me poking for an update, I just really genuinely love the story so very much

I originally found it around summer of 2023 and after reading it in full I really had to take a month to process it (in a good way!) and realized I couldn’t stop thinking about it and *had* to reread it, which is when I fell in love with it

Nico and Toto’s backstory fascinates me so much and is actually the reason I started reading a lot about Nico himself (and now he’s currently one of my favorite drivers) and the end game Nico/Jenson really created a soft spot for Princess Cake in my heart, I think of Desecration Nico and Jenson so fondly

Additionally your bits of Smick I’m absolutely feral over - Seb and Mick’s belongings intertwining so that Daniel couldn’t tell where they started and ended was the sweetest thing ever, and the cute German pet names made me melt!

On a more angst-ier note, Seb trying to keep Mick in the dark thinking it would help to protect Mick, only to cause Mick to distance himself from Seb hurt so incredibly good I cannot stress that enough how amazingly painful that was to read, I literally think about them once a week

Of course there’s so much I could talk about with Toto and George as well, I don’t even know where to start - the extreme angst and anguish George goes through is just, I don’t have the words but in such a good way. I genuinely think about Desecration multiple times a week and it has stayed one of my very favorite Formula 1 fics for nearly a year now

I introduced it to one of my friends who wasn’t interested in Formula 1 and now they’re a George Russell fan which has been incredibly fun and has really given a whole new fun aspect to our friendship to talk about Desecration over <3

Additionally (so sorry for so much talking, I just really do love this fic) I’ve been listening to the playlists you’ve made these past couple days and honestly I really can’t explain how much I love them, they’ve kept me company while I stress over finals XD

All in all no matter what you choose to do with this fic I really do love every aspect of it, the highs and the lows are both so incredible to me and I think I will always find the characters and their relationships fascinating to me - I wholeheartedly think about Nico, Jenson, and Toto as well as Sebastian and Mick at least once a week

(Apologies if it sounds like I don’t care about George and Daniel, I very much do but for some reason the “side characters” are very intriguing to me, perhaps because their stories still have yet to unfold in detail?)

Hi wow, hello!

First of all thank you for getting this ask together, I didn’t know I needed to remember desecration in this light and it somehow made me very emotional. The best thing a writer can know is that their work touched someone in some way, it’s been on other people’s minds and if they are the luckiest, that it helped other people connect. I honestly met one of the most amazing people I know thanks to desecration.

A bit of background about the writing of desecration. I started in 2022 summer, I think, was my last year in education as well.

I don’t know what pushed me but now I look back, I know what I tried to say with it: I’m here, I am real, my pain is also real and it matters and I will put it in a shape that it will matter to other people too. I wanted witnesses to the sometimes wild ideas and a very human pain that graced my brain. I almost always wrote it in moments of hyperfixation. Every time someone understood what I gestured at in the story, I felt understood as a person as well.

I am a different person from the one who wrote desecration now, and it’s difficult for me to read it again. I first thought it was because I was more in peace now and I didn’t want to ruin the peace by reminding myself of a darker time. But now I see that I am more out of hope than I’ve ever been and I don’t have the resilience to face the reality of myself I buried there, at least, not at this moment.

On the playlists, I built them with so much love and care. I’m so happy to hear you love and listen to them still.

About the story itself… I am actually glad people give love to side stories as much as the main story because I cared so much about them as well. Nico and Jenson there was my emotional anchor and Smick was the proof of untainted good intentions. I am not a big fan of miscommunication trope so I hope it was obvious that wasn’t what I was going for with Mick. It was the balancing act of shielding someone as much as respecting them, to super-simplify it.

Please reach out to me if you want to talk about it more, I always adore talking about desecration! And thanks for reading and loving it, and hopefully, seeing a part of me as well!

#answered asks #desecration: gr/tw fic

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ewanmitchellcrumbs · 6 months

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ahh okay, i finally have a break, although my brain is absolutely dead, so pls bear w me if this doesn't make any sense ! 😩 anyway, i love that ur fic made me dream about him! any ewan char has to be a good dream 😂 but the cartel thing i think was bc my husband has been watching Narcos and so i was hearing it in the background yesterday lol. Michael and a cartel was an interesting mix lol

but onto your fic!! (TW: a lot of smut talking and spoilers to "Stuck On You" for anyone else who might be reading this) Ugh, idk where to start bc i literally loved it so much!! i think I've talked about before, but i love dark fics in general, but **especially** yours bc i think you capture it so well. you could tell me you majored in psychology and i'd believe it bc of how well and easy it seems for you to get into their mindset (any ewan char!). Like-- idk how to describe it, but it feels like you just know all of his chars personally from how well each of ur fics seem to match their personality. I've said before that you add so much little detail to ur fics as to not rush over things, and i could really tell here. my fav small detail was when you simply mentioned how he repeated entering her until he was fully sheathed bc he hadn't fully prepared her. like-- when i read that, my mouth kinda dropped and i had to just take a moment bc (1- ur girl can relate 😂) but also it made me stop and realise just how many fics I've read where it kind of just rushes past the first thrust. and honestly, i just enjoyed that detail *so much* bc it's relatable and realistic ? i love reading smut bc its fantasy, but I've-- and I'm sure many others-- have had that moment where it doesn't enter perfectly the first time and just reading a relatable moment like that was SO refreshing. okay, I'm going to stop w my rambling bc i feel like i might sound stupid now-- onto my questions bc im so curious about his mindset more! fair warning, I feel like some of these might overlap or be repetitive, but i didn’t know how to word them perfectly.

did Michael have an interest w her from the start, or was it only after she embarrassed him did he take an interest in her? did he/does he have any actual true feelings for her? bc the way he talks to her makes it seem like this is more of a hate/revenge thing than anything. like he's just so mean, but is there actually something more underneath all that spite ? and with that, do you think she would have genuine feelings for him as well or would it be this "codependency" thing? -- idk if codependency is the right term, but its better than what i was coming up with lol. her mindset during sex kind of seemed like that dumbification vibes, but she's clearly not actually dumb, he just looks down on her like she is-- which no surprise there, it's Michael lol.

ANYWAY ! i have probably made this way too long and questionably unbearable. again, i really really really apologise that this is probably a mess, bc my brain hurts so bad after the day I've had lol. this is not proofread, so i apologise I'm kind of just word-vomiting all this at you. i hope you've had a good day, Ange and that life is treating you kindly. 🤍

-Hannah Montana anon.

Aaahhh, thank you so much! I’m so glad you liked it! Michael is definitely a virgin, but he understands the mechanics of sex, and the body is willing. I strive for realism in almost all of my smut, so I’m glad that pulls through here.

Onto your questions!

Michael doesn’t notice her at all, until she embarrasses them both at the first night of Fresher’s week. He sets his sights on getting revenge, because he sees her as just another spoiled little rich girl, and he despises those types of people more than anything.

When he learns more about her circumstances - she’s there on a scholarship, genuinely cares about her studies, etc. he softens to her, but not by much - in his view, she is naive and needs to be taught a lesson.

It doesn’t become anything tangibly sexual for him until she kisses him. That’s what sets the wheels turning in his head of “I could ostracise this girl so much that I have her all to myself”

She is definitely into him, and he has effectively backed her into a corner. Basically, she has gotten what she wanted from the start - to have a brilliant mind to be friends with in order to have the “authentic” Oxford experience. And he has what he wants in the sense that he has broken her down to nothing socially and she’s now fully dependent on him.

There is the potential for genuine feelings to develop, but its current state is dark, twisted and reliant on lust.

Hope that all makes sense! Wishing you a lovely week xoxo

#asked and answered #hannah montana anon

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the-kipsabian · 7 months

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just throwing together some misc alan wake 2 thoughts now that ive slept and had coffee after finishing the game. mostly talking end game, obviously spoilers

alice. alice intrigues me so much. that final stinger is incredible, for multiple reasons. that reveal following the series of photos of her seemingly killing herself is just.. yeah. i think that was not only her way of trying to getting back to alan, who she knew was trapped in the dark place at the bottom of the lake, but it was also to throw scratch off, to think that he won by tormenting her to her death. theres no light flickers in the background of that final video. she is free of scratch, but still clearly safe. maybe back in the dark place, but tbh im not sure if she ever actually escaped it in the first place. shes going to leave the place with alan. she has to, because they are each others rocks. they sink or swim together (it would also explain why she was able to contact saga while she was in the dark place)

speaking of saga, her mind place version of the dark place was just *chefs kiss*. it was an incredible, worked really well to demonstrate not only the power the dark place has on people, but also what kind of a character she really is. strong and independent, but so good to those around her. i really wish we got deeper into her friend and partnership with casey tbh, after hearing about his divorce (which, btw, loved the extremely casual drop about him and estevez just "bonding over their ex wives". amazing job remedy) and especially seeing the birthday photo in the mind place just. my heart. i really wish we got more casey in general, but i guess him being included in the story beats and echo visions as a hardboiled detective just needs to be enough. for now i say knowing full well im gonna dive super deep into fanfics when my brain fog lifts a little ough

my one big question was door. and maybe tim to that extent, considering the last page we read and we never fully got an explanation about doors involvement (im hoping ng+ explains this further?) but it refers to tim as his "unwilling disciple" - obviously tim was moved to the dark place against his will, but at the same time, why exactly and what is he doing? hes been trying to get out, to figure it out, he has a whole whiteboard of theories and yet. it all leads to door. and idk maybe i missed it somehow, but i never fully made that connection as to why and what doors game here is. which leaves me with questions for the next game/sequel/dlc. intriguing, but throwing that in last minute just felt kinda. idk remedy dont do this to me lmao

one thing im admittedly a bit disappointed about was them choosing to sacrifice alan for the ending. i mean i get it, at the point where we think alice is dead and saga makes it very clear that neither casey nor logan can be hurt and that they are both the heroes of the story, theres not much options left. like alan said, the horror story needs a victim. but also idk, i wish we could. have had a choice? multiple endings?? which i guess ng+ teased but we'll see. also it being left unanswered whether we were free from the darkness now or not, which i understand was intentional but idk im still a bit miffed about that one lol. logan not answering the phone. however saga did have a wedding ring on her finger (i did not observe this detail before so idk if it was just always there but it felt very significant in this scene as they didnt show her being lefthanded before so) which makes me think everything did get fixed, considering how badly david hated her during points in the story, so why would she still wear her wedding ring after all those years after what happened if this wasnt the good reality again. just saying

ALSO IM JUST SO GLAD CASEY IS ALIVE. STUPID BASTARD MAN I LOVE HIM SO

"its not a loop, its a spiral" has interesting implications, but i miss "its not a lake, its an ocean" tbh. i feel like that ending revelation held more power to it than this one, it just feels like a rehash for the sake of copying the original. like i get what they mean about this one (its not a constant changing loop, its a developing story moving forward that keeps expanding as it goes even tho it feels like its going in circles), but just as a saying it doesnt stand up to the original. thats all

the way, even if they are sharing a skin, alan and scratch are two different characters (im excluding zane from this equation for reasons as i dont think he was real [im fairly convinced it was scratch playing games with alan just pretending to be zane], but i wanna give special props to ilkka villi for his portrayal. immaculate job) and are written that way. the way they talk, the lines they have, there is a significant difference when you pay attention to it - i think its partially alans way of trying to dodge the blame and put it all on scratch, whereas scratch doesnt do that for himself, hes just trying to play into the emotional manipulation angle with the constant rush instead to get what he wants and to get people on his side and to trust him. which is a really good take, considering that hes using all common scammer tactics to try to fool people into giving him what he wants (also just god the transformation scene when this is revealed? permanently tattooed in my brain that was so goddamn good)

its also a very interesting take that the cult is actually the good guys. i also just love ilmos explanation for it; "what kind of a cult calls themselves a cult" like. yeah. yeah man you got a point there. but that being just a cover and a scare tactic to keep people safe? love that shit that was good (kinda high key mad we didnt get more of them after that. only that one last sad tv commercial, would have loved to give them a good ending too)

also the parallel of alan waking up from getting shot to the head vs earlier zane doing to same thing at the second meeting in the hotel. i havent stopped thinking about it tbh

just. a few thoughts. all in all idk i felt like the ending was missing something tbh. maybe i just missed something, but it feels like it was more of a setup for something in the future with everything than an ending to a full game and a sequel 13 years after the original. i have too many questions left, more than i entered into this mess with. that being said, absolutely loved the game itself, the story is insane and incredible, this has once again rewired the way my brain thinks about stories (plot board my beloved......), theres so much underneath the surface of a survival horror game that cant be explained, it needs to be experienced. there are sequences here that im unable to convey in words and feelings, you need to see them for yourself ("we sing" and the movie theater. iykyk)

just in general that cliffhanger like. why you do me like this remedy. why. i cant wait for 13 years for another sequel. goddamn

the ending tho, im. i dont know. in the first game we knew things were still kinda wrong, but it showed that everyone outside of alan seemingly got out of the things unscathed for the most part (i mean we lost nightingale, rose went kinda loopy, there were signs that not everything and everyone was right but for the most part the town and people in it were safe), but here we dont see any of it. the happy deerfest is nothing but scratch's illusion. so idk if im meant to believe that shooting alan was the fix and everything went back to normal, like normal normal before this man was pulled into the lake, or since he was still seemingly alive after that, are we still living in the happy deerfest illusion forever while the darkness spreads to the land outside of it? i have so many questions and this ending didnt answer a lot of them tbh lmao

theres so much here i cant fit here my brains still very rattled from all of this and i keep getting more questions the longer i think about it so im gonna leave it here. i'll probably see you later with more when ng+ and/or dlc releases, as hopefully those will explain more

10/10, absolutely my game of the year ngl

..one thing to leave you with. fuck the boss fights in this game lmao

#alan wake #alan wake 2 #aw2 spoilers #that is all for now. just. video games man #i have a lot of feelings and idk where to put them or how much sense this makes but here you go #i got more idk feel free to ask something if youre curious i guess lol #night is an absolute mess on main

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rookthorne · 2 years

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what stories changed you? like I see you write so much commentary and it’s evident that you love reading these fics - but what stories have changed you or affected you so much? ❤️

ohhh anon… you’re asking the tough questions. I LOVE IT. 😍

I’m gonna go with the stories that have changed me in the way of how I interpret things, or just how deeply they’ve sat with me. Or literally caused me to have some existential mini-crisis (in the best way). They all have brought me something so special.

I have 5. I’ll put this under the cut because I do go into detail as to how and why. and because I may get emotional. 🤣

this is not to say I don’t love the other fics I read, because I do - these are just the ones that hit the hardest for me. Whether it be because of the catharsis, or literally how they’ve changed my brain. I really recommend reading all the fics I reblog, and especially these that I’m gonna mention now - as well as checking out their masterlists. But do remember to heed warnings and respect their boundaries. 💗

TW: EDs, hospital mentions.

One of the first fics I ever read on here; Operant Conditioning by @buckyismybicycle. (technically it’s AO3 but I found it here 😂)

Now, there’s no words on how to describe the story telling and just the pure fucking beauty of the flow. Not many people can pull of POV switching like she has and it’s just an amazing read. The way she personifies and characterises Bucky, and Steve… just wow.

But what stuck with me the most is a bit I think towards the end or it’s in the middle. When Bucky is trying food in the lab with Bruce - more-so smelling different things that lead into food. Bucky experienced what I experience in every instance I go near a new food or smell food. Even my ‘safe foods’. And seeing it written in such a… beautiful, way - it just. I don’t even know how to describe it. I didn’t feel alone anymore.

It also brought me one of the biggest inspirations I have to this day. 💗

(I LOVE YOU SO MUCH 🥰💗)

🌻🌻

Flashing Lights & Convalescence by @pellucid-constellations is the next one.

Not only is like I’m reading a published novel, it’s like.. I don’t even know how to describe Kathie’s writing. She’s home. 💗

Those two make up a twoshot collection about the reader is in an established relationship with Bucky, and who is in a car accident, and Bucky is the paramedic that attends it. Then it follows reader’s rehabilitation and consequent success, and frustrations. I’ve already told Kathie all about this here, but I’m gonna reiterate it. I went through rehab and seeing the world through a new lense after my cardiac arrest, and it was hell. I used to look back on my time in rehab with such anger and honest to god devastation because I felt so alone. After reading Convalescence especially - that changed. It changed because I could imagine through my grief that I had someone there. I had Bucky in my mind cheering me on after I learnt to walk on my own two feet again, and I could imagine him holding me when I was alone in the hospital room and not wanting to take it anymore. And now, it doesn’t hurt so much.

🌻🌻

This next story is not on Tumblr - it’s on Wattpad. But the beautiful author is here: @woolfhoundsss. The story is Attachment Theory. (it wouldn’t let me bloody link the synopsis page only the first chapter 🤦🏼‍♀️)

God. Honestly, this is the story that inspired me to start writing. The fact that Thea writes like nothing I’ve ever seen before and captivates you - just unbelievable.

I found Attachment Theory at an odd time in my life where I was struggling like fuck to get by because everything was going wrong. I stumbled upon it after firing up my Wattpad account for the first time in like 7/8 years and it was the first thing that popped up in search. The summary instantly got me. So, I started to read it. I’m so fucking glad I did. Because when I was reading it, I felt like I had something to focus on and everything in the background just faded away. I could have however long I read for in peace and delve myself into Alice’s shoes. I remember the day that it was finished and I remember becoming so emotional over it, because it wasn’t just a story or a fanfiction to me. But I’m just grateful that in the end I got to experience what I did and I found a fellow author to connect with. I’m still in shock that you found me, Thea.

🌻🌻

This next one is another one that’s not here on tumblr, it’s on AO3 - but @winteratdusk wrote the series Homecoming.

This one I only found recently thanks to a suggestion, and holy shit. Thank you, @thenhewaswrongaboutme.

Now when I say that these fics had a sense of catharsis for me… this one takes the cake. For 4ish years now I have struggled with an eating disorder and whilst Operant Conditioning covered one element to it, Homecoming covered the rest. Literally.

But what I realised when I read this fic and how Bucky copes, and how much he struggled, I realised I was more caring, gentle and supportive of him - than I was of myself. For the exact. same. things.

Since I have read it, something changed.. in me. I now make a conscious effort to be gentle on myself with what I deal with. And I cannot describe how much progress I have actually made with my ED. It’s come in leaps and bounds.

Thank you, Sam. 💗

🌻🌻

Now this next one is very, very, very special to me.

yhhmsgm by my beautiful @thenhewaswrongaboutme.

Not only is this series one of the best things I’ve ever read, but by finding it - I also in turn found one of my closest friends.

I cannot find the words to accurately describe Elsie’s writing style except for the fact that I’m very fucking privileged to do so. The characterisation, the love that you feel when reading it, just fucking everything. God. I’m getting teary thinking about it.

So that covers it… I cannot get into words just how much I love these stories because there are no words fit enough. But I tried.

Thank you, guys, for sharing what you do. 💗

#about me #Lana’s rambles #rookthorne responds #tw: ed #tw: hospital #I get very personal here #sorry guys 💗#love all of you so much #and I’m so grateful I get the privilege of being able to read these stories #I’m getting carried away now I’ll shush 😅

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thanks-tacos · 2 years

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alright, I think I read everything you've written in the dcwyb-verse (except for the 'meeting dad' fic which I'm saving to read when it's done)

please allow me to scream some more at you?

you're a story-telling mastermind. all the bits of background that you'd woven into the fic and all the complicated backstories, all the thoughts, all the feelings. like.. how? what is your secret how does your brain come up with so much good stuff that is making me super jealous? :D

I can go on and on about your fic. I've been living breathing sleeping your fic for days and I just wished I could open a door and walk into it and live in it. already thinking about rereading. I'm just crazy about it.

and now that we're past the screaming (sorry) a few things:

John: I LOVE your portrayal of him. he is very very close to canon John and the way Dean sees him is so well-done and so canon. I'm so looking forward to the reunion and how he will see and deal with Cas and all that - but no pressure *cough*

Sam: I loved it when he appeared. I loved it when he came over to talk to Dean. I loved every single time he showed up and everything he did for Dean while dealing with his own trauma. I love how I still can't tell for sure if he killed Alistair or not, how you did it was sooo good. because we know Sam can get very dangerous when Dean is hurt (mystery spot) but also he is a good guy but also he has hurt some rather innocent people for Dean. Dean and I are not sure if he's really done it or not :|

Dean's trauma: when I first started reading I was like... nah no way Dean gets this broken ever. but after like two three chapters I was like OF COURSE OF COURSE HE WOULD. 20 years of abuse and conditioning and a street smart guy like Dean will find a way to survive. of course he would. it is just so well done. the way he takes one step forward and two steps back and then the complete breakdown he has at the diner when he thinks Alistair's back, it was just fantastically written. I'm just in awe

Cas' backstory: the way you built it all together was just awesome. it came together really well. He is just so Cas, eager to do whatever he can but also approaching everything in his own way with occasional fuck-ups, so very very Cas, I love him <33 I was wondering if by any chance you might write a coda with "Cas receives the communication that he's been chosen to take an omega"? no pressure or anything just something I'd really love to read. I have many thoughts about it, I might as well like write them all down and make a meta post for your fic :))))

gosh I think I've rambled on enough. sorry this went on for so longggg! believe it or not I have much more to say but I think I should really stop before you block me :))))

thank you again for this fantastic work and I'm so glad someone rec'ed it on twitter and I opened and started reading without realising how many words it was at first. you're a gem!

sorry?? you're sorry?!?! you made my fucking day 😭 ur crazy to think this wouldn't be one of the absolute best messages I received 💗💗💗 I got more feedback than I could've ever dreamed of but everytime I get a long message like this that actually tells me what you liked in detail i am on cloud fuckin 10. this means so much to me I've been thinking about it all day and it instantly makes me want to sit down and write 💙💗💙💗💙💗

ok now I'm so glad you liked my portrayal of both Sam and John. Sam got a lot of hate so it's awesome to hear you felt empathetic towards him. and John! he's one of my fave characters bc of how complicated he is. I'm so glad I managed to pull off the ambiguity of Sam's involvement in alastairs death. I feel like it's key that it's ambiguous, though ofc I have my own opinion on what happened lol. dude one of the things I'm most happy about is that you felt that both cas and dean were true to their show selves despite the AU and dean being so broken down. I was dead set on writing Dean's experiences and recovery as realistic (minus the time frame maybe lmao it happens so fast) but I'm glad his 'weakness' didn't make him too ooc. writing this fic has been a delight and you're making me wanna reread it bc I forgot a lot already jfjdjd. and sure I'll keep it in mind, the cas pov of getting dean. a friend wanted to read that too so it's been sth I've been thinking about before. and i would totally lose my shit if you made a meta post 🥰 just saying.

thanks again this mssg made me so happy. I'm so fuckin glad you liked the story so much. thanks for taking the time to tell me about it 🫡🙈💞💕💖💗

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timpac-capstone · 1 month

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Spring Update 2: Revised Animatic and Animation has Started.

After showing the initial animatic at a critique and to a couple of friends and professors, the common consensus was that it dragged on too long. This is the third version of the animatic, the second version had the montage scene replaced with a 3-hours-later card, and the golden tape scene was removed. From the critique a lot of people didn't get the golden tape scene, what I intended with it was that people would project their own worst memory into it instead of me trying to make it my worst memory, which is the marco polo game in the script. They also thought I should get rid of the montage scene which I personally liked but I tried it out just to see how things worked out. It still seemed a bit choppy and dragged on until I emailed the first draft to last semester's capstone professor and she had a lot of critiques about the basketball scene. That's when a lightbulb went off in my mind, "What if instead of trying to fix it I just remove it". And oh my god the animatic worked so much better and thank god because that scene had a lot of moving parts and complicated backgrounds that I didn't even know if it would be possible to animate at my skill level. Don't get me wrong it did hurt a little to delete a week's worth of work but that's how it is when producing an animation.

Highly recommend reading this book for your observational research during the fall semester. I was an idiot and started reading it in the spring so I barely got halfway through it before I had to start the actual animation process but what I did read was very useful. The main reason why I didn't read it beforehand was because I hate reading books, I feel that video tutorials are way more efficient and easy to understand than reading 400 pages but this book has a lot of pictures and the author's personality really shines through which makes it fun to read. However, you should be highlighting and writing notes on the side of the pages rather than just reading the pages. The more active you are in your research the more you will retain.

youtube

Also as the page from the book suggests you should record/time actions you want to animate by performing them yourself. I was really struggling with the last scene where Dillon goes back to bed. By recording myself I was able to see so many small details of my arm and leg placement as I changed positions. I tried this a couple of times with my first attempt being very slow and in this version, I did it a lot faster.

youtube

Similar to how my first animation test for the animatic was the walk cycle for Brain Cell 2, so was my Toon Boom Harmony test. I thought this would be the perfect thing to work on first cause this walk cycle requires a lot of different aspects of digital and traditional animation to make it happen and then once I know where everything is I can try and master it by working on the simpler cuts.

First, and probably simplest, is how do I even draw on this thing. I was having a lot of problems with Toon Boom in the beginning because it didn't like the size of my laptop's monitor so I checked out one of the monitors from the Fablab. I then set up my own animation station in the back of the bunker. This was a bit of an annoying aspect working with Toon Boom because if I had some downtime throughout the day, especially at the Fablab, I couldn't work on it because my screen wasn't acceptable and I needed space for the tablet. At the very least what this setup did for me, psychologically, I had a place where I could associate my stress with instead of keeping everything in my room. Until my other roommate let me borrow a monitor he wasn't using, then most of the animating I did at home cause I like having a place with sunlight.

From animating this one walk cycle I learned how to draw, color, make new frames for a layer, create symbols for the eyes and mouth which is useful for when characters are talking, how to insert spines/rigs into certain body parts or drawn pieces such as the legs so that I don't have to draw them frame by frame, how to rotate, resize, and move a drawing using pegs, and how to parent objects. Sometimes I would also get happy accidents such as the legs moving a bit before the body, this goes to a classic principle in animation which is anticipation. I was also really happy with how I was closely able to match the timing of the animation to the animatic, the bag still feels like it has a heavy weight to it.

I would also keep a notebook next to me and write down anything new I would learn so that I was more actively researching when clicking through Toon Boom tutorials on YouTube.

Once the walk cycle was finished and I was happy with how it looked I split up the animatic into 9 different scenes and then tried fully animating Scene 2 since that and Scene 6 is where that specific walk appears. However, that proved to be quite difficult because of how many different camera angles are in Scene 2, such as close-up shots of Bran Cell 1 on the couch, wide shots of Bran Cell 1 & 2, and then that one still with the door. There were simply too many moving parts to animate this on one file so then I thought "What if I split them even further to the cuts that make up each scene".

Now it's difficult to constitute what is considered the ending of a scene but I personally considered a scene done whenever there was a huge change in setting/background or if it felt like there was a new topic being discussed. So scene 1 is Dillon going to bed so we are in and rotating about his bedroom but once we enter inside his brain I call that scene 2 because the backgrounds are completely different for a good length of time. Then when Brain Cell 2 inserts the tape into the VHS player I called that scene 3 since they are not trying to figure out what the VHS tapes might be or how they work anymore but instead the focus is shifted toward the presentation memory even though they are still in the brain room and 2 cuts are in Dillon's bedroom. Some scenes like scene 5 flip back and forth between the brain room and the bedroom and quite honestly scene 6, which is the one where they drag in the new bag and ends when Cell 2 reaches in for another tape, could be argued to be a part of scene 5, especially since scene 3 has both the Brain room and Dillon's bedroom, but you really have to go off your personal feelings as to what will help you best in breaking down your animatic to simple parts.

Unlike scenes, cuts are very easy to define. A cut is whenever the camera angle of the scene is moved. If you think of it in a live-action sense if I wanted to get a different camera angle of my actors I would yell "CUT" and they would take a break while I set up my camera in a new position. Some scenes, like scenes 1 and 6, had only 2 cuts while scene 2 had 20 cuts, in total Bedtime had 80 cuts which includes stills and repeat shots. This made it a lot easier to work out the math as to how much time I had left to make the animation and which scenes and cuts required more priority if I wanted to make a good finished product. Scene 4, which is the montage scene, could be cut out completely if I really was stressed for time while scene 2, the dragging of the first VHS tapes bag, was not easily avoidable since that created the whole setup of the plot.

This can take up a lot of space on your hard drive and it can get annoying to transfer the assets/layers from one Toon Boom file to another so I would combine the cuts that had the exact same camera angles to make life a bit easier for me. I'm not 100% sure this is how people in the industry organize their files but to some degree, they definitely have to do it this way. Remember that you have several teams of people working on an animated project and the way people get paid, at least in Japan, is by the amount of cuts you do per episode.

Now that everything was nicely organized and I knew that my goal was to reach 80 cuts before the beginning of April I had a feasible plan of action. From February 28th to April 8th, I had to do at the very least 2 cuts a day in order to have the animation part done before the day of the exhibition. Obviously, I wasn't just going to do 2 cuts a day because I would be working up to the wire and that's not factoring in the time it takes to make the backgrounds and sounds for the animation so I definitely hoped that during spring break I could do at least 4 a day or get the harder cuts out of the way. If I wasn't able to complete 2 cuts then at the very least I had to start working on 2 cuts and then hopefully the next day I could do 3 or 4 to make up for lost time. Also, it's best to break this up into smaller pieces as well, so instead of "I need to finish 80 cuts as fast as possible" I would say to myself "I need to finish 14 cuts this week as fast as possible" which is why there is a number on the side with how many cuts I still had left to do. This way I can give myself some leisure time or work on other aspects of the capstone or school work and not stress myself out because I still have 43 cuts left. And if I got ahead of schedule by finishing my 14 cuts I felt more motivated to keep working at a steady pace.

Originally I was going to hire somebody to do the backgrounds for me but I ended up doing them myself in Toon Boom because I couldn't really find anybody cheap and even if I did I wouldn't know how to describe what type of backgrounds I wanted cause I needed to do some on my own regardless. I needed 27 backgrounds maximum, some were reusable so it was probably close to 20 but even then that would be way too expensive to make somebody else do for me so might as well do them all myself. That way they are all the same quality and I can save some money that can be allocated somewhere else such as voice actors. If you know some people who are good at digital painting and you have a good idea of what you want I would definitely suggest hiring someone to do the backgrounds. In the industry, everybody is a specialist in only one field, so one person does all the backgrounds while a different person makes the character designs and then a third person is the actual animator. But because Stevens' budget is so limiting for a project like this you have to really pick your battles.

Also highly recommend exporting your cuts as TIF Image Sequences and compositing them in After Effects, the one on the left is a TIF Sequence. When I export into a video format through Toon Boom the colors get a little bit whitewashed. This will however eat up a lot of your hard drive space especially since some cuts will need every layer to be its own separate image sequence. If it's just a still or a single stationary layer then just export it as one image and then extend it. If you're gonna go crazy with compositing in After Effects then you should definitely invest in an external hard drive to make life easier for yourself and it's just a good way to keep your capstone stuff out of harm's way, you never know what may happen to your laptop.

What I want you to take away from this specific post is that ORGANIZATION IS KEY TO A FINISHED ANIMATION. You cannot work on it every day for every second of the spring semester cause you'll get burned out like I did in April. If you can mathematically prove to yourself that you're in a good spot and can afford to give yourself breaks once in a while then your project will come out amazing. If you constantly keep yourself under stress then you'll start taking shortcuts where they don't need to be taken and your animation will suffer because of it.

#Youtube #animation #toon boom harmony #toon boom animation #organization #planning #animatic

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tracker-ziegler · 2 months

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The Spice Cabinet: Some Details

Alright let's start this blog off with some basic information about what this is and why is came to be, and then maybe some random tidbits if I feel like it.

Why were the spices made? Well originally I started making the spices because I was involved with a Murder Drones DnD thing, it never got off the ground really but I was prepared for a brutal campaign so I made a few drones in case of fatalities, originally just Sage, Mint, and Garlic. Even when it was clear it wasn't going to happen I kept making more drones, I had ideas and wanted to expand them, and that evolved to what we have now.

Why Spices? Well when coming up with names I originally settled on Sage, but meant it more in the wise old figure sense, however I realized as a spice it fit well, so that was the angle I went with. When designing Mint I figured "I don't want to be a boring Serial Designation M she needs a name" and I thought about the flavor of mint and how it fit the character, and it evolved from there.

Why so many drones this can't be easy to write/design? I am a creative person, I make characters for no other reason than to be background bodies in stories, and for once the characters I made are actually interesting and unique so I kept going, new ideas led to new spices.

How do you handle the spices in relation to Canon and things like the Solver? Simple, the Spices fall into an AU where I choose to ignore the solvers existence because it hurts my brain to try and write around it, so the company is still around, it is better explored in the Spice Cabinet chapter on Mint, which lays down a bit of groundwork on how I work with the concepts of different generations of disassembly drones and different human colonies.

Why did you make a Tumblr for this? Twitter is a cesspit and I wanted somewhere to show off these goobs, I put a lot of time, thought, and money into these spices so I want to show them off, beyond what servers I am in.

Do you roleplay with your spices? Abso-freaking-lutely, I didn't design all these drones just to toss them into a story or two and get art of them for the hell of it, people like these idiots and I love them (some more than others) and they all have unique personalities so I cover a broad spectrum with these guys.

Why does some of your art/stories have more explicit/naughty implications and designs? Because I am not a prude and honestly people are gonna be weird about the drones so I might as well get ahead of the curve and be weird with them. I encourage people to get creative with these idiots, I know I am not going to stick my nose up at the more mature topics and art, you see what people do with Canon characters, my spices get off easy in that department.

That covers the basics on the how and why, now for some fun tidbits:

Sage is Forklift certified at birth is a running joke due to his height, also when I made him he wasn't gendered so I just said "Sage is Sage" and that also became a joke.

Mint's nanite repair system produces to many extra nanites they overflow into her mouth giving her nanite saliva capable of repairing damage, many people have tried to take advantage of this fact through very stupid means.

Garlic got the cracks on his screen from his own IED, he covered it in pickaxes and accidentally set it off himself, he refuses to get the damage repaired because it is "a glorious battle scar"

Nutmeg worked in Cabin Fever Labs as an assistant on a project separate from the Absolute Solver, their ID card has a picture of them smiling and holding a hermit crab in their hands.

Cinnamon will hum the Jaws theme while hunting, he also believes in only hitting his quotas to then slack off, he will get exactly as many kills as he is required, and not a single more. He also likes to ice fish for workers, he uses a wrench as bait, and yes it works more than you'd think.

Rosemary learned all she knows about Tusken Raiders pre-core collapse, and she was trying to adapt to that way of life even before it happened, she got lucky with the world ending given how close she was to being decommissioned for biting a technician.

Onion is very hands on, and when he first meets a new drone (not for food purposes) he will try to feel every possible texture on them, this leads to him rubbing others jackets, arms, hair, and faces a lot. He is probably one of the most friendly of the disassembly drones under the Spice Cabinet.

Paprika is based on a Boa Constrictor because she still wraps things in her tail, and she will wrap it around warm objects, or drones, to heat up her internal systems, she can effectively stop an overheating Disassembly Drone or solver user from suffering by leeching their heat away, it is a temporary solution that lets her have a very squirmy living space heater. She also goes into a food coma if she eats too much.

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traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors · 1 year

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tw: brief talk of physically abusive and neglectful environment, dehumanization, someone else's delusion(s), maybe ableism?

Looking for: advice, information, resources, input(?)

Hi, this is probably one of the weirder asks you'll get, but I was wondering if you have any information about not feeling human? I don't mean this in a "I don't believe I deserve to be considered human" sort of way, I mean that I just.. I don't know how to human, it doesn't come naturally to me, and what does come naturally to me is not acting like a person if that makes sense?

For some background information: until I was around 4 I was being raised as an animal. I wasn't taught language or how to play or whatever kids typically learn in that time period. I was kept with a cat or two, not given clothes, punished if I made too much noise, etc etc. Feeding was either whatever they threw on the ground or they'd pin/tie me down to force feed me.

I won't go into any more detail because there's a LOT but after that I was raised in a household that at least expected me to act human (though they... the woman who ended up raising me post-original household believes I'm an alien and does what she can to limit my experiences with other humans and typical life experiences because she believes it will help keep me "pure"). Growing up I spent majority of my time in a forest alone because I couldn't hang out with other kids (not that they wanted to be friends with me).

Anyways even though I know better, the only way I really feel comfortable in my body is when I don't act like a proper human. I have to force myself to walk and move properly and even to this day talking hurts my throat. I have dreams about just being some creature in a vast forest and (something I don't like to share because it's not good) dreams of killing things with my hands and teeth and eating that.

Moving around on all fours (not hands and knees though) and climbing and all that is how I my body naturally wants to exist. My ears move according to sound, my sense of smell and hearing are stronger than average, and I've gotten comments of people asking me if I've done parkour (though I have never done so) when I feel safe enough to climb around and stuff.

I've never felt human and the idea of living the rest of my life as such just makes me feel so.. empty. I've always felt like humans are a different species to me, and I know that's probably due to a lot of my oddly specific trauma and how I was raised. I also have brain damage (it wasn't checked up on though so I don't have much info about it) and C-PTSD and I sometimes wonder if I'm autistic.

Do you have any resources or tips for this? I want to feel more like a real person but my dreams and wants in life is barely more than having a safe place to stay and food to eat (<- I've eaten... more raw meat than I should. I don't do it on purpose though! I've been buying dried meats to help curve the whole raw meat thing) and things like that. If I could be someone's house pet I'd be satisfied with that life, though I wish I was joking.

It's got nothing to do with kinks or whatever (though I am not judging people for that), I'm aroace and have never felt any sexual in my life. I just feel more comfortable when treated like an animal and being around animals than I ever have around humans. Thought I've spent years trying to fix myself, my brain still does humans==danger -_-

Hi anon,

I'm so sorry about what you've been through.

Your ask is quite similar to this one I answered.

I admit I was trying to help find resources but wasn't sure what to look for. I was searching for dehumanization but none of the resources that popped up seemed fitting. And then of course there's the whole feral child discussion, but it doesn't feel like such a term is respectful.

Take my thoughts with a generous grain of salt because I am not a professional and have little experience with situations like this. But based on the way that I am processing this, I would say that it's worth exploring whether or not these behaviors are something you should continue doing. Because I think to a degree, society is very rigid and ignorant to situations like these where it makes sense why you behave the way you do, and will instead cast judgment and discrimination on you without consideration or closer examination. So to a degree, perhaps it's partly society's problem that they fail to understand or respect the way you were simply raised to live. Besides eating raw meat, it sounds like behaving naturally for you may not be that harmful. I think it's okay if your dreams and wants in life are really just to have a safe place to live and eat. I think it's okay to want to be a kind of house pet. There are ways in which that could work functionally and healthily.

But at the same time I'm not sure if these are healthy to engage in, and whether embracing more human expectations is possible given what you have learned on a fundamental level. I'm not sure if "acting human" would benefit you or not. Mainly, I just am trying to think of why you should not engage in these animalistic behaviors that come naturally to you, what harm it's doing, and the only thing I can really think of is that society expects you to be something different, which as an autistic person I don't see as a legitimate reason. But I could be entirely missing other factors.

I think that ultimately this is something to talk about with a mental health professional such as a therapist. There is really only so much that I as a non-professional volunteer can say or do, and especially with things that have shaped you in your formative years, that can take a more expert approach. I believe that you deserve the best care available, and so if therapy is accessible or affordable for you, and if you don't have it already, it may be a helpful way to process these experiences and learn whether you should embrace these animalistic tendencies or conform to human expectations.

If anyone else has any comments or suggestions, please feel free to add on. Otherwise, I hope I could help, and please let us know if you need anything.

-Bun

#mod bun #trauma talks #tw abuse #tw child abuse #tw emotional abuse

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damienthepious · 2 years

Note

continue the beats on its chain meta pls? i missed the detail w arum singing and it feeling wrong (reading before bed is good 4 me to wind down but bad for close readings to get all ur juicy details). continue where you left off or whatever you want to talk abt most

absolutely hell yeah. forgive me for taking a few days to come back to this, my brain is Soup. I've got meta for the previous section if anyone missed it.

SO! CONTINUING.

warnings for discussion of suicidal intent and implied suicide attempts, removal of agency and autonomy, self-loathing, captivity, dehumanization, and mentions of torture to follow.

[At least it blocks out the noise of the Janus Beast, for a few minutes. It bores rather quickly when it cannot feel him sorrowing at its jabs and jeers.]

How exactly the Janus Beast works isn't really elaborated on in canon, but it MUST have some sort of telepathic ability, because it pulls things from people's heads that were not said aloud. Arum isn't preventing it from doing that, in any way, but by stopping himself from HEARING the thing, he's not giving it the responses it wants anymore, so. That's something, at least.

[It doesn't quite block out the sharp noise of the footsteps, however.]

Which probably isn't actually much louder, but the combination of Damien's armor rattling and also it being a new noise here where things rarely change, that means that Arum takes some notice of it.

[Arum is aware, in a distant sort of way, that he is never truly alone in here. Not even just considering his few fellow captives remaining, rotting away.]

I do not think there are MANY sentient creatures in the trophy room. But i also do not think Arum is the ONLY sentient creature in the trophy room.

[There is always, always some human, some knight or - more painfully, more mockingly - some gaggle of slack-mouthed gawking citizens, leash-led along through this torture chamber.]

This section was important for contrast, because Damien also refers to the tours in his internal monologue, as proof that these chambers must be BORING to guard, if they're safe enough for citizens.

[There is always a guard on the outer doors, and there is always some guard wandering the space, as well. Drifting in some pointless circle, as if any creature has ever before escaped from this hateful place. Always.]

there are a lot of things Arum has lost, in this au. Any degree of privacy, ANY degree of privacy is one of those things.

[Arum ignores them, when he can. They rarely pay him any mind, anymore. It has been too long since last he had the energy to make a bother of himself, and the crueler hands have long since bored of this post and moved on, from what he can tell.]

The small spiteful joy of inconveniencing his captors has... faded, with Arum's deepening exhaustion and hopelessness. The effort vs punishment equation has tipped very unpleasantly.

[Arum did not even notice that the footsteps drifting through his prison must be new, not until they react to his low thrumming song. Not until the armor-cased creature scuttles back from his repetitive patrol at the sound.]

This- this actually breaks me a little, because Damien.. Damien has been circling this space for probably an hour or longer at this point, and the sound of a knight's footsteps patrolling simply did not even register in Arum's conscious mind. It's rote. It's background noise. Like a clock ticking. There is NOTHING here for Arum to focus on, nothing for him to DO or to think about, nothing but his own misery and his mistakes and, if he REALLY wants to hurt himself, memories of his freedom.

[It is difficult for Arum to care, really. New blood on the cell block, new blades watching his neck. Perhaps this one might be stupid enough to trick into finally, finally killing him, but Arum does not still hold much hope, for that. If he is here, certainly he knows the rules for this particular captive.]

Ohhhkay. This is another something that will be elaborated on more in future chapters, so i don't know how much i should say about it, BUT. If the Citadel and the Crown wanted Lord Arum to be slain, he would have already been dead. They want him alive. Arum is... god this is bleak. Arum is being actively prevented from killing himself, too. Death would still be a freedom, and it would still serve his greater purpose, as far as he's concerned.

But Arum doesn't even really believe he'll be able to do that, anymore, either.

AND it's late again and i'm going to be oversleepy for work tomorrow, alas. I really should do the next chapter of this for next week. I PROBABLY will, honestly. Uhhhh i hope this all isn't TOO fucking grim for y'all! uhh!!!! whoops!!!!

#elle's fanfic meta #the beast in on his chain #asks #anon #mind! the! warnings!!!

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

Note

i've been keeping a list of possible prompts for you and there's one i have no memory of adding that just says "courtesan nmj????" so i guess that's the prompt you're getting lmao

What Does the Fox Say - ao3

“Second Madame Nie!” a disciple shouted, rushing into her little garden. She didn’t recognize him, but he was solidly built and well-muscled like most of the others – truly, the Unclean Realm was a rapturous feast for one with eyes to see it. Yum, yum. “Second Madame Nie, I have bad news!”

Boo. She hated bad news: bad news meant she’d have to do something, usually, and right now she was seated very comfortably in a pleasant piece of sun in the garden path that’d been made up just for her and to her preferences, with her feet up on a chair and a full plate of fruit from the kitchen on the table in front of her just begging to be devoured, morsel by delicious morsel.

Her schedule was packed!

“I regret to tell you, but your husband has been killed!”

“Oh,” she said, frowning slightly. “Has he? How obnoxious of him.”

How unreliable. Men.

She sighed.

“Second Madame – Second Madame – you don’t understand!” The disciple was all red-eyed and weepy, which was a look she liked, especially in big, stout men like this. The salt added a bit of spice to the whole thing. “You must flee at once! He was killed by Sect Leader Wen in an act of outright aggression – Sect Leader Wen has declared war – the Wen sect is invading!”

She nodded and picked up another lychee to start peeling it. She’d get around to fleeing in her own time. As long as this Wen sect or whatnot was being led by a man, she wasn’t terribly concerned.

“They intend to wipe out the inheritance of Qinghe Nie! They will rip out the child in your belly!”

She hummed noncommittally. Really, how attached was she to having a child of her own? Really?

“They will slaughter civilians – execute Nie-gongzi –”

Her hands stilled.

“What,” she said, and the disciple took a step back automatically, proving that he, at least, had something more of a survival instinct than her late husband did. “Hurt my little meat bun? My darling rice roll? My savory zongzi?”

She stood up, diminutive height and over-large belly and frilly clothing doing absolutely nothing to diminish the vaguely menacing aura that darkened the sky around her. She bared her teeth.

“Who does this upstart Wen dog think he is?!”

The disciple blinked owlishly, but nodded, seeming relieved that she’d finally accepted his concern, though she could see on his face that he was thinking that her reasoning was – characteristically – a little strange. But then again, and she could see this thought process on his far too honest face, it was well known that the second Madame Nie been quite strange ever since Sect Leader Nie had found her in some lonesome place with no family or background and brought her back to be his new wife nevertheless.

Such a charming man. Pity about his loss, really.

“You have to flee at once, we can’t possibly fight so many people,” the disciple said once more, and this time she nodded in agreement. “We can escort you to a hidden exit –”

“No!” a little voice called. “We can’t go.”

She turned to look, and there was the little pork-and-shrimp dumpling himself, chubby-cheeked and earnest-eyed, looking as delicious as always.

“What do you mean, fish cake?” she asked. “Of course we have to go. Didn’t you hear what this strapping young man said? This Wen person wants to kill you!”

“If Father is dead, then I’m the sect leader,” her stepson said. He was serious and solemn in a way that made her want to pinch his cheeks and bury her face into his belly to blow raspberries, and also possibly to eat him right up, flesh and marrow and gristle and all. “That means it’s my responsibility to preserve the Nie sect.”

“Nie-gongzi, no!” the disciple cried, throwing himself to his knees in a dramatic display of loyalty. “You would only die – far better for you to run, and live!”

“Then isn’t the same true for everyone else?” the tasty little dish asked, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting. Possibly he was trying to put on a fierce expression, maybe, she couldn’t quite tell sometimes. He was so cute. “Why should I live, and them not? I refuse to buy my life with their deaths!”

“But – Nie-gongzi –”

Her charming little honey cake shook his head and held up a hand to stop the disciple, turning to look at her instead.

“Second Mother,” he said, and he had that wholesome trusting expression again that was such a perfect little one-shot-kill to the heart, ugh. “You always said you’re the best at hiding. The best in the world, no one better among all the gods or demons!”

She was, too. She couldn’t help but preen a little, proud.

“– can’t you do something?”

“Oh, darling cabbage bun,” she said, not without fondness. “I can hide myself from even the net of Heaven itself if I so choose, from gods and demons alike, and I can most certainly hide a small group from any mortal eyes that dare to look, if you don’t mind being a little tiny bit dishonorable about the business. But an entire sect? That’s a bit much, even for someone as talented and skilled as me.”

Her stepson looked up at her, all straight-steel sincerity and upright righteousness wrapped into a perfectly edible little snack-sized package. “If we split them up, the sect could be small groups,” he said eagerly. “Couldn’t you do something then?”

He was so cute, and he trusted her. He trusted her, believed in her, felt that she could perform miracles with a wave of her sleeve if only she so wished.

It was awful.

She couldn’t bear it.

“Oh all right, you nummy little slice of roast pork belly,” she said, yielding. “But I’m telling you now, it won’t be the least bit honorable! There’s only so many excuses you can come up with for having a lot of strong men with wide shoulders and women with thick thighs hanging around, and not a single one of them has the slightest bit to do with what you people consider to be appropriate.”

“That’s all right. Preserving human life comes first, always.”

The disciple looked between them, clearly completely confused. Clearly all his effort had been spent on developing the muscles in his arms (quite nice) rather than his brain (quite slow).

“What?” he said. “What’s happening?”

“We’re saving the sect,” Nie Mingjue announced happily, clapping his hands together. Too precious, too precious entirely; she’d have to make sure no one else even thought about going near her darling little snackling. “Tell everyone to prepare to evacuate.”

“That will take too long,” she said, and smiled, with teeth. “Let me call some friends to help.”

When the Wen sect arrived at the Unclean Realm, they found the gate open.

That was unexpected enough, but when they entered, they found that the entire place had emptied out – not just of people, but of everything else, too. There wasn’t a single intact chair or table in the entire place, not a scrap of cloth nor a bit of food, like it’d been swept clean by locusts or wild monkeys come to pilfer whatever they could.

Even the paving stones where arrays had been laid out by the Nie sect’s ancestors had been pried up and carted away.

Sect Leader Wen ordered a search, but there wasn’t any trace of it – of the people, of the stuff, anything.

No one ever found out what happened.

Jin Guangyao despised social events, he’d found.

It was one thing when it was something he’d planned himself, where the work was interesting enough to distract him, but when he was an honored guest for someone else…miserable. Utterly miserable.

The only thing more miserable was when the host was his erstwhile father, from whom he’d forcefully extracted recognition. With Wen Ruohan as his backer, indulging his favorite torturer as if a beloved pet, there wasn’t much Jin Guangshan could do to refuse, and neither could he force Jin Guangyao to do anything on his behalf, either. And so Jin Guangyao, sitting as always by Wen Ruohan’s side, right beneath his sons, was now an honored guest at his father’s house, getting offered his pick of prostitutes as if the man had no notion of the irony.

Maybe he didn’t. Jin Guangyao couldn’t quite tell if his father had just forgotten his origins, thinking his bastard son too unimportant to remember the details of, or whether it was meant as a deliberate insult – who could tell?

“Oh, right,” the simpering idiot in front of him, a nephew or cousin of some sort to the sect leader, said. “Our dear Jin Guangyao is known not to like the gentle flower queens, even when they come from the finest houses in Lanling. Isn’t that right, cousin?”

Jin Guangyao’s fists clenched. A deliberate insult, then.

Despite that, his face remained neutral. Instead, he chuckled and said, “The appeal is limited. After all, I have seen the best of them.”

Beside him, Wen Ruohan nodded and smirked. He appreciated Jin Guangyao’s devotion to his mother, though Jin Guangyao suspected it was because he thought it funny that Jin Guangyao would bother to honor such a lowly woman – but what he thought didn’t matter, not really. All that mattered was that he let Jin Guangyao pay his respects to her to his heart’s content.

“Well, you’re in luck!” the idiot Jin Zixun said, looking absurdly smug. “We have something of a different flavor than the usual tonight – we’ve invited entertainment from the local branch of Splendid Spring.”

Jin Guangyao barely managed to avoid rolling his eyes.

The Splendid Spring Palace was a series of brothels that had popped up fully formed just about everywhere some years back, with madams and girls and musicians and bodyguards of all sorts. It was so patently a political move that Jin Guangyao had barely bothered to pay attention to it once he’d become actually powerful, and Wen Ruohan hadn’t paid attention to it at all. After all, in the unlikely event that the business really was backed by a cultivation sect that didn’t care about its face any longer, anyone who needed to use such a façade to gather power was clearly beneath notice.

Jin Guangyao had paid only very little attention, but to different and unusual aspects of the place: by all accounts, they were surprisingly decent employers as far as places like that went. They didn’t steal girls or accept unwilling goods – they had some connection with the merchant caravans, or at least one of the companies that helped coordinate routes and provide protection to such things, and they were as meticulous about checking things over as they were about seeking refunds if they were dissatisfied – and they did accept married girls fleeing unhappy marriages, which not everyone did. They did buy up all the girls in the local markets wherever they were, but they swept them away and brought them back transformed, even the ones that wouldn’t sell because they were too ugly; Jin Guangyao assumed that meant they had people who were talented in make-up and clothing, since the usual rumors of the girls being blessed with a yao’s enchantment were obviously ridiculous and nothing more than the usual marketing gimmicks that brothels since time immemorial had tried.

Even once they had the girls in hand, the places were pretty decent: they had physicians on staff to help with the usual side effects of the business, made sure their girls were clean and healthy, and were said to even limit the number of customers a girl would be obliged to take on in a given evening…honestly, knowing as he did the brothel business, Jin Guangyao sometimes wondered how they’d managed to bespell enough people to even make money in the early days. At any rate, whatever they’d done, it’d worked, because by now they had a solid enough reputation to trade on.

In short: a decent enough place, far better than the usual run of the mill. Once he’d had the ability to do so, he’d even pulled a few strings and arranged for the better of his mother’s old compatriots to end up there, since he couldn’t convince them to leave their old professions behind entirely.

Anyway, if they also seemed to have a sideline in information brokering and assassinations, well, let them. In the cultivation world, where the only thing that mattered was strength, real strength.

A little thing like that wouldn’t make any real difference.

Or so Jin Guangyao had thought.

He found himself re-thinking that, though, when the entertainment in question came out. There were the usual set of attractive (albeit in a wider variety of shapes and sizes than usually seen) dancers, dressed up in silks that seemed actually high quality, and plenty of strapping young men carrying sabers – dancers as well, once assumed, to provide some spice to the entertainment, and implicitly on the offer for men who cut their sleeves or women with more flexibility, like widows or ones with especially permissive husbands. Wen Ruohan’s wives were in that latter category, and they were already whispering to each other excitedly, looking at them.

They’d even brought in the local madame, who was…

Well, she was actually breathtaking, even by Jin Guangyao’s extremely jaded standards. She had hair that fell almost all the way to her ankles, shimmering in the light, and dark eyes shining with liveliness, a smooth and ageless face that simultaneously suggested youth and health but also winked at knowable experience, the features characteristic of what his mother’s employers had called the ‘fox-face’. As if to emphasize that, the lady was wrapped in fox-fur and draped in embroidered brocade, with little stylized foxes running up and down the hems of her clothing and along the gazy silk draped on her shoulders.

It ought to have looked absurd, looked gaudy and overwrought and overdone, but it didn’t.

She was a thousand dreams of wealth and beauty and power and sex appeal all wrapped up in one, and even Jin Guangyao – who was in his personal preferences quite firmly a cutsleeve – couldn’t help but intrigued by her, wondering what it might be like to touch the hem of such a glorious creature.

And next to her…

The lady was accompanied by two men that seemed completely different from each other. One was a slender and winsome young man, fluttering his eyelashes from behind a fan with a charming smile, emanating the appeal of softness and weakness, ready to be indulged. While the other…

Jin Guangyao swallowed.

He was the exact opposite of the first man. Clearly strong, muscular and powerful, and tall to the point of towering, with wide shoulders and a narrow waist, a chest that you could lean your head against and an ass that begged to have someone’s hands on it – and there were his hands, big and broad, perfect for holding someone down or up if they so wished and of a size that was very promising as to what was only hinted at under his clothes. His face was hidden behind a veil as if he were a woman, marking him, like his comrade, as one of the available courtesans of the Splendid Spring, but his body was visible under clothing clearly cut to put it to the best advantage.

And oh, what advantages it had…!

“It seems we found something to the tastes of dear cousin Guangyao after all,” the idiot said mockingly, sniggering and snorting like the pig he was, and for once Jin Guangyao didn’t even care.

“Who’s the woman in front?” Wen Ruohan asked, ignoring their interplay. He seemed utterly fascinated, almost spellbound, and Jin Guangyao couldn’t blame him one bit. If this woman had been at the same brothel as his mother, there wouldn’t have even been room for jealousy or shame; his mother would have gone straight up to her to ask for some tips. “She seems…familiar, somehow.”

“That’s the madame of the Splendid Spring,” Jin Zixun said proudly, as if he’d done anything at all in relation to this – nonsense, of course. Everyone know which brothels were backed by the Jin sect, and Splendid Spring wasn’t one of them. He was acting as if he deserve a pat on the back just for the introduction! “That means she’s not for sale.”

His smile faded a little, twisting in a small bit of bitterness. “Or so she told my uncle, anyway…although I’m sure if it were Sect Leader Wen asking, the answer would undoubtedly be different.”

Probably because Jin Guangshan couldn’t slaughter prostitutes with impunity if they said no to him, whereas no one could stop Wen Ruohan from doing any damn thing he pleased.

Wen Ruohan grunted, pleased by the answer – he was a possessive man, in the rare events that he did exert himself in the realm of women, and there had been more than one instance where he’d stolen away some girl his sons had been eyeing first just for the joy of having had her first – and raised a hand, catching the lady’s eye and gesturing for her to come over, which she did.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

She laughed. “You can call me Hu Jiuwei. With the ‘Hu’ being the character for fox.”

Jin Guangyao tried not to choke. There were false names and then there were false names – the lady’s theme was already clearly related to foxes, given her fox-face and fox-fur lining and the foxes embroidered onto her robes. Was the over-the-top name really necessary?

“It’s a fake name,” she added, unnecessarily.

“I see,” Wen Ruohan said, sounding a little choked himself. Possibly it was the woman calling herself ‘Foxy Ninetails’ and then kindly reassuring them all that the name was false as if she thought them too dumb to figure it out that was tripping him up a little. Jin Guangyao couldn’t tell if she was doing it deliberately in order to make her frankly inhuman beauty a little less frightening, or maybe she was blessed with so much beauty that she hadn’t bothered to cultivate her brain at all. “Are you our entertainment for the evening?”

She smiled, and any complaints Jin Guangyao (or indeed Wen Ruohan) might have had about her intelligence faded away at once.

It was that type of smile.

You could wreck nations with that type of smile. Jin Guangyao couldn’t help but wonder: how had a woman this extraordinary ended up in a brothel, of all places? How had no one snatched her up to keep her all for himself before now?

“My sons and I –” she gestured at the two behind her, “– would be more than happy to provide you with all the entertainment you could possibly want.”

Her smile widened.

“We’ve been hoping for an opportunity like this for a long time.”

#mdzs #nie mingjue #second madame nie #jin guangyao #wen ruohan #my fic #my fics #what does the fox say

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whisker-biscuit · 3 years

Text

The Birds, The Bees, and The Bottles

Fandom: Psychonauts

Rating: T for mild language and discussions of underage drinking

Summary: Two teens are caught trying to sneak into a bar. Bob finally has a conversation he’s held off for far too long.

Because herbaphony is not the only thing that runs in the Zanotto family.

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

Bob’s phone rang at two in the morning. Judging by the jolly ringtone of Helmut singing Strawberry Fields Forever, it was his personal phone instead of his work one, and that was the real tip off to things being very, very wrong.

He woke up and groggily pulled out of his still-slumbering-husband’s arms to answer the little thing going off on his nightstand.

“H’lo?”

“Bob!” Truman’s voice came out far too loud for the time of night, and far too stressed. “Bob, I’m so sorry to wake you, but something happened with Lili. I need you to pick her up for me, please.”

The older man sat up, much more awake as worry and fear immediately rolled in his gut. Helmut finally began to stir beside him, sensing his partner’s agitation.

“Truman, what’s going on? Pick Lili up from where?”

“The city’s police precinct on Abbey Avenue. She – she called me, but I’m out of state and I wouldn’t get there for hours at least even if I left this instant. She’s not in danger!” He added hastily, hearing the concern before Bob could even voice it mentally. “She didn’t get hurt! She’s just…”

The way he tapered off, the way he hesitated, said more than words could.

“She just got herself into some trouble, and she needs someone to go get her.”

Helmut was sitting up now, and Bob felt the question cross their mental link.

What happened?

Truman needs me to pick Lili up from the police station.

“I’m up, I’m on my way right now,” He responded to his nephew verbally, heaving himself out of bed. His husband followed suit despite still looking extremely puzzled, bless him.

“Thank you so much, Bob. I’ll make it up to you as soon as I can, I promise.”

“Don’t worry about it.” The older man waved a dismissive hand even though Truman wasn’t there to see it. “Family is s’pposed to do that for each other anyway.”

“Did I hear that right? Our peppy petunia had a run-in with the law?” Helmut asked as soon as his partner hung up. He paused, and in a lower tone – “she didn’t kill anyone, did she?”

“I don’t think it’s that serious,” Bob said, pulling a coat on over his sleep shirt. “But something tells me we still have a few things to worry about. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

“Ohohoh, no, don’t even think about hoofin’ it without me. We both know I’m the better driver.”

“Neither of us are very good drivers, Helmut.”

“Exactly! That little bit makes all the difference!”

The herbophanist sighed, charmed despite himself and the situation. “Alright, alright. Let’s not keep her waiting.”

The police precinct was nearly dead at this time of night. While it would’ve felt eerie to anyone else, Bob was grateful for the lack of people, and not just because he was still an introvert of the highest degree.

Two teenagers awaited them in the lobby, sitting on a bench together. One was hunched over and burning a hole in the ground with his downcast eyes. The other sat straight up, defiant, holding a glaring contest with the officer standing over them. When Bob entered the room first and met his great-niece’s eyes, her self-assuredness wavered for a brief moment. She hid the slip-up behind a wall of indifference.

“Lili,” he said softly. Then, just as softly but with a gruff tinge of surprise; “Razputin.”

There was no accusation in his voice, but the former scowled harder and the latter looked like he wanted to employ his invisibility. Bob studied them both a moment before his husband appeared and broke the tension with his mere presence.

“We’re here to bust you out, kiddos!” He announced with spread arms, cheerfully ignoring the looks he received from every person in the room.

“Are you Truman Zanotto?” Asked the officer who finally broke his gaze away from Lili to give them a disapproving once-over.

“No, I’m uh, I’m Bob Zanotto, and this is Helmut,” came the awkward reply. “Truman called me to pick Lili up. She’s my great-niece.”

A few seconds of silence passed as the officer made no move to do anything with that information. Bob cleared his throat.

“We’re, uh, listed in her emergency contacts for school?”

“I see. If you can just fill out some paperwork first, we can release her into your custody.”

The herbophanist watched the way Raz seemed to sink further in his seat at the mention of family contacts. The Aquatos were also out of state right now too, if he remembered correctly. Perfect timing for two minors getting up to mischief.

Well, up until they were actually caught.

“And…Razputin, too?” He asked, catching the teen’s startled gaze and giving him the mental equivalent of a thumbs-up.

The officer raised a brow. “Is he related to you, too?”

“Well, uh –”

“Yep!” Helmut interrupted, strolling right up to Raz and giving him a merry clap on the back. The teen had a physique comparable to most adult Olympic athletes, but even he nearly toppled forward from the force of such a big man. “He’s my third cousin, twice removed. Big family. Very close. Holidays are an experience, lemme tell ya!”

“Fine,” the officer pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine, okay, I’ll make sure he gets cleared for release too. I’ll be right back.”

He stalked off, muttering something about it ‘being too damn early for this’, and the older couple turned to face Raz and Lili. Helmut steepled his fingers together to rest against his mustache.

“So! Now that Officer Spoil-Sport is gone, are we allowed to know what heinous crime has been committed in the night by my favorite pair of mischief-makers?”

The two glanced at each other. Raz was the one to break their silence.

“We, uh…got caught sneaking into a bar.”

Cold heat rushed through Bob’s core. Helmut blinked once, twice, then let out a boisterous chuckle.

“That’s it? Jesus! From the way you two were acting I thought you’d robbed the First National Bank.”

“…Helmut.” His husband murmured. The psi-king lost his mirth as he caught Bob’s eye.

“Ah…w-well, y’know, while I’m certainly glad we won’t hear about a righteous homicide in the news tomorrow, forgery ain’t exactly a humble hobby either.”

“It was just two IDs,” Lili muttered under her breath. “Not a big deal.”

The ice in her great-uncle’s heart turned frigid, but before he or Helmut could say anything to that, the officer was back. He shoved a handful of forms under Bob’s nose and the herbophanist fumbled to grab them before they all tumbled to the floor.

“Uh, uh, thank you.”

“Alright, we’re putting the pause on this conversation to make you free citizens again, but don’t think that means we’re done with it.” The Psi-King gave the teens the sternest look he could manage. “As soon as we get in the car, you two will have a lot of explaining to do.”

“O-Okay.”

“Uh-huh.”

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No one spoke a word as they got in the car and started the drive back.

Raz seemed content to continue his efforts to blend in with the background of his seat, still not meeting anyone’s eyes, and Lili stared out the window with her chin in her hand, leaning against the car’s backdoor and letting the lights of the city bathe her in neon sickness.

Helmut, bless his soul, dutifully kept the radio going while he drove, changing the station to something more mellow whenever a song started getting a little too upbeat for the collective mood of the vehicle. Bob sat in the passenger side with his arms folded awkwardly. His brain was buzzing, dreading the inevitable conversation he needed to have with his great-niece and trying to figure out how he was going to go about it.

It surprised them all when Raz spoke over the music.

“It was my idea.”

The two adults glanced at each other, then through the rearview mirror at the fidgeting teen.

“Your idea to go looking for a drink? Or to sneak into a bar to do it?” Helmut asked, turning off the radio.

“Both.”

He still wasn’t meeting their eyes. Bob sighed through his nose.

“I don’t believe you.”

Razputin’s head finally snapped up to stare at him in shock for the fast call on his bluff. “I’m telling the truth!”

“I think you’re only telling part of it, kid.”

“No! I’m telling all of it.”

“Razpu-”

“Oh, come off it, Raz,” Lili snapped a little too loud, making the whole car jump. “Quit trying to take the fall for me. It was my idea to try the stupid fake ID thing, okay? Happy now?”

“Wh – uh, who said anything about being happy about it?” Helmut asked, legitimately confused.

“Look. Neither of us had anything to do tonight, and we were bored, so Raz suggested getting a drink somewhere, but Adam and Lizzie are out of town so we couldn’t ask them.” She crossed her arms and spoke without any inflection. “So, we went out but no one would let us do anything cause we’re minors. I thought that was stupid, because we’re agents same as any of you, so I came up with the sneaking-in part. We only got caught cause one of the bartenders recognized Raz from a show.”

There were a lot of loaded things to parse through from that explanation, but Bob’s mind stalled on one particular detail.

“Adam and Lizzie give you two alcohol?”

“Not…often,” Raz admitted. “Just once or twice, when we asked.”

“Do you mean like, a literal once or twice, or a…an estimated once or twice?”

“Did Dad put you up to this?” Lili shot back. “It was just a few times, like he said. What’s with the inquisition?”

“…Lili –”

“Raz.”

“Okay!” Helmut proclaimed as he slapped his hand against the steering wheel in boisterous aggression. “Who wants some ice cream?”

Everyone stared at him, dumbfounded.

“Cause I’m really feeling some chocolate-vanilla swirl right now. Basic bitch style. Right? Who’s with me?”

Silence.

“Great! Look at that, open Dairy King right there, better take advantage of this opportunity before it slips through our fingers like the melting ice cream we’re all gonna have in about five minutes!”

The psi-king swung into the parking lot in a frenzy and herded the car crew inside before any of them could come out of their shock long enough to protest. It was only as Bob was staring up at fifteen flavors of oversaturated sugary goodness that he realized what had just happened.

He couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief over his husband’s diversion. The tension that had been boiling over was cooled significantly by the sudden non-sequitur, and while the teens were rather half-hearted about picking out their sweet treats, there was no longer a risk of an explosion happening.

Metaphorically and literally.

Helmut caught his spouse’s eye with a meaningful look at Lili the moment all of them had their orders in hand, then slung his arm around Razputin’s shoulders and steered him away. “C’mon my lad! Nothing like the cool night air of three in the morning to keep your Hurricane ™ properly chilled!”

The poor boy had no choice but to let himself be pulled outside, leaving the two Zanottos standing awkwardly in the dingy restaurant. Bob gave a nervous scratch at his chin under his beard.

“How about we, uh, find a seat somewhere?”

Lili couldn’t fully cross her arms while holding ice cream, but she did a good job of making it work anyway. “Sure.”

They sat in a booth in the farthest corner from the front counter. Both great-niece and great-uncle stared at their respective sweet treats as if they could teleport them out of this situation. Bob glanced out the window and saw Helmut and Raz standing outside of the car. The former was on one knee with his hand on the teen’s shoulder, speaking earnestly but inaudibly, and the latter was scuffing the toe of his sneaker against the asphalt.

“Are you going to lecture me?” Lili finally cut through the silence.

Bob turned back to her. “No. Not really.”

“No?” She broke her gaze away from her ice cream just a little bit, eyeing him with surprise. “Then why did Helmut take Raz and leave us alone?”

She was so perceptive, so smart. And yet, still so young.

“Well, I… I still want to talk to you about what happened. I’m just not very, good, at this kind of thing.” He took his spoon and absentmindedly began drawing a flower in his soft-serve. “You already know what you did wasn’t a good idea, right? So I don’t think a lecture would help things any on that front.”

She didn’t respond. He continued.

“It’s less about the fake ID and more…the reasons you made the fake ID. Does that make sense?”

“I guess so, but I know what I’m doing, Uncle Bob. I’m not going to drink irresponsibly.”

The herbophanist shook his head. “But you’ll do irresponsible things to be able to drink in the first place.”

“That’s not –” Lili didn’t have a good rebuttal. She folded her arms and grumpily started eating her cherry chocolate delight. “Whatever. It’s two different things, anyway.”

Against his better judgement, Bob began picking at his own food as he thought about how best to bring the subject back up without making the teen defensive again. Spoons clicking against teeth was the only sound between them for a solid minute.

Finally, an epiphany.

“Did Truman ever…tell you anything, about your great-grandma?”

The girl paused with a bite halfway up to her mouth. She frowned, confused. “Grandma Tia? Not much. Just that she died when he was a baby.”

“Yeah. Yeah, she did.” He ran a tired hand over his face. The ache in his heart might have long-since healed into a scar, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt when pressed. “She passed away when I was nineteen. The doctors told me it was liver failure.”

He didn’t have to say anything else. Lili’s mouth thinned and she put her spoon down, uncomfortable.

“When I…found out the reason behind her death, I was horrified by it. It didn’t make sense to me why she would willingly do something that hurt her so badly, especially when I was right there to love her and help her. It felt like a betrayal that she never got help or made herself stop. I was…disgusted by the mere thought of doing anything like that.”

Bob took a moment to breathe and wipe his eyes. He wasn’t crying, but better safe than sorry.

“It sounds pretty hypocritical when I say it now, doesn’t it?”

His great-niece only gave him a hesitant look.

“Anyway, uh, where was I…” He worried his lip. “Oh, right. I told myself that I’d never touch the stuff after that. I was angry at what she’d done, and I was determined not to have the same ‘weakness’, so to speak. As you know, it, uh, it didn’t last long. I was at a college party barely a year later when I was invited by some friends to drink with them. I didn’t make human friends very easily back then – actually, I still don’t – so I was a little desperate to keep them. It turned out to be pretty hard whiskey, so I got hammered.”

The man leaned back in his seat, staring at the patterns in the booth table.

“Back then, no one really knew how alcoholism could run in a family. Everyone thought it was a personal choice to keep drinking. It wasn’t even classified as an addiction yet. So I didn’t know how susceptible I was, or how careful I had to be. I’d spend months not having a single drink, thinking I was fine and could handle myself, and then I’d get plastered for a week at parties and bars and God knows what else, and it would take me even longer to get myself to stop again. It was like that even when I was with Ford and his gang. It wasn’t until I started dating Helmut that I started trying to change those habits. I’d never met anyone who loved me so unconditionally that I wanted to be a better person for them, until him. And it worked for a while.

“Well, barring our wedding, of course. I got shitfaced at the reception. It was embarrassing afterwards, but Helmut told me it made our cake-eating ceremony a hell of a great time.”

Lili snorted, and it was accompanied by a tiny upturn of her lips. Then it dropped as her expression became solemn. “And then…everything with Maligula happened, right?”

“Yeah. I think you know the rest of that story.”

“Uh-huh.”

Great-niece and great-uncle sat together for a while, just thinking about it all.

“I know I have to be more careful drinking than a lot of people, Uncle Bob,” Lili finally said at length. “My dad warned me about it when I was old enough to ask.”

“Truman is a good dad,” he murmured in response.

“The best dad.”

“Definitely the best dad.”

More silence.

“I didn’t mean to worry you and him,” she continued. “Or scare you. I know it was dumb to do what we did tonight.”

Bob looked at her, and she gave a conceding sigh.

“Okay, it was dumb to do a lot of what we’ve been doing with this stuff. That doesn’t mean I’m not being careful.”

“Kid, it’s not always just a matter of being careful. I thought I was being careful. I thought that for years and years, and when I finally realized I wasn’t, I convinced myself I could stop any time I wanted to, and kept up the same patterns anyway. That’s what I’m trying to get you to understand. I just don’t want you to make the same mistakes I did. I’m just worried about you.”

Lili closed her eyes with a grimace. “I know. I’m sorry, Uncle Bob.”

“Hey, kiddo, look at me.” He waited until she did so. “I’m not mad at you. I’m not disappointed, either. That’s your dad’s job. I get it, is what I’m saying. It gives you a buzz, and it’s fun and exciting, and you just wanted to have a good time with your, uh…”

Bob leaned in a bit, and dropped his voice to a stage whisper.

“Is Raz still your boyfriend?”

“Wha –” her cheeks went red. “Yes, he is!”

“Alright, sorry, I’m just always out of the loop. No one ever tells me when these things change or not. Anyway,” he continued before she could get brighter than the cherries in her ice cream. “I’m just saying that you gotta be more than careful with this kind of thing. Everyone should be, really, but especially people like us. Plants aren’t the only thing that runs in the Zanotto family, unfortunately, so we just have to be aware of it and act accordingly.”

The teen turned this over in her mind. He could practically see the gears moving. When she looked at him again, it was with a slow, contemplative nod.

“No more late-night bar-hopping?” Her great-uncle asked.

“No more late-night bar-hopping.” She answered, sincere.

“Good.” He looked outside. Helmut and Raz were both lying on the front of the car, pointing out stars to each other. The sight made him smile. “Come on, we’ll work on that whole thing about Adam and Lizzie giving you alcohol another time, when it’s not three in the morning. For now, let’s rejoin our boys again and go get some rest, okay?”

“Okay.” Lili slid out of the booth and tentatively took her family member’s hand. His fingers squeezed hers in reassurance. “And...thanks, Uncle Bob.”

“Well, what can I say. Us weird Zanotto plant people hafta look out for each other, right?”

“Right.”

They walked out together, hand-in-hand.

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A/N: I knew from promotional material that we'd be going into the mind of someone struggling with alcoholism, but Bob's Bottles punched me hard in the gut. It's probably my favorite mind in the game, both because it's visually gorgeous and because it hit a little close to home with some of the themes, like generational alcoholism and how the addiction can make someone a shell of themselves.

I wrote half of this three weeks ago and then found myself really struggling to finish it because it brought up a lot of old feelings I thought I'd sorted through a long time ago.

Psychonauts, man.

#psychonauts 2 #psychonauts 2 spoilers #Bob Zanottto #Helmut Fullbear #Lili Zanotto #Razputin Aquato #Bob Zanotto/Helmut Fullbear #psychonauts

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