#Actually lockdown is the reason I'm behind

[eloise-t-g]

long post ahead. i wanted to respond to some of the things i've seen people saying about the watcher situation. i honestly just needed to get some of this stuff off my chest lmao.

"sorry, the bridge has been burnt and i can no longer support watcher" - valid.

"i'm happy with this compromise and will continue to watch their content" - valid.

"oh so they apologise, change nothing, and now people are happy to give them money?" - things have changed. they compromised and completely changed their plan for the new website. did you not watch the update video? they're also issuing refunds to anyone who wants one.

"i bet people who over-reacted feel real stupid now!" - some people over-reacted, but a lot of people had valid criticisms and concerns. they shouldn't feel stupid if they expressed it in a non-abusive way.

"yay, we successfully bullied them into changing their minds!" - you're ... you're proud that you bullied someone? this isn't fucking elon musk or jeff bezos. these guys aren't multibillionaires exploiting their employees. these are three youtubers who want to pay themselves and their employees a living wage, while making content they're proud of, and they made a simple fucking mistake. stop throwing around the term 'eat the rich' as though it applies here.

"the apology video is clearly PR!" - yes, watcher is a business. this is how a business responds to situations like this. they had abuse hurled at them for 48 hours straight, they shouldn't feel bad for wanting to make sure everything said in the video was 100% agreed upon and analysed beforehand.

"steven was clearly the one behind this, he should be fired or step down!" - was he? do you know that for a fact? cause from what i saw, all three of them got in front of the camera and made the announcement video together. i agree that he should step down as CEO, but only because they clearly need someone who has actual business experience leading them (if you remember, ryan and shane stepped down a while ago because they didn't want to deal with that side of the company anymore - in the same video, they thanked steven for being the sole reason watcher was still going).

"they shouldn't have been silent the whole weekend" - maybe so, but it's clear they went into lockdown/crisis mode. also, businesses aren't open on weekends. i think it's fair that they waited until monday and took their time with it. maybe they should have tweeted something like "we're sorry and we're working on an explanation", but that just would have given people another place to attack them.

"you're all being parasocial" - i've seen this used against both people who are supporting/giving the team the benefit of the doubt, and people who are against everything. a lot of people (myself included) have used this experience to realise they were developing/had developed a parasocial relationship with these men. this is a good thing - it allows us to recognise these things and make changes within ourselves.

i think generally people are more parasocial towards youtubers than celebrities in films and tv shows. YT feels like there is a barrier removed between the creators and us; it makes us feel like we know these people in a way that we don't know actors who are always playing different roles. YT makes it easier to believe we're seeing the real people, when we really don't know them at all.

"why should i pay someone who owns a tesla?" - you don't have to. also, steven has been working consistently for years. it doesn't surprise me that he has enough savings for an expensive car. people are allowed to own things that you and i can't afford.

"they're embarrassed to be youtubers" - might be true, who knows. but for me it feels more like they want to be taken seriously as filmmakers/television producers, and don't feel like they can do that on YT.

"there's clearly money mismanagement going on" - i think this is likely. i personally don't know what it's like to run a business like this, which is why i've been watching videos from other youtubers who do. since they're saying they don't know where the funds are going, i'm inclined to believe watcher's budget is way off what it should be.

"why didn't they initially say they were having money troubles and might close doors?" - i can see both sides of this. i believe they should have recognised that their audience would have been more receptive to this kind of honesty. however, if you're asking people to give you money, while also saying the venture might not work out, it doesn't engender a great deal of trust. why should i pay for a 12 month sub if it's possible watcher will fold in 6? who will be around to issue me a refund then?

"we were happy with blue and yellow text on a screen!" - valid, but it's clear that they weren't. they clearly want to push themselves further creatively. on the other hand, it definitely feels like they got impatient and wanted that future creation to start now, when they don't have the funds for it. they shouldn't have tried to force their loyal audience to pay for content the audience didn't ask for.

"i don't want to fund steven, andrew, and adam flying around the world eating expensive food." - very valid. i wonder how different things would have been if this 'Worth It' revival had come around 6 months earlier. it still would have been tone deaf in a global living crisis, but i don't think people would have been this upset. what i don't understand is them doing this show if they genuinely couldn't afford it, which is the implication i got from them announcing it just before announcing the paywall.

"why don't they move their office out of LA?" - that would be incredibly expensive, especially for a company that is struggling financially. they would have to uproot their entire lives, and would probably lose a great number of their staff who don't want to/can't move. they would have to completely start over, which is something i imagine they're desperately trying to avoid.

i think the cancel culture that has grown in popularity over the internet over the last few years has led people to believe that:

they can say whatever they want online with no consequences.

people aren't allowed to make a single mistake, and should understand that when they do, it's okay to for others to spew hate and awfulness towards them.

part of me doesn't even know why i made this post, i think i just got sick of seeing the same complaints and questions lmao.

#watcher #steven lim #ryan bergara #shane madej #watcher entertainment

[rongzhi]

Hi! Love your TikTok translations, they help me learn so much. Sorry if you've answered this before already, but as a language student myself, I was just curious about how you got so good at Chinese - is it a native language for you, or what's your background in using/studying it? Thank you!

I think I answered this a long time ago (like 2021 maybe) so I will just tell it again. It's kind of a longwinded boring post that's very self-centric (😬) and also probably not going to have any helpful advice to the average language learner, so I'm going to put it under a read more!

Background

My family is Chinese so it's my heritage language. I did learn it before English as a baby but then forgot a lot of it. My parents speak Chinese at home but I always replied in English growing up. Part of this is because I have a twin sibling and because we spoke English at school, we also started speaking English to each other at home.

We went to Chinese school on Sundays growing up (this is like a community/cultural school; it included other courses like math, Chinese dance, art, pre-SATs (lol), etc, depending on who in the community was available to teach), but I didn't really pay attention so my Chinese was pretty shit for a long time—like broken conversational level shitty, although I have always had a strong comprehension ability. My dad's side is from Sichuan so I grew up understanding a bit of Sichuanese.

The beginning of my "studying"

I don't actually have much of a background studying Chinese in a formal setting. I took Chinese 101-103 in college as part of a language requirement (specifically chose to start with 101 so I could relearn basics, even though my teachers kept offering to place me in higher levels). I really credit my Chinese 101 prof who was also the college's calligraphy teacher for making us focus on brush stroke order and recognising characters and understanding semantic components, which is something other profs did not emphasise (they were more focused on building conversational skills).

Anyway, that was only my freshman year of college because I ended up changing majors and not having a language requirement anymore (boo). I continued studying a bit of Chinese in the intervening years, but I am not a very disciplined person when it comes to self-study, so much of it was just translating song lyrics for my own amusement. During this time, I also started watching some cdramas, but mostly just Chinese web shows, which maybe helped? (I don't think I was watching enough for it to really make a difference).

Fast forward a couple years to 2020 and I started watching more cdramas during lockdowns, including watching 成化十四年 (The Sleuth of Ming Dynasty), which I was super invested in for about two years (this used to be a fandom blog lol). Basically, hyperfixation led me to rapidly improve my Chinese; I started translating a few behind-the-scenes videos for fandom friends. In order to keep up with Chinese fans and gain access to more material about the show, I started venturing onto Chinese sites such as weibo, bilibili, and eventually, douyin, which I downloaded around October of 2020 (so this was 6 months into my increased interest into Chinese things). At first, I translated a couple of douyins to share with fandom friends as I had done with behind-the-scenes materials, but for whatever reason I felt like some of the videos I wanted to translate would just be annoying to spam into the chat... I couldn't figure out a way to connect them to the blorbos, but I still wanted to translate them, so I started posting them here on tumblr. That's how my douyin translations started out. This was the height of covid-19 related sinophobia, too, so at some point I started realising how important it was to continue translating douyins, and that motivated me to continue even beyond it just being a fun thing to do. On that topic, it was through this blog that I realised how poorly understood China and Chinese people are, specifically on this site. I feel like that has changed a lot, or maybe that's just a comment on insular online spaces, but I have to think not; since I started translating douyins, I've seen a noticeable decrease in sinophobic comments and messages (not that I don't still get them, but it's lessened), and I think that's also thanks in great part to other blogs on here that were posting/have started to post more content from China to help increase exposure to tumblr users.

Improving

In any case, in the beginning, I did a lot of translations mostly by ear rather than reading captions because my Chinese reading wasn't that good.

It's kind of slowly improved with time and repetitive reading, and over the last three years now, I've also gone through periods of taking notes and actively seeking out some vocab lists or grammar explanations... but it usually comes in the process of trying to translate something. My motivations in "studying" (it's more like "figuring out") Chinese is largely based on the simple desire to know what people are talking about... what they're joking about... what they're ranting about and roasting. Related: I also started reading fanfics in Chinese about a year ago. Some fics have been easier to read than others, but some of the best ones I've read were also the ones that challenged me the most, and which I had to take a lot of notes on while reading. I'll admit! There have been times where I just took a fic and dumped that sucker in google translate and have it read the Chinese to me, so I could just listen to it like a podfic. But even so, I would take notes, because I think my improvements in Chinese are heavily connected to my Chinese literacy.

Reading douyin comments and forums on douban or comment sections on bilibili has been one of the main ways that I've picked up on common phrases and characters. I often write things down but I do so more as a muscle memory practice, because I have never really been the sort of person who reads back notes (this was also how I studied in school, iirc). Branching out and translating things that are written in formal or non-colloquial styles is also a way I challenge myself from time to time, and I do like to look up the etymology of Chinese characters from time to time because it helps me pick up patterns of semantics and phonetic hints when I'm reading (this makes it easier to guess what a character might mean or sound like, even if you've never seen it before). Overall, translation has been the great learning tool for me. I think maybe it comes down to learning styles? I have always learned better from trying to teach others, and I feel like translation works a similar muscle in the mind; translation is about figuring out ways to efficiently communicate a message, and in order to do so, you must be able to grasp the essence of what it is you're relaying.

All this said... And to try and return to your original ask after all my usual Wawa rambling... I actually don't think my Chinese is that good, lol. In fact, there's probably people who follow this blog who are studying Chinese in a more conventional and methodical manner whose Chinese is objectively much better than mine 🤷🏻‍♂️ I mean, if you crunch the numbers, I have really only be self-"studying" for three years. Three years of what is really just vibe-based learning. There's a lot of vocab I still don't know (I mean my English vocab is pretty limited too, sooo.... 😭), a lot of areas that I can still improve on, and am improving on, and try to improve on... when the mood strikes. Again, I am not a very disciplined self-study type.

Maybe this will give any other Chinese diaspora hope, though. I feel like it's never too late for us to start learning. There is probably a seed or language foundation within you already which will make it easier for you to start, and then after that, I think it sort of comes down to finding what interests you and will keep you motivated.

Most of the stuff I talk about on here when it comes to culture or folk art or what have you, I did not know even five years ago! I learned about it because I was interested to find out more. (That's another reason I have to laugh when I get some of the asks I do in my inbox... The stuff I don't answer is dumbfounding at times. You translate a couple of funny videos and people think you're some kind of Tripadvisor cultural ambassador guy! I swear...)

The "study" resources I use regularly are the following:

Pleco

Zh-En browser extension

Yellowbridge (usually to check brush stroke order, since I have Pleco)

Baidu etymology pages / Chinese etymology dictionaries such as hanziyuan

#text #answered ask #about me

[terriwriting]

Hi. My name is Terry and I went into debt during the pandemic lockdowns. Some of it was because I had to break a lease to escape a building the landlords were turning into a slum (elevator was broken for nearly a year, roaches overran the place, next door neighbour was throwing coke parties all night). For a while things were okay, but then the rising cost of living and rising interest rates made that debt unsustainable. Now I'm lurching from one crisis to the next and I need to get out from under this debtload before it crushes me. Everything donated to this fundraiser will go directly to paying down that debt, because it is the single biggest problem in my life and makes every other problem worse.

I actually owe over $10,000, but I have one Guaranteed Investment Certificate left over from years ago when I was able to save money. That matures in August and I've already made arrangements with my bank to have it applied directly to my debt. The GIC is for just over $7,000, which leaves me with $3,000+ to pay off somehow.

Currently I make just enough to cover bare minimums (rent, utilities, groceries) and if I can get extra shifts I can keep up on interest payments. But if I can't get those extra shifts or if I miss a shift I fall further behind. And sometimes I get enough to pay the interest, but I get it too late in the month to pay by the due date and still end up being charged a late fee. For a while I was making headway on the debt, then the cost of living went up and I was just breaking even. Then both the cost of living and interest rates went up and now I'm barely hanging on by my fingernails.

I have tried to make up the difference by cutting back. I've reduced my phone and internet services to the lowest levels available, and I try to keep my power usage to a minimum. Water is included in my rent but the area I live in is in drought conditions and water bills are going up. Property taxes are also going up in the region. My rent will probably go up at the end of my lease, whether I stay in this place or try to find a new one. Every apartment in this city is too expensive now, and my landlords have actually been comparatively reasonable in raising rent.

The cost of living has gone up too fast for me to keep up with, and I can't make my interest payments or reduce this debt on my own. Every small setback becomes a crisis, and I've made two posts here to cover things like vet bills and end of month bills. If I can reduce my interest payments immediately and reduce my debt over the next few months, I can get out of this spiral. If I can't, I'm going to keep tripping from one crisis to the next until I fall completely.

It's not all bad news. I have a couple of ongoing writing projects that might actually earn some money. My cats are healthy (thanks to everyone who donated to my previous fundraiser). And I have an apartment that is close enough to shopping and work that I don't need a car. I'd be doing alright if not for this debt. So: Everything donated to this fundraiser will go directly to paying down that debt, because it is the single biggest problem in my life and makes every other problem worse.

Thank you for reading this.

$100/$3100. Thank you!

[saintsenara]

if you are still doing ship game, thoughts on jily?

thank you very much, anon - i am always taking questions both on romantic ships and on characters' platonic vibes, the more unhinged the better.

although jily can't really be described in those terms, not least because their narrative purpose in canon is to be little more than blank canvases onto which harry can project as he goes through his series-long character arc, shedding his initial hero worship of james when confronted with the reality of his father's behaviour in order of the phoenix and starting both to fully appreciate lily's centrality to the course his life is taking and to see his dad with nuance as a real and fully-rounded person, flaws and all.

this narrative role means that the glimpses we get of them in canon feel kind of superficial - their bantering during snape's worst memory is basically high-school-teen-movie level, the snapshots of their life under lockdown in deathly hallows lovely and bittersweet but also just colour to a storyline which is already all of those things.

and this is not to say that i find jily uninteresting as a ship - i completely reject the common anti-jily position that they didn't really like each other, that they had nothing in common, or that their backgrounds made them incompatible [i'll expand on this below, but while i do think that their respective blood statuses and the impact of these on their relationship are worth thinking about, i loathe fics which portray james as chafing against his marriage because, as a pureblood, he'd be more comfortable with someone 'of his own kind'. this is bullshit, and there's far, far too much of it in this fandom]. my views on one of james' most frequent non-lily partnerships are well known, and i share the outrage many jily fans have for the way lily in particular is treated in a subfandom increasingly dominated by rigid fanon which prioritises giving depth to male characters [even if those characters are, in essence, oc's] and slash relationships over exploring the canon female characters, partnered or not.

but i do also find that a lot of jily falls into the same trap as much of the hinny i dislike - that is, a tendency to present as a sunshine-and-roses fairytale a relationship which is much more interesting if the things which canon implies [and which can be reasonably inferred outside of canon scenes from a canon coherent engagement with the text] might have introduced an element of dysfunction into james and lily's partnership are taken into account.

the shadow of the war is obviously one of these things. what role lily actually plays in the resistance is something which preoccupies me [she is never mentioned in canon to have taken a combat role - and i find it considerably more plausible that any attempt voldemort made to recruit her was at snape's request and connected to her potions prowess] particularly because, as we see in the way her death is memorialised in deathly hallows, the series regards the defence of the integrity of the nuclear family as a key aim for the good guys. how does she interact with james and his wartime role when she's pregnant, nursing, or in hiding for the vast majority of her time in the order? how does she feel about her husband being a soldier if she's behind the scenes?

indeed, what role james [and sirius] plays in the order is also something i'm obsessed with thinking about - not least because so much of the inherent tragedy of the marauders' storyline is caused by the fact that james and sirius think they're fucking invincible and that their plans to keep the potters safe are foolproof. it's entirely reasonable to read james and sirius as being pretty gung-ho about being paramilitaries - and my headcanon is absolutely that more battled-hardened order members didn't like them very much [moody does not, after all, seem massively fond of sirius] - and lily seems affected by this too [she's not holding her wand either!], and what they thought they were doing as 1981 rolls around is compelling to me.

james and lily's divergent backgrounds is also something i'd like to see explored more in fandom - not, as i've said, in the dull 'james should have married a pureblood' way, but in a way which deals with the fact that their relationship follows wizarding norms. molly weasley can blame the war all she likes, but [although i doubt this was jkr's intention] the evidence of canon is that witches and wizards marry and have children extremely young as a social standard, that couples generally don't live together before marriage, that divorce doesn't seem to be common, and that married women tend not to work. lily - a mother at twenty and, therefore, presumably married at nineteen - is coming of age, then, in a magical world which thinks about gender very differently from the muggle world of the 1970s, and i think that tension is worth exploring.

[similarly, the way in which her marriage is self-protective - lily gains a pureblood name and the social cachet which comes with it at a time when she's in rising danger on account of her birth - is something i think it's worth looking at when considering the pairing.]

there are other flashes of dysfuntion which i adore thinking about in relation to jily - lily's relationship with the other marauders [you can pry the reading that sirius resents her for stealing the love of his life - and i certainly don't mean lupin - away from him from my cold, dead hands]; how much of his misbehaviour at school james conceals from her; the fact that lily becoming more overtly interested in james from her sixth year onward must have a little bit of attempting to make snape jealous mixed into it - and whenever i stumble upon them in fics i say oh ho like horace slughorn and kick my little feet in the air.

i care rather less about 'we're so hot and flawless and not doomed' as a trope.

but i do stan james for beefing with vernon dursley even though lily told him to behave. the man really is just that annoying.

#asks answered #asenora's opinions on ships #jily #james potter #lily evans #is this an 'i'm in danger' one? #only time will tell

[hedgehog-moss]

I meant to shear my llamas last spring, but ended up having to cancel due to yet another national lockdown—and it was actually for the best since last summer was so cold and rainy; not a good time to be a naked llama.

So we postponed things by a year, and our new appointment was today, and I'm so pleased with how it went! The shearer said, and I quote, that my llamas were exceptionally nice llamas. I'd never had them shorn before, so I didn't know what to expect, and just to be safe my mum and I added crossbars between the posts in the corral earlier this week—it used to be just a wire fence. I thought wooden rails would be more of a deterrent in case of a llama uprising (literally—Pampe's jumped over this corral fence once when she was a teenager.)

Here are the new crossbars, with fresh leaves still attached, for a bonus llama snack (they have now been eaten)

I decided Pampelune would go first. Pyrgus refused to enter the corral with his mum, so he worriedly watched her being haltered and tied to a post from outside—I was hoping for a poignant mother-son nose-cuddle scene like in Dumbo but no, Pampy actually looked a bit offended by her son's wimpiness, and Gus was like sorry :( the corral is scary :(

Pampy was so calm and patient throughout <3 She's a very chill llama so I was expecting things to go well with her. I warned the shearer that Pampérigouste would be another story—that was the reason I wanted Pampy to go first, so Pampe could watch her mother calmly being shorn and see that nothing bad was happening.

The only issue we encountered is that Pampelune likes to wear her ears low behind her head, as shown above, because it just seems to be the ear position she finds most comfortable (and it's the reason she ranked last in last year's ear contest), so we had to grab her ears and move them this way and that in order to shear the back of her head, and she very much resented it. Still, she was very good and was awarded a banana peel and half a carrot.

(Important bit of arcane knowledge: underneath her wool, a llama has the texture of very old and scratchy wall-to-wall carpeting)

At first I hesitated to keep Pampe in the corral while her mum was being shorn, explaining that she might freak out about being trapped in a small fenced place with a stranger wielding a very noisy unknown device. Straight away she started debunking my claims by being very calmly and politely curious about what was happening.

The shearer had been previously told on the phone that she might only be able to shear 1 llama, because the second one is a bit of a pain in general. Pampe's never been shorn in her life and she's Pampe. A free llama. She doesn't like being controlled or immobilised or forced to wear a halter and she's not particularly trusting with strangers. It seemed safe to assume shearing her would be challenging, and the shearer was abundantly warned that she would be dealing with one Good Llama and one Bad Llama.

So, of course, Pampe proceeded to be The Best Llama This Shearer Had Ever Met. Just so she could complain about being unfairly slandered, I suppose. She didn't even dance around or lift her feet when her legs were being shorn, which is apparently something every llama does as a defensive reflex. She just stood there like "?? I'm a model llama. Everyone knows that. A pleasure to have in class. What lies has my owner been feeding you?"

Pampe: "I haven't had an experience this boring since giving birth."

Baby Poldine: side eye

(Poldine was pretty intrigued by the whole thing. You can hear her quizzical hums in the video, and when her mum was freed she immediately went to sniff her and touch her all over with her nose, while holding her tail up very high, which seems to be the baby llama equivalent of cartoon characters going around with a question mark above their head. )

Pandolf spent the morning locked in the barn because he tends to express his support a bit too exuberantly (I bet he would have volunteered to be shorn in solidarity), and when he was finally freed, he also had a lot of questions.

Pampe's wool turned out to be a lot thicker than Pampelune's, and Pampoldine's father is also very fluffy, so I think my next shearing appointment will be just for Pampe & Poldine. The shearer was so happy with my llamas—at one point I was telling Pampy "That's a good llama" and she said "That's an excellent llama!!" and then she called them exceptional, which I've already mentioned, but I'm so proud.

She said she often needs to use a hobble or ropes and force the llamas to lie down on their side, like they do with alpacas, which tends to be more stressful for everyone involved when it comes to llamas, since they're bigger and struggle more forcefully. She'd also told me to have old towels at the ready, to wipe off all the spit we would receive from stressed or angry llamas—and no one was spat on even once.

(I asked her how she came to be a travelling llama shearer, and she said she had two alpacas on her farm, and her shearer offered to train her since there are few camelid shearers in the country; so she's now his successor. She spent the night on my land in her camper van and we did the shearing in the early morning, then had a coffee and she was off to shear 25 alpacas further South.)

After letting everyone out of the corral I went to get a large bag to gather up all the wool, and meanwhile the llamas were rolling and rolling in the still-dewy grass, it must have been quite an intriguing and refreshing sensation! As close to skinny-dipping as a llama can ever get.

Conclusion:

#crawling along #is this a dated reference #probably #okay i just looked up how old the bouncing pixar sheep is and this short is nearly 20yo oh my god

[blood-teeth]

05.19.23

howdy everyone! it's been a long time since i've done one of these. also this is going to be a long post, so if you're like "i'm not reading allthat but stay safe tho" im sorry in advance.

i was going to wait until the two year anniversary of TMITAWH to post this, but i've been getting more and more asks about the status of this game, why it's on lockdown, when it's coming back, etc. largely, i've been dodging these questions or answering them with a vague "oh, i'm working on it!" which is very much the truth. just, not the entirety of it.

the truth is this: the story is done.

the real truth is this:

actually, before i get into that, i wanted to mention something else. i know i've waxed poetry over and over again and maybe it's getting annoying to hear it - so i'm very sorry - but it really is important to me to mention this because it's the motivation and the life-force behind everything that i do on this blog. i wanted to say thank you. i remember typing up the intro post to TMITAWH after getting the second COVID shot, delirious, but bolstered by a fever that had rendered me brave. i've been writing this story since 2019, i had the vision, the characters, the aesthetics and the understanding and i wanted to desperately to share. i never expected the level of support and love from so many of you. i've never had people genuinely vested in my worlds or characters. i remember getting the first comment about the prologue and slamming my computer shut and freaking out. i cried when i got my first ask telling me how much they'd love it, despite the small amount of content. the fever may have given me the courage to post it, but y'all gave me the courage to continue. and that means more to me than anything means to me in this world. for two whole years!! you've dealt with my wildly out of pocket thoughts, long absences, and have continued to show your willingness to continue the exercise in patience. i dont have people in real life that would do that for me. so thank you, thank you for being here, thank you for caring, thank you for the sweet comments. i wasn't lying when i said that i keep most asks unanswered because i go back and read them, hold the words close to my chest, and convince myself that i can do what i want to do when it comes to storytelling. thank you. forever and always. i know this feels maybe so much like im baring my soul, but i think it's important. TMITAWH saved my life. I mean that in every understanding, with the breadths and depths of my soul. I mean that with all the fibers and cells and atoms that make up me. This story saved my life. it's important to me that you know that in so many ways you all did, too.

so much of the reason i've been sitting on this is honestly mostly fear. it's choking me now as i write this. i'm scared of y'alls reaction, i'm scared of potentially disappointing anyone, and i'm scared of people just being overall pissed off. which i would get! this is not why the majority of you are following me. i'm asking for grace, for understanding, for mercy.

so, the real truth is this:

Tell Me If There's A Way Home is complete. there's a beginning, of sort, a middle, an end. but, it is not complete in the way you might expect an IF to be complete.

this is, simply, because Tell Me If There's A Way Home has been re-written and re-formatted into a novel.

over this past year, i was struggling with the story. things had along the way stopped making sense. this WAS the story i wanted to tell, i knew what had to happen in order to get the whole point of it across. is it better to get back what you've lost, what does it look like when you do get it back? but there was something that wasn't working. i could force the scenes, have The Traveler spend time with Cain in his little house talking about his past, or provide the option to explore the peaks of a mountain looking for a legend of old. i could do all this. but it was all wrong. the story had become corrupted along the way and the vision of it that i held onto so desperately was fading into obscurity.

so i opened a new word document and just wrote. i wrote for a whole year, and the story unveiled itself to be in the way i believe it was always supposed to. i understand so much more of this story than i did two years ago. sitting at 90k words, book 1 is officially done. it's essentially the same story you all had read, but different somehow. more than it ever could have been in an IF format. there are the characters you love. there's cain. there's silas. alice of course. there's the traveler as *her* own character. and there's the reverie. but the reverie is no longer Ezio/Elena. it's just elena now. its beautiful, gorgeous elena with her quick smile and hemlock eyes and her memories.

what happens now?

i'll be spending the next few months making the book as perfect as i can make it. i've been working through the rough draft - or alpha draft- and then i will ask some people to see if they want to read draft 2, draft 3 , draft 4. however many drafts it takes until i feel as though i can do no more. after this, i'll query agents and pray to god that in the hellscape publishing is in right now that im offered representation. after this, i'll pray to god that an editor likes the book enough to want to work with me on it. after this, i'll pray to god that a publishing house likes the book enough to buy it, put in on shelves. there's going to be a lot of praying to god. a lot of luck. so i think it'll be a while before anybody gets to hold the book in their hands, but god i hope y'all get to. i really hope you get to. more than that. i hope you want to.

after all of this, i'll be working on book 2. i already have the title. i already have the first chapter. i know exactly what happens and how.

i know there's maybe some confusion, so please feel free to send me asks about it. i will happily and gladly answer what i can and discuss it.

i'm so so sorry for the long post. this all felt important to mention and it felt important to be transparent with y'all. this was becoming a secret too hard to keep and i'm glad that i dont have to anymore. i hope you're not mad, disappointed, etc. that would really suck ass. i hope you're excited, maybe. i hope you're curious.

anyway. thank you for getting this far, if you did. thank you. i love you. i'll talk to you soon <3

#Tell Me If There's A Way Home #Tell Me If There's A Way Home update #tmitawh #tmitawh update #i feel sickkkkkk #and nervous #ahhhhhhhh #AHHHHH #please ignore the spelling errors #my computer is on her last legs #keyboard functionality is taking a huge shit

[theboytatu]

on my youth - wayv: a review

it's not often that i look forward to an album as much as i did with this one tbh, so it was a little hard to accept the song description SM dropped for on my youth before it was released. "low tempo emotional hip hop ballad" is definitely not what i look for in kpop/cpop (this term will be used interchangeably sorry to the way is cpop purists following me) and i immediately let my expectations drop to nearly zero when this came out. SM has had a very, and i mean VERY hit or miss year - probably a combination of the hybe/kakao takeover fiasco and industry-wide creative exhaustion - for all their idols, with long-awaited comebacks missing the mark abysmally or simply putting out subpar "fine at best" insipid music.

wayv's last (and only) full album was released in the midst of the 2020 lockdown - a time so different in every aspect but specifically in the kpop world it feels like it could have been a lifetime ago - and after their 9/11, lineup changes, months of delays and two mini albums with mixed results, it's safe to say this album was make or break for the group. with that lengthy foreword out of the way i am very happy to inform that wayv not only delivered - they surpassed all my expectations and managed to deftly execute what was in their case their most awaited comeback ever. here are my highlights from the album:

on my youth

like i said, i really didn't know what to expect for an emotional hip hop ballad but this song packs a punch like few other low tempo title tracks do. it seems to hit every mark for a minor key progression - the slow start, the build-up, the emotional first verse being delivered beautifully by xiaojun's superb ability to emote, along with a really nice, kinda muted instrumental that consists of piano, some synths and a restrained percussion.

it even manages to deliver on the required second verse slow rapping about how people say we're too young to know better - thanks to yangyang's personality shining through on these verses the shtick manages to go from cheesy to enjoyable, and even hendery allows himself a moment or two of true sincerity in his rap.

the chorus is a welcomed switch-up with a catchy hook that quickly becomes an ear-worm. it's the perfect balance to make this song go from b-side to title track material. the final chorus has an amazing instrumental climax that matches the grandiose, emotional vibe of the song's theme and it translates amazingly in the performance video's choreography.

overall this song might be top 3 wayv's title tracks depending on who you ask. for me it's definitely up there and i actually love the english version better because well, you can tell this was originally meant to be an english language song. i give it a 9/10 (and i famously hate slower songs)

poppin' love

a lot of people would say that this should've been the title track and they might be right. i'm not sure what the artistic direction for this comeback was built around, but the emotional title track was definitely picked for a reason over a more conventional, easy sell like this one. but this one is not only an easy sell, it's yet another hit that proves wayv is the best and most 90s boyband coded group in kpop right now - because they are perfect for it. they fit the vibes and the sound in a way that few, if none, other current groups can pull off without feeling gimmicky.

the chorus is sultry enough to keep it in the r&b territory but the added hip hop elements keep it super energizing. it's like if love talk and nectar had a baby. the selling point for me is the added harmonization they included in the refrain of "you're the only one" and it's so cool. it feels like the entire song is tightly built around the bassline and the high melody of the chorus - at 3:05 minutes it gives you the exact amount you need of everything. nothing lags behind and nothing fizzles out too quickly. it has enough grit to stick your hands into while reimagining the classic boyband elements enough to keep you on your toes. a HIGH 10/10 from me.

rodeo

this song is just bonkers. is it that groundbreaking or original? not really, but it manages to make it feel soooo exciting it's like i've never heard a dj snake beat drop in my life lmfaooo 😭 the vocals are crunchy enough to give me asmr when putting on my headphones. the instrumental while very basic edm still punches in with some cool drums - but of course the star of the show is the bass drop.

referencing lil jon in this should be enough to give them an award tbh. like this is giving nct 127 unserious club banger in the best of ways.... and they still hold it down with their own personalities. this is not markyong going crazy with himalayas, this is yangdery showing they can pull off subunit songs (and winwin is there too i guess) while doing whatever in the recording booth. rodeo is just a VERY enjoyable kpop rap line playground and trust that i will eat it up every time it comes on. 9/10

moonlight

there are songs that can be amazing when you play the album, and there are songs that you just instantly know will be superior if you hear them performed live. moonlight is the second kind, and the entire vocal structure is enough to make me want to see wayv at a concert at least once in my life.

the chorus is insane. the stacked vocals give it a depth that is almost cinematic and i do need to give kun, ten and xiaojun their tens for this accomplishment, but specially kun. sure - xiaojun might be the most technically gifted vocalist in the group and i am in love with his tone, but this song has kun all over the foundations. i dont have the stems for the track but i can bet my life that kun recorded at least five layers for that chorus. his tone is so distinctive i can almost only hear him during the high points of the song.

anyway, this song is super pretty. it's just gorgeously designed. i actually wish it was a vocal line only song because the compulsory rap additions do not fit with the rest of the atmosphere at all. still, this gets a 10/10.

lighthouse

when i heard this the first time i wrote "wayv outsold both exo AND shinee for ballad of the year at sm" and i stand by it. again, this style is just classic boyband slow tear jerker and they execute it perfectly. i'm a notorious hater of ballads in kpop and yet not only can i sit through this every time i put on the album, i actively seek it out. like holy shit, this only happens with exo for me.

the song is very straightforward - a heartbreak song about missing the girl they lost. but it's so well made it just works perfectly. another point where wayv need to be praised is their ability to emote. xiaojun specially is amazing at this - you can hear the yearning in his voice. i actually think ten has also learned from him because he comes across just as sincere in this. (kun does famously stiffen up which is not an issue here but still, xiaojun carries this ballad for sure). the instrumental is very cozy and i like how the whole track is designed to sound as if they're singing from just slightly behind you. 9/10

#wayv #this review is so fucking long lmfaoooo #idc i had so much fun doing it this album truly has THEE most replay value

[azucar-skull]

Wanna hear about a ROTTMNT nightmare I had a few months ago?

Of course you do, you freak-- /j

So preface, I have nightmare disorder. I was born with it actually, giving me the vivid variant. Which means that if I'm not careful, I could wake up with severe side effects like migraine and nausea and disorientation that all last for the entire day. It also means that I have been dealing with nightmares since I was a child, and you can think of me as a "skilled master" if you will.

I enter the dream in the midst of the apocalypse as Casey Jones Jr, in his teens. I have my own bedroom though there is not much too it and I am sprawled out on my dinky bunker bed drooling away as I sleep.

When suddenly alarms start blaring from outside. I tumble out of bed and jump into whatever pants and t-shirt I could find (I slept in boxers apparently) before putting on my boots as I stumble to the door to assess what was going on.

The second I open the door, the door is slammed back into my face. A voice shouting from the other side.

"WE ARE IN LOCKDOWN, YOU HEAR ME?! YOU KEEP THAT DOOR SHUT. DON'T COME OUT OF YOUR ROOM!"

A voice, for some dream logic reason, I recognized as Usagi’s.

And IRL me was like "nah fuck that, I'm bored, lemme see what this dream has here".

And so I venture out, grabbing my chainsaw staff.

To my right is a dead end.

To my left...

I hear screaming. Then a severed head flies out from the corner and slams into the wall. It was Usagi’s.

I had no choice but to move forward.

I peer around the corner, trying to avoid looking at the head. And there I saw Donnie’s lab. The doors bursted open. Mikey and April stand outside before some weird pink slimy tentacles draw them in, screeching and hissing.

Immediately, I assume Donnie has been turned Kraang some how. So I decided to dip out of there and find something else. IRL me was thinking about maybe going to the armory or drawing the monster outside where I'd have a bigger playing field. Tight spaces fuck up my head a lot, I need room in my dreams to breathe.

I duck past the doors quickly without getting caught and continue hurrying down the hall.

There I see a smudged trail of blood. I follow it, a bit curious. The blood led to Master Leonardo. His legs were gone, torn. He was crawling dragging himself across the floor.

I run up to him, ready to shout his name when he notices me and presses a finger against his lips. Then his eyes dart behind me.

IRL me just sighed internally and mentally prepared myself for whatever kind of fuckery was behind my back.

I turn around...

And there was Donnie.

Just a normal Donnie. In his future form with the fancy visor and lab coat and all. His eyes were pleading.

He smiles, walking forward.

"Casey. Casey, it's me."

I glance back at Leo, he looked outright terrified.

"It's me, it's Donnie. Your uncle Donnie." His smile widens.

He steps closer and closer. Closer still.

"Don't you trust me?"

Now. Remember how I am a "skilled master" of dreams? Yeah. I can also detect who is good or bad by a gut feeling I get. This is an IRL thing too, idk what it is but I am able to just...know when someone is bad. And in my dreams, it's like all my senses are going haywire tenfold.

And Donnie. Did not pass the vibe check.

"NOPE.", I said, slashing my chainsaw staff into his face.

And then I woke up. =)

#i wanted to make this a comic but I am too lazy so here #rottmnt #tmnt #rise of the teenage mutant ninja turtles #teenage mutant ninja turtles #nightmare disorder

[lonelyroommp3]

❤️🧡💖💕 for tbosas (or thg in general)?

❤️: Which character do you think is the most egregiously mischaracterized by the fandom? i'll be honest i don't read a lot of fan content for tbosas or even thg more broadly. however the reason i stopped doing this for tbosas is because i can count on like, one hand the number of people i've seen on this website who actually Get coriolanus snow's character in that book. i wouldn't even call it mischaracterisation bc it's not like i'm seeing it specifically in the context of fanworks it's just a completely fundamental "failed step one" misunderstanding to me

🧡: What is a popular (serious) theory you disagree with? i just don't particularly care for the whole "lucy gray or maude ivory is katniss's grandmother" thing. it's not that i think it's completely implausible or wacky or whatever. i just don't think it adds anything! like i think the number of parallels between katniss & lucy gray (and other key players in tbosas) are interesting enough & already sufficient to ruin snow's crusty life without getting into convoluted long lost ancestor theories. it almost parcels everything up too neatly for me in a way that just feels a little bit trite and over the top

💖: What is your biggest unpopular opinion about the series? i'm not a finnick girlie... nothing against him but i just do not feel the same absolute rabid adoration & obsession that seems to be the standard among hunger games fans. just can really take or leave him

💕: What is an unpopular ship that you like? we are not even going to begin to get into the intricacies of my actual opinions here and instead i'm going to offer you a funny little never seen before story. ages ago i made a post that got pretty popular but which naturally tumblr's wonderful search system will not bring up for me which was basically like "if you ever see a ship and think that's weird, don't know why anyone would ship that, do NOT go into the ao3 tag on the grounds of 'research' because you'll accidentally get invested in it". well the backstory to that is at some point during lockdown i had the weirdest weekend of my life where i got wildly invested in peeta/cato because i saw a not very good edit in the tumblr tag that intrigued me in a car crash kind of way but MORE IMPORTANTLY the ship name everyone was using was PEETATO and i was like. well i've GOT to see what's going on here. i don't care about it anymore but there's some behind the scenes lonelyroommp3 lore

[lifeofkaze]

"Where We'll Go From Here" or "Where the Hell I've Been"

l don't think there's ever been a post writing which has hurt as much as this one, but, well, let's get it over with.

Those of you who follow this blog (and have for a while) will maybe have noticed that I've become rather quiet, lately. Have for a while, actually, but increasingly so since the beginning of 2023.

There's been reasons for this, of course. Looking at my history since starting this blog a little over 2 years ago, I've made well over 9.000 posts, written and completed 3 multichapter fics of over 100k words each, contributed heavily to a fandom-wide project, and written over 100 (jeez...) published or unpublished short stories.

My life has changed significantly since I started all this. The baby I had then has grown into a very active child, lockdowns have ceased, and I'm back at work again. I've made some fantastic friends on here, some of which I lost again and some of which went beyond anything I could ever have imagined finding on the internet. And not only I have changed - the fandom has, too. Maybe that's what's changed the most.

And, truth be told, I'm tired. Being an active part of this changed fandom has turned me into a perpetually anxious person, who is always somehow occupied with all the drama that is going on here or behind the scenes - so much so that I struggle to actually be present where it matters.

I've become so tired that I fail to find the excitement I used to feel for both my work and the work of others. I have lost the energy to give my stories and characters the focus they need and deserve, and the prospect of diving into another multichapter project positively petrifies me. And I hate it. I hate it being like this.

There's so many things that make me tired. So many things that have gone wrong and weigh on me, even though I usually only let a very small number of people know. I'm tired of competing for faceclaims, attention, of being part of a system where all you can ultimately do is lose. Either you further the ridiculousness by being part of it, or you try to be the better person and sit there with your frustration until the wish to see good in everything and everyone turns to something impossible to uphold.

Over the last two years, my work and I have been mocked, dragged, and even downright plagiarised. Sometimes it happened to my face, sometimes behind my back, where it was impossible for me to see were it not by coincidence. Of course, there's also so many good things that have happened. The friendships - the deep, deep, genuine friends I've made - the excitement about each other's content, about bringing into existence a little world that is there only for us and our happiness.

But, as it usually is in life, sadly, the bad tends to overshadow the good, and every mean word, every accusation, everything that's happened has been eating away at me for a long time, and it's finally become too much for me. I tried fighting the pessimism by working harder, by being better, by putting pressure and perfectionism on myself and my work where it's wrongly placed. As a result, I've lost my passion for what I used to love most. I used to write from my heart, and now, it's all my head. Writing has become a chore I need to tick off my list to hasten on to the next project, the next short, the next challenge, the next big story, comment, reblog, ask... all to show everyone and myself that the bad things can't touch me if I only focus hard enough.

And now, there are no words left in me. They have dried up, at least for now.

So...

What happens now?

Firstly, I'll wrap everything I have in an active publishing stage, namely A Search for Balance and Before the Spark. I will also try and stick with the 12 Months of Magic challenge, but no promises on that. And after that?

Truth is, I don't know.

I know that I'm not done with my stories. What I don't know is whether my stories are done with me. I have so much more I want to tell you, so much more that is already planned and prepped. I want to experience all these stories together with you, but if the spark is gone, it's gone, and I'm too tired to run after it for now.

I will take some time to step back and reassess. Gather my words and see what I can salvage from the rubble. I need to relearn being imperfect, writing for fun instead of form. I need to find my excitement again, for my stories as well as all of yours.

I don't know if I'll be gone entirely. Knowing me, probably not. What I do know is that I need to relieve the pressure this hobby has turned into. I want to be here when I want to, and not because there's things I need to react to, and networking to be done, and stuff I mustn't miss. My blog remains open, my characters available, I invite you to tag me if you think I might like something. I will answer comments. I will play games. I will reblog stuff I like. I will post stories, if I feel like it.

I don't want to leave, just breathe.

I will try and save as many of your stories as I can, and I will read them when I want to (and oh boy, I WANT to). It might be that you won't get a reblog, or a comment-less reblog, not because your work isn't worth it to me, but because it's the best I can offer you atm. I'm not happy with it, but it is what it is, and I can't change it.

And if all this means your engagement with my stories will take dive... well, so be it. That's something I can't change either. I just wanted to be honest with you.

I do hope that everything will return to normality once everything slows down a little and that my stream of words hasn't run dry for good. I really, honestly do.

And if you actually took the time to read this sermon of a rant that was never intended to be this long (some things don't change after all, eh?) - I love you. From the bottom of my heart.

Take care, everyone 💛

#psa #kaze speaks #sad things #but necessary things #honestly just writing this feels like I can breathe more freely

[cinnaki]

Prowldown Fic 2

1000 word count

Lockdown sees Prowl before the final battle in season three of TFA to help give him an edge in the upcoming battle.

Commissioned by @rules-and-protocol

a/n: Yes I'm still salty at cartoon network for crying about toy sales being in favor of the movies, why do you ask?

Citrus rating: Grapes

Content warnings: None

Silence fell in the deep wood. Springtime was known for its symphony in the night. Crickets, bats, and even the call of owls settled into an eerie quiet. Prowl watched, echoing the silence, at the hazy moon above. A storm would come. Soon.

Humans had multiple ways of foretelling the future. The silence of animals, the hazy moon, and clouds resembling fish scales are hints of rain to come. He found this history fascinating, but not enough to ease his apprehension.

Lockdown had requested to meet him. Alone. The message said it was urgent. But the wording felt off. The Bounty Hunter almost sounded scared. And with Ultra Magnus dead, the hammer stolen by Ratchet, and Megatron poised to attack, both mechs had plenty of reasons to be afraid.

And so the Cyber Ninja waited at quite the scenic spot. A cliff overlooking an ancient ravine. Or, what is a glacial scar? Prowl did not know the difference but appreciated it all the same. To witness the aftermath of an ancient war between forces of nature on this world, and how beautiful they became, gave him an odd sense of hope for Cybertron.

Prowl sighed quietly, rubbing at his tense neck cabling. He could feel his plating flutter at the relief. He had been holding himself stiff without realizing it.

"Still wearing Yoketrons helmet, I see." Lockdown's voice crawled up the Autobot's spinal strut. Swiftly turning, Prowl met Lockdown's glowing red optics in the dense wood behind him.

Prowl quickly became aware of how close he was to the cliff's edge. "What do you want, Lockdown?" he demanded, voice filled with disdain. "If you haven't noticed, we have our servos full already."

"And here you squeezed in time for little old me? I'm touched." He took a confident step forwards.

"Not another step!" Prowl snapped.

Lockdown froze in place, holding his arms out in a casual shrug. "Fair enough.""I won't repeat myself again. What do you want?" Lockdown's expression was unreadable. But, for a single moment, Prowl could swear he saw regret on the Bounty Hunter's faceplate. "Right down to business, I see," Lockdown grumbled. "We're buddies now, right?"

"No."

"C'mon, after all we've been through?" he leaned against a tree. "Anyway, you and I both know this conflict is coming to a head again." He paused. Lockdown swallowed hard, dismissing his rehearsed speech about how Prowl was too young to remember the years leading up to the last Autobot Decepticon war. Watching him tread the same ground he himself did all those years ago hurt more than he would let on. He wanted to help, wanted to save him, just this once. He wanted to ask, beg if he had to, for Prowl to abandon this fight and run away with him. It was easier than taking a side in a war no one would ever win. But all that melted away when he saw Prowl's expression, his determination to stick through this to the end. And he admired that. That kind of strength is rare to come by.

"You really believe in him that much, don't you?" Lockdown finally asked.

"Who?"

"Don't make me say it."

Prowl thought for a moment. "Optimus?"

Lockdown gave a slight nod. Glad he was far enough away to escape Prowls EM Field, and thus, able to hide his own field from him. "Kid really did temper his spinal struts on this mud ball. The first time we met, he could barely hold his own axe." he chuckled.

Prowl narrowed his optics, showing impatience.

"But being a good leader won't save you when it comes down to it."

"Did you come here just to talk about Optimus, or do you have a point?"

"I do--actually." Lockdown pulled out a bundle of weapons, and equipment. "Good intentions never win battles, especially battles where an Omega unit is involved." Lockdown tossed the bundle between them, allowing silence to once again claim the night air.

Prowls optics trailed from the bundle back to Lockdown. He wanted to yell, to tear him apart for making this about upgrades again. But that expression haunted him. Lockdown never acted without purpose. "Why are you helping us? Didn't Megatron pay you enough?"

"Let us just say you bots are a group I can get behind. Maybe he can change Cybertron for the better. Maybe he can't. But we won't know if all of you die before it's over. I know you're not used to being told this, but it's your choice this time, Prowl. Make it a good one."

Lockdown turned swiftly, disappearing in the dark. The fear of possibly losing Prowl had overcome him, and he could no longer keep his vocalizer in check.

Prowl reached out after the mech, but let him go. His attention fell to the upgrades Lockdown had left behind. Most of which he would not know what to do with. Odds and ends that maybe Ratchet could make sense of. But a small bag of inverters caught his attention. They were built for helping regulate energy flow, something that could be very useful in Processor over Matter manipulation.

The ninja sighed, grabbing this new gear and stowing it away. Nothing explosive, so he would be able to safely take it to someone who would know what these were, and how best to use them for the storm to come.

#transformers animated #Maccadams #prowldown #prowl #lockdown #fanfic #transformers animated spoilers #commission #my writing

[nancydrewwouldnever]

I'm going to send this to my four favorite Chris blogs. If you don't want to post this- that's ok. I wanted to offer some advice.

I'm a Seb girl- been a fan of his since the Covenant. I've been through Margarita, Ellie, Ale, Annabelle, all his supposed hookups, all his confirmed hookups and everything in between. Believe me I've seen and heard some shit from that fandom and from Seb himself.

I used to love when he would appear on ig. But I could see the slow deterioration of his mental sanity during lockdown.

I was on furlough when Seb showed up in Spain 7/4/2020. Believe me I was livid. I was spitting venom. What the fuck was he thinking? He just called spring breakers in Miami dumb fucks not two months earlier. And he's in fucking Spain!

We immediately got boat picks of Ale (while I cannot fucking stand her- I will not use the name what was popular for her at the time.) And the fandom had a melt down. Where was our sweet Sebastian? The one who championed staying home? The one who did a bunch of interviews, donated PPE to a hospital, read I love you to the moon and back and spoke about nearly poisoning himself and mustard chicken?!

Then there was another pap walk in Spain. Ale began to bait in her stories and then she showed up in NYC for, you guessed it, another pap walk.

Long story short- it was meltdown after meltdown. Ale's baiting never let up and Seb seemed to be on constant vacation with her when he wasn't actually working.

For a long list of reasons I will not list here it was proven Seb and Ale were PR. And they lasted nearly two years.

I see a lot of the same thing happening in Chris's fandom right now. Yes he is just as responsible for this as Alba (just like Seb was as responsible as Ale was). And it seems, especially with the Disney trip, that the fandom may implode again.

Please listen to a fandom veteran and one who still had ptsd from Seb and Ale- it will all be ok. I know it doesn't seem like it but it will be.

You're in the thick of it now. Just remember this is all bullshit and they will go through great lengths to make you believe this is true. Just try to not let it get to you which is easier said than done (the amount of panic attacks I had between the Seb/Ale actions and the vitriol of the fandom was insane!)

Take care of yourself. Please try to remember that nothing that happens with Chris/Alba will have any effect on you in the real world. Your life will still go on and you will still have things you need to do.

And, since I've seen a few of these questions around I'm going to say my opinion on this, I think it's ok if you're still a fan. Is Chris being an ass now? Fuck yes he is. So was Seb. Does that make him a bad person? I don't think so. He's human and no one is perfect no matter what his image says.

Just try to focus on the good things, don't sweat the small stuff. Remember if she shows up at Disney (God forbid!) It's not the end of the world. Just laugh at the stupidity of it all.

One day this will be behind us and we can thirst in peace again.

I'll still be lurking to see how this plays out. I'm sending good vibes that everything is done a hell of a lot quicker than Seb/Ale. I'll be around if anyone needs some advice!

Good luck fandom! I'm rooting for you!

Thank you for this, Anon! I love other perspectives.

But, wait... you're telling me Chris and Seb both went to European countries on the same day, July 4, 2020, to do papwalks? Wow, I guess that really was CAA at work.

(July 4, 2020, is literally the Lily James hotel papwalk.)

#ask

[beigeshiba]

A conversation with my intrusive thoughts

Why didn't you go back to Twitter?

Multiple reasons rather than any short, single reason.

I go through these phases of phases of having a lot to say and phases of running out of things to say and deciding it would be a good idea for me to shut the fuck up and listen for a while. Around about when I got banned from Twitter, I felt like I had been repeating myself and running out of things to say and that it would only be a matter of time before people figured that out.

When I got suspended from Twitter, it came as a relief. The decision had been made for me and I could simply accept it, so I did.

I avoid trying to reenter places where it's been made clear that I am unwelcome. Even though the internet is a husk of its former self, it's still big enough that trying to get back into a site you've been kicked out of is a sign of unhealthy obsession.

Speaking of which, whoever finally suspended my account was so pissed off by me they nuked me from orbit. I wasn't suspended for TOS violation or hate speech or any of that stuff. They brought out the big guns: Platform manipulation.

I have never run alt accounts, tried to evade a ban or suspension or bought engagement, never needed to. Still, this meant I had to apply for a review to my suspension about half a dozen times to actually get a response and only recently, did I finally get a response. Yup, they're keeping the suspension permanent for TOS violations. Anyone surprised by that? I'm not. I was really just doing it to show that I tried and hadn't just given up on people.

What have you been up to since?

Mostly, getting my shit together IRL.

I've left behind a lot of things that were negative influences in my life: Melbourne, Victoria and the IT industry in particular.

I moved towards something more positive, a girl I met on Twitter and formed a relationship with kicked off initially by running a D&D campaign and then just talking a lot about religion and spirituality in DMs between sessions. She's currently being initiated into the Roman Church (she was brought up Wiccan, hasn't been baptised yet) and we're planning on getting married later this year.

OK but why are you on Tumblr, of all places?

Because the most obvious place that all the edgy dissident bois are going is Substack, which just makes it a big, tempting target the next time the Empire feels like swinging its dick around.

Meanwhile, nobody gives a fuck about Tumblr any more. The place is less moderated than 4chan and ever since the ban on pornographic content, the most toxic part of the userbase collectively fucked off to Twitter, because it was the next most lax social media platform for pornography. Sure, they'll make lots of bratty bottom noises about Elon letting a lot of people back onto Twitter whom they don't like, but frankly so long as that bunch of coomers can still share nudes, the place could turn into a carbon copy of /pol and they'd still show up. Addiction makes people do some pretty fucked up things.

Why were you away for so long?

For most of it, I simply felt I had nothing new to say, that was worth saying.

Now that I do feel like I have things to say, I'm rather worried that a lot of people who liked my content back on Twitter, aren't going to like the things I have to say now, because I've changed a fair bit.

I'm not going to pull any of that "I've grown up and become a better person" nonsense, because that's bullshit. I'm still a sinner in the eyes of God just as much now as I was back then. People just change as time goes on and that's as true for me as it is anyone else.

Some of the things I went through changed me a lot. The cyberpunk dystopian nightmare that was Melbourne's lockdowns and mandates radicalised me intensely against capitalism. Seeing the extent to which my government was nothing more than a service provider for the most wealthy, eagerly pimping everyone out to the highest bidder for such a tiny slice of the profits forcefully extracted, was a real eye opener. I'm never going to unsee the reality that this world I live in isn't my world, I just live in it for as long as the wealthy can profitably extract something they value from me.

For a lot of people in the dissident right, the idea that capitalism isn't their friend is a bitter pill they're just never going to be ready to swallow. They'll simp for vampire corpos to the bitter end because they've internalised that idea that every alternative to the status quo leads to mass death. I always knew that expressing that opinion was going to piss a lot of people off and have them grumbling that I've "gone commie" and frankly I didn't feel like disappointing people with that and dealing with the results of that disappointment.

I've never tried to hide the fact that I have read Marx and do find some of his ideas useful, in particular his conception of the dynamics of class struggle and particularly the concept of alienation. The fact that Marx's critique of alienation has been almost entirely abandoned by the contemporary left in favour of trying to defictionalise Ian M Banks "Culture" novels is one of my biggest disappointments with that part of the political spectrum.

Also, I don't think I'm ever going to vibe with people who think that "Dialectical Materialism" is anything other than the two stupidest ideas known to mankind doing a Dragonball Z Fusion Dance.

At the same time though, I fail to see how setting up a totalitarian state with even greater concentration of capital than we already have now, without any safeguards against abuse of power, is going to improve the lives of the common man. Because that's what the manifesto more or less proposes as a solution and while Marxism has moved on from a lot of things from the original material, it's clung to that vision laid out in the manifesto like a barnacle.

Why are you back now?

Well, I have things to talk about now, other than myself. I just wanted to get that out of the way for the sake of those who were curious.

What I have been getting into, during my extended absence, is studying the Western Esoteric Tradition in depth.

I am sure this concerns some. Just to make things clear: I am still Roman Catholic, quite orthodox in my beliefs and I am staying the hell away from sorcery and gnosticism. A lot of what I am studying frankly was pretty mainstream folk Christianity back in the Renaissance.

This said, it's been very healing for me in a lot of ways. It has helped cure me of the despair I had that ideology was a completely impotent force for improving our earthy lives. I still believe that to be the case, I've just learned to accept this without despair.

In particular, it's helped me to re-engage with the world from an enchanted perspective again, to see the world as a beautiful place full of non-human living beings. It's quite the improvement over seeing the taint of human sin ruining everything and letting it fill me with hate.

It's been odd, taking the teachings and wisdoms of Druids and Shamans and Taoists and using it to help bring me closer to God. Still, that's how it's turned out. And I feel like these understandings I have come to as a result of all this study are things that I have an obligation to share with people.

Because unlike all the piss and vinegar I was venting out with my political hot takes on Twitter, this might actually improve people's lives in some way instead of just being some sound and fury which recognised the pain other people were feeling.

[wildcard-rumi]

How long have you liked sonic? I never really played any of the games but I’ve seen some of the anime, old cartoon and the movies

I've liked Sonic ever since I was four. Sonic The Hedgehog on the Mega Drive was actually the first game I ever played. That's honestly one of my weirdly vivid memories: walking into the living room and seeing my mum playing it and being completely enchanted by the cute animal and the bright colours so I just sat down next to her and watched her play until she asked me if I wanted to try.

And then after that, every time my mum saw something Sonic related in the shops, she had to get it for me, I was obsessed. Like every kid has that one thing that shapes their personality, like Disney or Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh or whatever... Mine was Sonic. Like, I watched Sonic Underground and Sonic X (and since you mentioned seeing some of it, I would definitely recommend watching the anime in sub because the dub cut out so much stuff, it's insane) on TV whenever they aired, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle was my first game that was just mine and not shared by the family plus my sister and I spent so much time raising our chao together it was like our thing we did to spend time together, I had a Knuckles plushie I found in an charity shop and I adored him but unfortunately he got lost when we moved, I'd buy any of the comics I happened to find in secondhand shops, and I can remember one birthday my mum made some biscuits in the shape of Tails' tails and I LOVED them.

Ngl, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle is that one thing that I think "If I didn't play that growing up, who would I be now?" Because it honestly shaped so much of who I am today, I'm sure you have something like from your childhood too, it's crazy to think about, right?

I didn't mean to go on for so long over such a simple question but yeah, I love this series. I did go off it when I was a teenager because 1) the games in that era just weren't all that good for certain reasons (the writing) and 2) You got bullied for liking stuff like Sonic at that age. But now I'm in my early twenties, and honestly I think being stuck in lockdown helped, I went back and realised "actually fuck you I love this series and these characters" and it's fantastic. Like I got excited when it was revealed that Sonic Frontiers' release date was my birthday; if that had happened when I was little, I would have gone insane. So yeah, I would recommend going back to anything you left behind due to highschool bullying because you might actually still adore it.

So uh, yeah, liked it since I was four, it's a fun series 👍

#i feel like you can tell when i have interests that i don't get to talk about much...

[radicarian]

For that fic meme: L, R, S, W.

Behind a cut 'cause I picked way too long of a scene to DVD-comment about.

L. Is there a trope you haven’t written yet but really want to?

Characters Must Solve A Murder.

I think it'd also be fun to write more Fantasy Politicking but I do not believe I am sufficiently well-read for that kind of thing.

R. What is a line/scene you’re really proud of? Give us the DVD commentary for that scene.

Chapter 3 of "Grounded" is, to date, the piece of writing I'm most satisfied with in terms of accomplishing what I meant it to do. So... some notes on the art gallery scene!

I wanted to keep the canonical clue to the Phoenix Cave's location in Gestahl's portrait. I also wanted to build in various parallels between Locke's solo chapter and Edgar's, and I hadn't planned much of Edgar's at the time, but I knew that Gerad Shenanigans were a given. Ergo, Locke also gets to try on a fake identity and get his questions answered through crime!

(And they both end up doing shitty and unflattering impressions of each other. The concept amused me.)

This was written in late 2020. Earlier in the year I had reread the Gentleman Bastards books. I am pretty sure, in this scene in particular, I got my Locke Cole cross-contaminated with some Locke Lamora. I'm not sorry about it! The circle is complete! Anyway, I don't think I borrowed anything that's not a reasonable extrapolation from Locke Finalfantasy's in-game characterization, and I do think this is a valid take on how that guy would bullshit his way into a rich-people party and cause trouble.

Also... this was written in late 2020. During lockdowns, Rich People at my workplace had been saying shit like "oh noooo the pandemic caught us in our European house as opposed to any of our three other houses, and we have been TRYING to pull strings with the local government to let us get on a plane and leave this house for a more different house, but these guys are acting weirdly insistent that the rules actually apply and things that happen in the world are relevant to us??? Even US?????" That's it. That's the vibe of this scene. How lucky it was exactly what I needed for a story; I'd hate to have endured that for nothing.

Some additional Tasteless-Rich-People-Art takes were probably influenced by McMansion Hell.

The "rustic breakfast" that Locke is so scathing about... is this. Delicious.

At the time of writing, my favorite couple of lines were:

There was always this moment, right before things went off the rails, right as the game changed on you: this moment of clarity where you realized, Okay, the time for careful maneuvers is over, I'm about to start some shit. Like hanging, just for an instant, in midair.

...But I'm no longer sold on that second sentence; early in the drafting process I was like "heh heh heh, I bet people falling from a great height, e.g. in an airship crash, is something that smashes Locke right in the Dead Girlfriend Trauma," but as things went on I forgot to do much with that motif. I was distracted by the bird motif. So the falling/not-falling thing doesn't quite... ... land.

Overall, though, I wanted this whole chapter to be "Locke does cool stuff, while also being a giant mess. He's making progress in pursuit of a goal, but the goal is objectively wack." And I think it is that!

S. Who is the easiest/hardest character for you to write about? Why?

Easiest is probably Best Boy Sabin Figaro. He's straightforward, while still having enough going on to be interesting - and his voice, in narrative or in dialogue, is really forgiving of weird or infelicitous phrasing. He just says stuff and does stuff and doesn't obsess about it, and considering that a lot of my other go-to characters are on 2-6 layers of meta at any given time, he is SO REFRESHING.

Hardest, of characters I have actually attempted writing more than once... ...Johannes Cabal. Not because it's particularly difficult to get into his head; IMO just thinking "peevish nerd" is 75% of the way there. Rather, the logic by which his universe operates is hard for me to get a handle on. And without getting that right, it's difficult to strike the correct balance between him being 1) very smart and cold-blooded and dangerous, 2) an extremely uncool pathetic weirdo. He doesn't quite work without a properly calibrated narrative voice of "we like this guy, but also, hahaha screw this guy." I haven't totally ruled out writing about him again, but it's a tricky needle to thread.

W. If you had to remix one of your own fics, which would it be and how would you remix it?

I've never done a fic remix but I think "The Echoing World," a little exchange fic I wrote with OoT!Zelda in the world of Majora's Mask, has potential that-a-way. I was doing some structural weirdness with it already - sort of smash-cutting between Zelda encountering various Termina weirdos, with these main scenes being in past-tense, and a sprinkling of present-tense drabbles (Yes They Are 100 Words Precisely, This Was Important, For Reasons) where she's trying a bit harder to reconcile where she is, what's going on, and how time even works here. I could easily imagine flipping that around to foreground the spooky vibes a bit more... maybe especially dialing in on that bit where Zelda's not sure whether she's Zelda or Sheik. She is trying to solve an ontological mystery here but also this dream world is so weird it's making her doubt the reality of the real world?

#ask meme