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bet-on-me-13 · 3 months

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Culture of the Ghost Zone

SO! This is less of a full on prompt, and more of an opportunity.

I've been in this Fandom for over a year now and over that time I've seen so many little bits or lore and headcanons about the Ghost Zones Culture, but I've never seen a single post put them all together.

So, here I'll try to write down as many as I can think of, and anyone else can add their own Headcanons, or add to whatever I or someone else writes!

...

So! My personal Headcanon is that when a Ghost Passes on, it's a thing to be celebrated.

Ghosts are Immortal Beings, holding onto a desire or unfinished business that tethers them to the Mortal Plane. They live, because they are Unfulfilled, unable to accomplish the task that would allow them to Pass on, and be at peace with themselves.

So when a Ghost manages to fulfill their Obsession, manages to Pass On to the After? It's something to CELEBRATE!

Like when a Viking would die, you don't just mourn their death, you celebrate their Life! A Ghosts Passing On is much the same. When one of them manages it, there are parties across the Zone of people who knew them, or people who didn't but still want to celebrate! It's a Joyous thing when someone you know was able to find peace!

...

Ghosts socialize through Battle.

Ghosts are Immortal, Superpowered, and Stuck together for Centuries. They are going to fight, and they are going to love the thrill of it!

From the freshest of Newborns to the Oldest of Ancients, All Ghosts love the thrill of Battle. It's one of their defining traits! They have Centuries of nothing to do and energy to burn, and they devote it to the art of Combat!

And it's not just Brawls! Some Ghosts prefer to battle with Swords alone, others with their Fists and no Powers, others with their Powers and no Fists, there are entire communities of Ghosts who have specific Rules, or Customs for Combat!

In one part of the Zone, it may be common to Tackle any Ghost you see and instantly start to fight them, but in another? That would be seen as Rude, you need to throw down your glove in front of them to request a Battle!

Or in another section of the Zone you may be forced to battle without Weapons whatsoever, in another it may be Without Powers whatsoever, or with ONLY Powers!

The Fight Culture stretches far and wide, no two parts of the Zone are exactly the Same

...

Art is highly Valued.

Of course not all Ghosts are entirely focused on Battle, and even the ones that are like to focus on something else from time to time. Some of those Ghosts were Artists when they were Alive.

And they continued to make Art in Death. But this Art is Special, with all the Time in the World, a Ghost can spend Decades or even Centuries on their Magnum Opus! It would be their Life's Work, something they dedicated their entire Afterlives to!

So of course, it is respected. Ghosts know better than to ruin or destroy another Ghosts work or Art. Be it a Statue, a Painting, a Song, or a Theater Production.

...

I think that's Good for now, what do you think? Anything to add to the points I written down? Any entirely new points to add?

Go ahead!

#Dpxdc #Dp x dc #Dcxdp #Dc x dp #Danny Phantom #Dc #Dcu #I tagged Dpxdc because it is usually where I find the most interesting Cultural Headcanons #Also cause it's where I'm active the most #Ghost Zone #Ghost Zone Culture #Infinite Realms #Infinite Realms Culture #Ghosts celebrate when a Ghost passes on #Ghosts love to fight #Ghosts fight in different ways with different rules #Ghosts love Art #Ghosts respect eachother #Even if they hate eachother

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oceantornadoo · 26 days

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cleanse me (bsf!johnny mactavish x reader, fluff with groping)

it had been a rough mission. the kind where the team gets out by a hair, bleeding and scraped as they ran to exfil. the kind with a silent ride back to base, neither you nor johnny able to fill the air with a laugh or two. the kind where you think of what could have happened if things hadn’t fell into place at the last second, who you could be mourning now.

johnny’s your best friend, and maybe something more. late night cuddles, waist hugs and forehead kisses all feel like a little more. that night with the drunken marriage pact (you both were only tipsy, but you like to use alcohol as your reasoning for stupidity) that you both ignore to this day.

so when you see him in the communal showers, a man whose seen you naked in every way, you can’t help but seek comfort from your other half. you strip your clothes into a pile on the floor and walk over to where this scottish god stands under a shower head, letting the water wash off his sins.

he hears you come up from behind him and tenses a bit, still in fight mode from the mission. you take a hand and smooth out his tense back muscles, his body relaxing at the familiar feel of your calluses. his mohawk has grown out, almost breaking regulation standards, but you like the feel, sliding your hand from his neck to his longer strands. your nails scrape his scalp, every movement reminding you that you didn’t lose him, he’s still here. you reach your other hand around him, and he silently squirts shampoo into it.

you take your time massaging his hair, getting out the dried bomb residue and drops of blood. the water finally runs clean after a few minutes, and you finish him off with your own conditioner since you know he doesn’t own one.

you move on to body wash, massaging him up and down until he’s covered in suds, in soap. you take your time with his back, tracing scars and healed-over bullet wounds. you crouch and get the back of his legs, kneading tense muscles. he turns around and you choke back a whine, coming face to face with his hardened cock, but now isn’t the time. instead, you lather the front of his legs and slowly stand, giving his cock a couple pumps to make everything gets cleaned.

finally you clean his torso, playing with his light chest hair as you work in the last of the soap. his arms are so masculine, thick veins protruding as you work him down to the fingers. and now you’re done.

you make eye contact nervously, for the first time since this entire endeavor started. his blue eyes sear into you, a world of want and understanding found behind them. johnny grabs your chin and pulls you closer, forcing you into the cleansing stream of water. “leannan.” darling. love. you had looked it up before, his tender nickname for you, never really understanding the breadth of it until he looked at you like this. like you were his love.

“johnny.” he was cleaning you now, with the same care you gave him. the hands of a soldier, a bomb maker, an engineer, practiced in deft and slight movements. “ye take care of me so well.” you nodded, choking back some unknown emotion. he was cupping your pussy, muttering sweet nothings about treating her right and my wet little thing, things in his language you didn’t understand.

“how long do i have to wait to marry ye again?” he moved from your cunt to your breasts, memorizing their feel. storing it for later, in the darkness of his room, fist pumping his cock with rough strokes. “five-“ his hand gripped your throat, thumb stroking your jaw, distracting you for a second. “five years.” he hummed. “i’ll marry ye tomorrow if ye want, just say the word.” your mouth opened and closed, resembling a gaping fish. he laughed and gave you that cheeky grin, slowly returning to himself. because of you.

“cmon, let’s get some food in ye.”

—

best friend!johnny GETS ME

#fluff #cod 141 #tornadothoughts #john soap mactavish #john soap mctavish x reader #soap x you #soap x reader #johnny soap mactavish x reader #johnny mactavish #john soap mactavish x reader

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sporeblossom · 1 year

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logging back onto this website to say that while i dont think (???) it was intentionally done, the scene before their "last day" where frank is working on a portrait of bill, reminded me of keith haring's "unfinished painting"

comparison here before i explain:

keith haring's painting was purposely made to look incomplete. haring was diagnosed with HIV in late 1988, and died in early 1990, at the age of 31. the painting is a self portrait, hitting us with the gut-punch reality of how the aids-epidemic robbed haring of the right to finish his own story. the overwhelming amount of empty space is a glaring reminder that haring didn't just have a short life, he had an incomplete one. the piece points to all that empty space and says: this should have been filled out. this should all have been my art, my story, and my space. by claiming this empty space, haring claimed the empty space of his unlived life, that was taken from him and so many other people, by a negligent and homophobic society that refused to care about the pandemic ravaging an entire community worldwide.

now back to my original point: like i said, im really not sure if this was intentionally done by the show. but when i was watching this episode and i saw this scene, i immediately thought of this painting. the blue color of the eye trailing off onto the blank part of the canvas is, at least to me, a strong visual parallel.

and i feel like this visual parallel highlights some very important thematic parallels as well, which deserve to be talked about. in the show, the outbreak starts in 2003 which means that bill and frank have both lived through the aids-epidemic. they have seen people like them die. they have experienced the hatred and isolation that came with it. you could speculate and read into things ad nauseaum, but i thinks it's safe to say that in this place and time, this also plays into how careful and hesitant they are, when they first start to show intimacy with each other. in their world, they didn't even get to experience the legalization of gay marriage.

seeing as this show takes place during another, fictional, pandemic, airing at a time where the real world has just faced another actual pandemic, it is impossible to ignore this aspect of their story.

these two characters however, are not destroyed by the outbreak in the show. they find each other, they experience freedom, love, and a full life together. their life is not cut short.

in an absurd twist of fate, when the rest of the world is finally forced to experience what it's like to be abandoned by your government during a devastating epidemic, this is when these two people find happiness. they get to go running, and have fights, and grow strawberries, and have friends over for dinner.

and after spending nearly twenty years together, frank spends his last time working not on a self portrait, but on a portrait of bill, the love of his life. this is the sort of thing that rightfully should have filled the empty space of haring's work. finding love(s) spending your time together, that is a life lived.

and yet frank's painting is unfinished, because of course we are never truly done living. we are never truly done loving. but he got so much more time, so much more story, than the people we lost to the aids epidemic, which the trailing off blue paint reminds us of.

at the same time their house is absolute filled with all the paintings that frank did finish, showing us all the good days he got with bill. and in a way, i feel like that is the show being very aware of what it is: a complete, beautiful story about two men loving each other, in a world that sorely lacks these stories. a world where we had so many unfinished, incomplete lives, that we lack an entire generation of older gay men.

and even though i was completely reduced to tears by the end of this episode, the ending still filled me with some sort of mournful joy. because yes, even though it was incredibly sad to see their last day, these two men got to fill so much of their empty space. they got to experience love, and they got to live their life. like bill says: "im old. im satisfied. and you were purpose."

so many people didn't get that. keith haring didn't get that. a whole generation of queer people didn't get that. that makes this episode so much more moving for me, because it is not just an incredibly beautiful love story, but it is an incredibly beautiful love story that the world should rightfully have seen millions more of. but all those lives were incomplete.

so with the undeniable, but unspoken, presence of the aids epidemic in the narrative of these characters, this visual reference to keith haring and aids, purposeful or not, is incredibly meaningful.

#alright bye i just had to write all this down!!#tlou spoilers #tlou #the last of us #the last of us hbo #tlou hbo #bill and frank #the last of us episode 3

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sunbeamedskies · 3 months

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I've seen a lot of troubling antisemitism in the Our Flag Means Death fandom lately regarding Taika Waititi. Please hear me out.

A lot of people want everyone to comment about the Israel/Palestine war. It's understandable. What Palestinian civilians are going through in Gaza is a nightmare that no one deserves. They are overwhelmingly paying the price for Hamas' actions- a group they have no control over and are also harmed by. Thousands have been killed.

After October 7th, Taika signed a letter asking for the Israeli hostages to be released. It did not endorse any specific actions taken by the Israeli government- it was simply in support of the hostages.

But you know what he was immediately accused of?

Supporting genocide. Even though what he signed was about Israeli civilians- including the elderly, disabled, and children- who were being held captive by Hamas.

On October 7th, Jews died in a single day in numbers that hadn't been since the Holocaust. Israel contains half the world's entire Jewish population. The majority of its population are descendants of Jews from middle eastern and north African countries who were forcibly kicked out in violent pogroms and had nowhere else to go. Many are descendants of Holocaust survivors as well.

I think most non-Jews would be astounded at how much the majority of the worldwide Jewish community is still mourning and reeling from October 7th. It triggered a lot of intergenerational trauma in many of us, yet I hear barely any non-Jews talk about it.

And yet you immediately accused Taika, a Jewish man, of supporting genocide just because he didn't support hostages being taken and random civilians being murdered. Do you really think he trusts people not to twist his words if he attempts to talk about Palestine too, when you turned a moment of legitimate pain for members of one of the persecuted groups he's apart of into accusing him of being a genocide-supporting monster?

We Jews not only have to deal with the memory of October 7th, but also with people conflating any support for the hostages with support for the Israeli government. When we say that criticism of Israel can at times get antisemitic, this is the kind of thing we're talking about.

Many of us are simultaneously mourning for Palestine and horrified that a right-wing fascist government that has little care for Palestinian lives has taken over Israel. Innocent lives taken shouldn't justify the killing of other innocent lives, and we are watching it happen, feeling powerless.

And it gets worse, because targeting Taika specifically because he's a person of multiple marginalized identities, when you don't attack white members of the crew nearly as much, is ironically racist.

Unintentional antisemitism and unintentional racism is still antisemitism and racism.

Take a deep breath and please reflect on how you have no idea what it's like to be Jewish right now, and how some of your own antisemitic criticism about his signature has likely contributed to his silence about Palestine. If no matter what he says his words and actions are twisted by so many of his "fans", he might think there's nothing he can say that will do any good.

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thediktatortot · 8 months

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Sugar Daddy Modern AU Harringrove:

Steve has a lot of money from both the trust fund that was set up for him as a child and from truly delving into the offer his father gives him to work at his company.

He's good at what he does and he likes to thrill seek to spice up his life. Sailing, Skydiving, Hiking and even Caving once or twice.

He also loves the thrill of auctions.

He doesn't actually buy anything (often) because it's the thrill of not knowing whether or not the risky offer you place is going to be topped or not. Steve's lost his game on a few occasions, but never enough that it made him quit.

It's a raffle auction that does him in this time however, a pride event his father's company is holding to 'show their appreciation'. Steve hates these events if only because his father had always told Steve it would ruin him if it got out in the world that the CEO's son was a fag.

Still, that doesn't stop Steve from placing his bid on the company raffle, a "buy a date" game where one could win the chance to take the lucky person out for dinner.

It was all in the name of money of course, none of that money even going to the person who was getting the free date out of it. Every penny going to some charity for the local community.

He'd avoided his father's piercing eyes for the entire duration of the bidding, only being able to see the person who he would be 'taking on a date' from the waist down where they were sitting behind the curtain.

Steve fought with himself as he raised the bet, his eyes unable to look away from the thick legs that crossed and uncrossed nervously as they waited for the bidding to be over. It was probably the legs that made Steve feel like he needed to bid high, dropping some six figure number down after tentative tens of thousands were announced.

He could feel his father fuming. It was fine, Steve could technically afford it and that wasn't really the issue that was concerning his father much.

Steve didn't care what his father thought anyway, not when the curtain pulled back to reveal a man that looked like one of the men on the Marlboro magazines. He didn't have long to celebrate (or mourn) the bid as he had to go finalize the donation paperwork.

It was a few hours later when Steve finally got to meet the man he'd dropped an chunk of money down for, not that he was going to see this as some sort of romantic exchange for money. Steve didn't even think the guy was going to accept the offer for dinner, and if he did, he probably wouldn't want a second one.

Which was fine, Steve may have been a bit of a playboy in his life, but he'd never actually sought out men before. Besides, it felt icky to try and hit on a guy who you just technically paid for.

Why were corporate events so icky?

Billy, it turns out, is really out of his element. Steve can't help but tell him that it's fine if he doesn't want to go out to dinner, saying he honestly finds the whole thing a little creepy and just liked the fun of an auction.

#Harringrove #Steve Harrington #Billy Hargrove #Stranger Things #Sugar Daddy AU #Queue Tea Pie

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drdemonprince · 9 months

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are there any medium articles or other essays you've written that you have a different perspective on now? Whether a small bullet point or the entire objective of a piece. It's interesting following your journey while catching up on the archive

Ohhhh yeah. In a big way. My thinking on nearly all matters continues to evolve, so much so that I always cringe a bit at some phrasings in my books by the time they are out.

In my work on Medium you can see a strong inconsistency in how I think about several topics -- I've gone through periods of disparaging my family, to extending them grace, to thinking I have a moral responsibility to fight with them, to regretting my rage at them, to calling my parents abusive, and on and on. On this topic, it's not so much that my feelings have changed, so much as each point of view represents one facet of the same gem I'm spinning in my mind's eye.

My thoughts on sexual assault and justice have evolved a ton. Around the time of the Weinstein and Ansari accusations, I wrote a lot about rape and coercion. Then a dear friend experienced an assault and was not believed by a huge friend group that we shared and I took on an even more hardline, believe-all-victims-and-take-action-swiftly-to-protect-them stance. I was more traumatized and dysphoric back then too.

My hardline stance eventually came into conflict with my abolitionism, and my growing respect for the importance of personal discernment that emerged more and more over the course of the pandemic. I just saw too many people who were afraid to exercise their own discernment on a wide array of topics and who amplified vague callouts of all kinds without skepticism (god, remember the Wayfair conspiracy?), and I saw how such formless accusations harmed the marginalized in particular. And all the gormless attacks on "narcissists" as the cause of abuse really chilled me. all that strongly tempered my dogmatism.

But I have also witnessed the "anti cancel culture" squad fail to live up to any value system whatsoever and I have fought with them a lot quite openly over their frequently racist, transphobic, theory-free views. All I know today is that navigating these waters is very, very hard, and that I am only in control of living by my values and being outspoken about them and that attempts to manipulate a moral response out of other people don't work and that information is only as good as my knowledge about who and where it came from. I think my evolution on all this closely tracks with the shifts in the zeitgeist -- it's rare for me to be that on pace with the average person I meet.

My perspective on how a meaningful difference in the world is made has changed. In 2016 I was calling politicians for an hour every day on livestream to protest this or that conservative bill. Now i'm an anarchist with minimal regard for electoral politics or any formal institutions. I did vote for Brandon Johnson though.

But by far the piece that least reflects my current understanding of things is one from 2020 called "Against Community." But that one was never meant to be a prescription for how people should live their lives. It was just a description of where I was at emotionally, having watched multiple friend groups disintegrate over abuse, triangulation, and bad boundaries. I'm glad I don't have to feel that way now. It was the growth after that experience that led to my revelation that communities are just relationships you build, and keep building, not static places you find.

On the whole I am less angry now, less dogmatic, less inclined to believe that electoral work matters or that posting is activism, less hellbent on making everybody agree with me, more comfortable with mourning, more radical, more patient, less grandiose and less hung up on what other people think of me. Despite all that i am still a very arrogant angry neurotic stressed out self superior insecure person.

Thanks for this great question. When I hold fake interviews with myself in the shower, it's being asked things like this that I fantasize about.

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icypolargirl78 · 2 months

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i'm so fucking tired man. i don't normally post on tumblr beyond reblogging and making art occasionally but i cannot think of anywhere else to put these thoughts so whatever

i'm not entirely sure if anyone will read this post and that's okay, i don't have many followers and there are better posts to follow when it comes to supporting palestine and her people. don't give up hope, keep reblogging, keep talking about palestine okay. even if you think it doesn't matter it does. talking about what's happening beats back every bit of propaganda that gets spread about palestine. every bit counts

FROM THE RIVER TO THE SEA PALESTINE WILL BE FREE

here is a list of resources that you can donate to if you can. and if you can't, please reblog anyways. boost them.

i'm sick and tired of the constant news from palestine. not because i want to remain blissfully ignorant about what's happening there but because with each passing hour i get more and more angry and discouraged regarding what's happening there. i cannot in my mind truly comprehend the level of inhumanity that is required to forcefully remove people from their homes, to deprive them of basic necessities like water, food, and medical care, and then carpet bomb the land that so many families have lived on for literal decades. it's horrific and a disgusting level of evil.

beyond that i have to live with the knowledge that my government is actively funding these atrocities. i don't even want to call it my government because there is no way in my mind that any human could possibly see the deaths caused by israel and want to help them continue in their path of genocide.

these past few months have solidly confirmed in my mind that capitalism is single-handedly one of the worst things to have ever happened to our society because capitalism the thing that's behind my government supporting these atrocities. plain and simple it makes companies more money to help kill literal children who have done nothing wrong than to send aid to those children and to call for a ceasefire. it's sickening that my government is choosing to support this senseless violence simply because it means they can sell more guns and bombs and tanks.

i think about how the world will speak on these events in 20, 30, 50 years from now. i wonder how the history books will recount the brave gazans who survived what happened. i wonder if my country will continue to pump out propaganda regarding their involvement in this disaster. i wonder if the textbooks and worksheets students will read and write on will echo the way that my textbooks talked about native americans or african slaves. i wonder how many lives will get reduced to a statistic on a page.

and it makes me sad. so depressingly sad that so many people will get swept under the rug. that every lost life will never be mourned in the way every human deserves to.

i get conflicted over whether or not i have any right to speak on these events. i live a very privileged life. i never have to worry about when my next meal is coming, i have access to clean and safe drinking water at all hours of the day, i have a roof over my head and 24 hour access to the internet. why should i, someone who has all this, speak about events that are happening across the world. why should i have the right to mourn and speak about people who are now gone when those who are still alive are living in some of the worst conditions known to humankind.

and i realise that that's what the israeli government wants. they want me to stop thinking about gaza and palestine as a whole. they want the world to turn their backs and ignore the atrocities they are committing.

and i don't want that to happen. i'll continue clicking daily for palestine. i'll continue to reblog posts about gaza. i will keep that shred of hope that one day i will wake up and my tumblr dashboard will be filled with posts celebrating a ceasefire, that one day palestine will be free from the occupation of a tyrannical state.

but even knowing that doesn't take away from the guilt that i feel when i see gofundme's and links to aid relief programs. i've donated an esim to gaza and i really do hope that it helps someone but i'm not in a position to do anything more than reblog posts and do my daily clicks.

#free palestine #free gaza #from the river to the sea #support palestine

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blessedarethebinarybreakers · 10 months

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“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

A story of discovering scripture’s depictions of a God who is more than male.

The following is an excerpt from God’s Tapestry: Reading the Bible in a World of Religious Diversity in which author W. Eugene March has a revelatory conversation with his mother. For the entire passage, see this google-books link.

Some years ago I received an unexpected phone call from my mother. She was clearly agitated and thought I would share her concern, a theological concern. She was agitated about the language that had been used in fashioning a prayer to God in a study book that she and other women in her congregation were using.

…The issue was a prayer on which feminine metaphors were employed to describe God’s love for Israel. Wombs, labor pains, and nursing at nurturing breasts were used in a prayer to God. When Mom and her Bible study friends read this prayer, the explosion was not pleasant. And not surprisingly, an unofficial ‘denominational’ publication circulating widely in her congregation fanned the fire of my mother’s zeal to denounce perceived heresy.

It took me several minutes to get her calmed down enough for us to talk reasonably. When I did, I asked her to read the offending prayer to me. As she did, I recognized the clear influence of Isaiah. I said, “Hey, Mom, that language is straight out of the Bible.” She said, “It is not!” I said, “Yes it is!” “Is not!” “Is too.”

Finally, I asked her to get her Bible and we had a long-distance Bible study of some selected verses from the book of Isaiah:

For a long time I have held my peace, I [God] have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor; I will gasp and pant. (Isaiah 42:14)

Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. (Isaiah 49:15)

Rejoice with Jerusalem, and be glad for her, all you who love her; rejoice with her in joy, all you who mourn over her – that you may nurse and be satisfied from her consoling breast; that you may drink deeply with delight from her glorious bosom. For thus says the [Holy One]: I will extend prosperity to her like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing stream; and you shall nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem. (Isaiah 66:10-13)

After she had read those verses, there was a long pause, and then she said, “When did they put that in there?” “It’s been there all along,” I replied. “Well,” my dear mother continued in a somewhat subdued tone, “why didn’t anyone ever tell me?”

“Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?” That is one of the questions that prompted this book. There are so many misconceptions about what the Bible does and doesn’t say, so much ignorance among otherwise well-educated, capable people. In my experience, the people in the pews are often well ahead of the clergy when it comes to the matters that really count in the way we order our daily lives and structure the communities in which we live. Their attitudes are usually based on what they recognize from their own experience of life. But they need knowledge about the support the Bible can offer and encouragement and permission from their leaders. They often think that what they believe must be heretical or offbeat, since no one assures them otherwise.

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season-of-trope: Memes, quotes, mental health, opinions on things political and otherwise, personal development, pretty pictures ... everything else, really.

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7grandmel · 6 months

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Todays rip: 11/11/2023

Your Silent Reality

Season 2 Featured on: SiIvaGunner's Highest Quality Rips Volume A

Ripped by Ahmaykmewsik

youtube

Birthday Special!

Yep, its the big day - 11/11th is the day I was brought into the world, and now I'm yet another year older. And I was thinking about this in the context of the blog for a very long time - I really wanted to make this day somewhat special too, by highlighting a particular rip that means a lot to me. Or, well, that was the thought I had back in like, July this year. With close to two hundred posts, I've already been drip-feeding the blog with some of my all-time favorite, most resonant rips from the channel's life. From Battle! The Trainer Inside Your Head!, to Everybody's Special Course, to The 0 Has Returned and A love letter to this wonderful community and my amazing friends - to not even mention everything connected to the Christmas Comeback Crisis such as voiceless and 時の回廊＜ver. CCC＞. The amount of times SiIvaGunner has touched my heart and rewarded me for my time invested in such a silly project is frankly incredible, and I've shared many of those feelings with you here already.

Yet one remains. Your Silent Reality.

To say that A Silent Voice was a film that broke me would be an understatement. It to date remains one of my all time favorite films and my first time watching it, I cried more than I believe I ever have in my life. To date I still have yet to rewatch it purely because of how dearly I hold those memories of that initial viewing, how much it meant to be to be able to be so openly emotionally connected to art. Instead of rewatches, its Your Silent Reality that's kept my mind still thinking of the film - a rip that has touched me, and seemingly thousands of other viewers, to their core. Its release in Season 2 just so happened to be at the absolute perfect time for me, and its been my go-to therapy music for every year since.

I feel like Ahmaykmewsik may be a contender for the most underrated ripper on the entire channel? The guy has been around for a very long time, and I've covered his rips here on the blog before with Everything Circus and Picture This Ranch - he's a ripper with an excellent attention to detail, and in general knows how to make stuff emotionally resonant. There's a number of his rips coming up in the pipeline, but Your Silent Reality is obviously no exception to the rule. In describing it as a mashup between Your Reality from DDLC and music from A Silent Voice, and a six-year old rip at this point, you may initially get the impression that it'd be a rather simple effort. But in listening, I get the sense that Ahmaykmewsik himself knew how important the music he was arranging here was, likely even due to personal experience - and went above and beyond in delivering that premise. Small little edits and tweaks are done to the rip's instrumentals, changing in and out of melody changes to other, well-loved songs by the SiIvaGunner fanbase, be it music from Undertale or a cue of Snow Halation - yet it never interrupts the ongoing vocal performance, the heartfelt ending to Doki Doki Literature Club.

Though I've fallen out of interest with the game at this point, back in 2017 the game was yet another game I found it hard to divorce my feelings from - its music and characters do genuinely mean a lot to me. DDLC - most notably Monika - had a rather large presence on SiIva during Season 2 and Season 3, though I believe the plans for her importance to the lore...eventually fell through. Yet that's not something I mourn - in fact, in a way I think it adds to the spirit and feel of the rip as a whole. That knowledge, and the knowledge of everything that would happen to the SiIvaGunner channel over the six years that passed since Your Silent Reality was uploaded, serves to remind me of one very simple fact:

The SiIvaGunner team are, just like us - human.

A non-profit, passionate group of hobbyists, with a silly plan for a storyline, organized within a bunch of different minds, a bunch of different creatives with differing goals for the channel. And amidst it all, sits Ahmaykmewsik - another human, another individual, who just so happens to love A Silent Voice. And though the lore and foreshadowing and all such greater plans for Monika and DDLC seemingly amounted to nothing...Your Silent Reality didn't. In fact, NONE of the rips paying tribute to DDLC did - Your Silent Reality may be my favorite, yet I'm certain you reading this have your own favorite rip of the game, or favorite rip of another game - rips all made from the burning passion of individuals the world over making music. And in all honesty, as borderline fanboy-ish as it sounds, I find it hard to be truly upset with whatever direction the SiIvaGunner channel takes when I know its all for the benefit and strength of its team of immensely talented, fellow human beings.

There's a YouTube comment, left on Your Silent Reality in particular, that I vividly remember reading back when the video was first uploaded six-odd years ago. Part of the kayfabe with the SiIvaGunner channel is that its an entity that rarely if ever directly interacts with us as fans - our gratitude is reciprocated through indirect action, or through dialogue with individual rippers, yet SiIvaGunner himself is an entity so large and all-encompassing to where it would feel...wrong, to have it interact with us as people. The only interaction it usually has with the comments is with a track's original composers discovering and approving of rips - yet this time, a Heart was awarded to just another comment, by just another human. Yet NexusPlayerNA's comment resonated with an entire community, saying the silent, heartfelt feelings we'd all had bubbling internally out loud: Its 267 words of pure, unfiltered love and gratitude toward everything SiIvaGunner does. Because behind all the memes, behind all the shitposts and behind all the demands, requests and disappointments we may express toward the SiIvaGunner team - I think many of us are simply grateful for all that they've done. What was once a mere gimmick playing off of Vinesauce memes has evolved into a magical network of human expression, a place for artists to grow and connect with one another - and a place for humanity to be expressed within the confines of remixed video game music.

"Godspeed, you magnificent bastards. I hope you never stop finding fulfillment in everything you do, because I always will."

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swampgallows · 29 days

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i straight up get violent now when i hear people say "post covid". covid has completely fucked up my life and career. it's kept me from getting the medical care i need because even healthcare facilities won't take precautions anymore, leading to a threat of being infected on top of my original problems.

it has permanently fucked up the lives of some of my closest friends. my best friend was infected for the third fucking time last week; he takes every precaution imaginable, even getting his groceries delivered, but was infected by the person preparing his fucking taxes. another of my best friends now needs an inhaler and walking stick and isn't even 30 yet. yet another close friend most likely has long covid, suffering short term memory problems and a chronic chest cough despite normal xrays. another friend has lost over a dozen family members since the pandemic began, with his father, brother, and uncle all passing away in December 2020.

i want to say that people who reflexively knee jerk say "covid is over" are living in a bubble, but i think the more accurate reality is that they've forced people like me and my friends to live in a gutter.

i can't write any more. I'm so fucking tired of having to be angry about this. i am in a really bad place mental health wise and wish i could go get help but i can't imagine anywhere more likely to catch covid than a ward, save for an actual covid wing of a hospital.

if i get covid, i could die. i have a blood disorder that already impairs my iron and clotting and oxygen levels, and a single infection of covid could result in a stroke. if i don't die of stroke, it could disable me for life. if i don't have a stroke, i could still get a clot that leads to pulmonary embolism. or i could just be saddled with long covid or chronic fatigue as my anemia disables me. this is the risk i face every single time i go out in public. any encounter could kill or disable me. and it is me against literally the entire world. i am told over and over that me and my friends are not worth protecting, that we're expendable, that we're "those people" who would have died of something anyway. we have mental illness, or chronic illness, or are trans, or people of color, or even a combination of these things, so society is fine isolating and killing us.

this is all ive had to think about as ive watched it be reinforced by everyone -- friends, family, communities, leaders -- for the past four years. every waking moment spent in hypervigilance and exhaustion and depression, mourning the life i had, the present life i could be having, the future i want being withheld from me. mourning, and yet still not having the space or time to grieve, because it is still going on. it is still happening. there are still thousands of deaths a week, and that's nothing to say of who is becoming disabled.

i just want to breathe air. in public. i want to be able to access healthcare without the threat of being infected. i want to go outside. i want to be able to get a job where i don't have to fear that my coworkers or the general public can literally kill me in complete ignorance. i want being in public to not require a particulate respirator.

i am sick of being told that these requests are unreasonable and that i might as well just die because infection is inevitable. at this point it's a race to see if my misery will kill me before covid does.

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burningvelvet · 8 months

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okay more thoughts on pride and prejudice as i begin chapter 39

1 i want to see lady catherine, mrs. bennet, and miss bingley in the same room together on a podcast panel debating things like marriage and childrearing etc but i dont think the world would be able to handle it

2 i’m interpreting mr. darcy as either being neurodivergent (possibly autistic) and/or having severe social anxiety — and this is really informing my entire perspective of his character (as a core theme to his character is being socially understood/misunderstood). however, i know its still very controversial to “diagnose” fictional characters and i don’t want to come off that way — but historical complications aside (the field of psychology didn’t exist back then how it does now) it’s really obvious to see that he’s not neurotypical, although i don’t know if this is an accepted thing in the austen world though!

3 i’m not buying that mr. darcy’s letter was only 2 pages long. 3 pages minimum with tiny handwriting maybe.

4 this entire novel really highlights the importance of social communication more than anything imo

5 mr. collins is fucking hilarious and his interactions with elizabeth are so accurate/relatable of what it’s like to deal with oblivious men as a female, esp. men who dont know how to take a hint — i was actually laughing out loud through his entire proposal sequence, especially at the line where it says elizabeth is trying hard not to laugh too. so familiar.

6 i wish we could see more of charles i actually like him — i also like colonel fitzwilliam and kind of wanted him to marry elizabeth - its kind of hilarious how casual the topic of marriage is with people you’ve just met & i really want to read more about regency history on marriage specifically now to figure out how much is embellished for satire purposes & how much is true to life

7 i have many thoughts on wickham but thats for a separate post

8 from what little i’ve read about p&p analysis/consensus so far, it seems mrs bennet and some other characters have already been torn to shreds over lit history to the point that its become more common to defend them & mrs bennet in particular, which i understand bc she’s supposed to be a satire on women of the time period but of course her concerns are valid and there are real economic reasons for her actions and societal norms that pertain to them. i’ve also read that it’s common for people to prefer mr bennet over his wife and to pit them against each other which can lead into misogyny & i can see this. however (im sure the bennet family ends up happy at the end, but at this point in the story) i think there are valid reasons for these interpretations which lead people to like mr bennet more than mrs bennet. after the ordeal with collins i really lost respect for mrs bennet for threatening to disown eliza & treating her so harshly, and i gained respect for mr bennet for sticking by eliza. i continuously defended mrs bennet and her behavior up until the collins proposal. i understand she’s desperate for eliza to marry so that she doesn’t become destitute etc. but mr collins simply isnt an ideal husband

9 eliza’s feelings on her friend marrying collins are so sad and relatable of how all of us feel when we watch a friend or loved one enter a shitty relationship and/or betray themselves or lose a part of their personality + the idea of having to mourn your friend especially upon growing up etc. but particularly as it relates to the lonely woman’s experience of finding one’s friends starting to center males & prioritize romance over friendship the older you get.

hope some of this is semi-intelligible - i save the grammar for my real essays - but felt like rambling

i think in my last post i was spelling “bennet” as “bennett” so i apologize for that lol - pls dont kill me janeites, i’m new here!!!

#pride and prejudice #jane austen #reading #currently reading #book opinions #book thoughts

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ineffably-human · 2 years

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"Well why didn't you do something? You should have gone and done something about it instead of just sitting here."

When the leaks came out two weeks ago, I was seriously in a period of mourning. Like I was truly, deeply upset for three days trying to process what was actually half-translated and poorly communicated. And it's a lot of the stuff other people were thinking when 4x9 first dropped. Were we being told it was wrong to desire growth and progress in these characters? Are we stupid for caring about the humanity in them? Were we supposed to hope Guillermo just escapes this toxic limbo forever?

We see so much of how these violent, sometimes half-crazy, ancient beings are dissatisfied with their lives. How they're capable of love and connection, how they want the same things that humans do... I couldn't believe that stagnation was the entire point. I couldn't believe the answer to 'can you change who you've always been?' was 'nope, sorry, nobody really does even when they're miserable.'

It feels important we care. It feels important that we feel unsettled by Colin reverting back to exactly how he was before, without even the slightest memory of being loved and looked after when as an adult he's so lonely. (That whistling, the way it breaks your heart and gives you a hope spot at the same time!) It's important they made it clear, before he finds that room, that as much as his instincts are calling out to him it's not what young Colin wanted or something he had a choice about. It was important that Laszlo and Nadja felt like they lost major, important pieces of their new lives, experiences they'd never had before even if they ended badly.

And Nandor... I don't think Nandor's as okay as he says. I think Nandor seems as aloof as he was when we first met him. It's withdrawing for recovery after the end of a lot of striving and struggling and pain. Eventually the scab is going to rip off and leave him with grief and depression again. Who's to say he hasn't had this experience before? He did tell Guillermo that he hadn't been really happy in decades. Maybe for a vampire, taking some 'me time' after a rough period is a decades-long affair.

But there's such a clear rift between him and the person he loves most now. Everyone's lost something, and Nandor and Guillermo have lost some of what they were building. I think they were losing it before the Freddie incident even happened. (Now would be the part of the slow-burn, by the way, where they get it back and reaffirm how much they belong together.)

When the leaks dropped, I read Guillermo's decision and I thought 'why?' This was the first season where I could think of plenty of explicit reasons he shouldn't become a vampire. He might never see his biological family again, even though he knows they love him. No matter what, he has to deal with his chosen family's selfishness. He sees how slow vampires change, he sees their ennui, how the big things they want are band-aids over their dissatisfaction. He knows he can stay human and still have physical power, emotional leverage, life experiences he's missed out on up to now because of all the waiting-waiting-waiting. Even having a foot in the supernatural world wouldn't have to change. His devotion and loyalty have waned somewhat, he's built relationships with the other housemates but they're not as strong.

It's not like he's so unexamined about his feelings that he'd ignore all those things to go be a vampire alone, to go hang out with a lonely dude working a counter (just like he was when Nandor met him) when that lonely dude just happens to be a vampire. Was he regressing? What the hell was he doing it for at this point? He hadn't even said goodbye!

It was like a gut punch of relief (seriously, the noise I made) when I found out exactly what the line was, the last thing Guillermo says before taking the money to Derek.

"Nothing in this house ever changes, nothing's ever going to change unless I change it."

He doesn't pack his things. The bag is full of money and only money. He won't need that closet anymore because it's no place to keep a coffin. (The attic, on the other hand, newly renovated and now the biggest room in the house...)

I want so badly to believe Guillermo is becoming a vampire because he is going to march straight back to the house, show off his fangs, and drag them all kicking and screaming into the life he's dreamed of along with him. To rescue them from themselves.

'I can use this power better. I can be the new blood. You need something to react to? React to this.' Because his dream is relentless but so is his capacity to love these people at their worst.

And if that just sounds like Guillermo saving the day again, well...

You guys want a jealousy arc? Imagine Nandor seeing that someone else stepped in and did what he wouldn't. Imagine a Guillermo made newly sexual as a vampire, having a well-deserved slut era as Nandor watches and wonders what's so different about him these days. Nandor being the one to eagerly listen to him, to sit beside him as he bosses people around...

More importantly, imagine Guillermo having a conflict between his slayer blood and vampire blood. Or leaning into the selfishness that comes with being a vampire, so much so that he starts to lose the parts of him the household really needs. Or pretending 'it's fine, it's fine, it's fine' when it's really anything but and this isn't how he's supposed to end up.

I need Guillermo to be the one to fuck up for once. I need him to do something so selfish it hurts others, I need him to do the right thing when it's hard. I need Nandor to save him or remind him of the best, most human parts of him when he's lost.

I can't wait to get that, if that's where we're going.

#fandom: wwdits #what we do in the shadows #wwdits spoilers #guillermo de la cruz #otp: nandermo #char: guillermo the relentless #i am a meta gremlin

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qwilman · 1 year

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Losing your Twitter Audience: Some Shit of the Top of My Head, by Me

Reposting a Twitter thread I just made because it's got a lot of thoughts I've had stuck in my head lately:

I don't have a fully-formed version of these thoughts, but I think what a lot of artist are asking when they say "where will we go after twitter" is actually asking "where are all of the normal people going to end up?" I can name a half-dozen sites that are ready and waiting for more artists to come flooding onto their platform. I'm sure there are just as many for writers, musicians, filmmakers, everything else. The actual question everyone needs an answer to is where is the AUDIENCE going.

I've been terminally online for well over two decades at this point. I've been obsessed with the internet since middle school and I can honestly say I've never seen anything like twitter's user base in my entire goddamned life. I've never seen a website that EVERYBODY uses. The closest comparison I have is Facebook, which was really the first internet community that normal people ever truly appreciated. At it's core though, Facebook was a tool that kept you connected with people you knew in real life. As much as it changed, that idea was its bones. Twitter isn't really like that. It doesn't have shared calendars or photo albums or a base instinct to keep you hooked into communities you're already in. Twitter has performance in it's core. It's a bullhorn you pick up to shout to as many people as possible. As much as it's changed that's still it's core feature, the thing it's always going to want to do. That's why it's so appealing for every performer in the world, and I think since most people who don't want to be on stage want to watch a show, that's why it got so huge.

So a bunch of performers can reach enormous audiences and a bunch of us managed to make a living off of it. The question now that this stage is burning down with us on it is where is the next one, and I just don't think this massive audience is ever going to move in unison. I think the thing we all need to be prepared for is that we're going to fragment. We're going to find our own corners again and the more savvy members of our audiences are going to find those same corners as they seek out what they love, but our causal viewers will veer off. Twitter has been an incredible tool for us to put our art in the faces of people who would never think to look for it. This was a big part of what the people who found success on Facebook benefitted from as well, the audience who treated social media like television.

The people who are just looking for an entertainment box to turn on and comfort them without effort are most likely never going to use a Pillowfort, or a Tumblr, or a Cohost, and DEFINITELY not a Mastodon, because they all require a base level of interaction and engagement. And to be clear, this isn't me calling those people stupid, or a "bad" audience. People have their own lives and their own interests. Curating a feed of content requires effort and seeking out new artists is a skill. A lot of people just want to crash after they got off work. So those people aren't going to follow us to new sites. Either because those new sites are improved, but more esoteric, or just because signing up for a new site is a hassle of it's own. We're going to lose that audience. Period. Mourn them if you need to, but accept that.

I think success for artists online in the future is going to look a lot more like what it was in the early 00's-10's. Artists and willingly-engaged audiences seeking each other out. I just don't think putting as many eyes as possible on our work will be a winning strategy. Instead of finding as many people as possible, we need to be focused on finding the right people. 100 followers who are excited that their you, specifically, just posted are as valuable as 1000 followers who don't remember you that well and just want to see some cool art. A lot of people stopped trying to find their 1,000 true fans and focused completely on reaching 10k, 50k, 100k followers, no matter how closely they're paying attention. Honest to god, I think the later is going to be suicide in five years.

FWIW, I've never actually been any good at doing that. The biggest following I've ever had in my life is a little over 3,000 followers in TikTok. I think I just feel weird seeing a bunch of artist who have "made it" panic that they'll be losing everything when Twitter's gone. If you have 10k, 50, 100k followers right now, I don't think it's useful to focus on how many you're about to lose. Instead focus on who the best 10% of those followers are, the ones who've supported you financially and by sharing your work, do what you can to meet them where they live.

Anyway this started as an attempt to excise a stray thought I've had stuck in my head all week, didn't mean to spend 45 minutes on it. The point is get ready to post like it's 2007 again. Best case scenario, the internet is going to be asking a little more effort from all of us pretty soon, but I think at the end of the day if things go right we're all going to come out the other side better for it. If you made it this far, dig through your feed, pick one or two of your favorite artists who have links in their bio to give them money, then give them a little money. I promise you they'll notice.

#twitter #social media #long #mastodon #pillowfort #cohost #audience

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