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pommunist · 1 month

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past anon who talked about the alex's first priority being money/funds and who is apparently based to you (hola :D👋)

after reading back my ask i realize that i may have come off as a little bit harsh (not as harsh as you french fans, you guys are BRUTAL) i wrote most of it in a burst of frustration at the whole admin thing lol.

i don't think alex is some disney villian who is twirling his mustache as he watches on his past workers cry out of frustration because of the lack of communication. he just isn't as experienced when it comes to these kinds of things.

he's doing what he thinks is best from his lawyer studies, don't gave out any info that isn't 100% guaranteed, anything that comes with money is a huge legal problem and must be fixed as first, those type of things.

everyone that has known alex personally has said that he's a genuinely sweet guy (well, except his some of his workers but doesn't even have a relationship with them because of the lack of communication LMAO /coping) i don't think any of his current actions are done out of malicious intent or whatever.

all of his recent streams are probably a way to earn money and the whole egg merch is probably for even more money (the bio of the acc literally says that it is ''the best way to fund qsmp'') (i've already talked about my opinions on that)

the whole not communicating is so ''he doesn't make false promises'' and also, so he doesn't get sued. (understand where he is coming from but huge disagree)

the not having ways of contacting him via twt isn't done as a result of this situation, he deleted twt some time ago (very unfortunate timing, like, 2 days before lea's statements. he should've reinstalled it, but he doesn't need to anymore since he now has an email for when he needs to be contacted)

the events that are currently happening have been planned for months in advance (still think he should put them back a bit. i guess the german streamer is kinda understandable since he has apparently been waiting for like, 10 months?? still think he should've put it back)

i think what he wants is for when pomme's admin comes back for the work environment to be perfect but i still heavily disagree with his ways. the way he's going about it now is only going to lead to burnout from the workers :( none of what i said justifies the lack of communication btw. his actions come off as kinda tone-deaf right now.

although with the whole (understandable) anger from people about the twt admins + the union + jose's statements + the french's statements, i do think he will start actually communicating with his workers (he kinda has to with the whole jose thing, unless he wants all of qstudios garbage out in the public, which is like, a really bad thing for him)

unfortunately, i'm only based when i'm angry <3 so this is probably dogshit. but the problems in qstudios ARE fixable. (this is either gonna end up aging like milk or like fine wine. i hope it's the fine wine since i love qsmp and i'll probably completely give up on learning french/spanish if it doesn't)

holà again !

I personally didn’t think you were too harsh on your last ask, you had genuine concern about the course of his actions and it didn’t feel like you were attacking him or anything !

I don’t know Q personally obviously so I won’t speculate too much on what he’s thinking through this, but I agree with you that he probably isnt an evil guy and doesn’t have bad intentions with it.

However I still stand with the fact that he was at least negligent towards what was happening behind the scenes of his passion project and should’ve been more aware of the inner workings of the QSMP.

This isn’t an easy situation, especially with all the legal aspects (which should’ve been thought of beforehand btw) but I think everyone or at least most people who criticise what is going on are doing in first because they want the admins to be treated well but also because they want to trust that Q will do the right thing.

Admins and fans alike wouldn’t spend so much time getting updated on the situation and writing their thoughts if they didnt have at least some hope that things can be fixed.

Now it’s up to Qstudios to prove those who believe right and to prove those who lost trust (can’t blame them) wrong !

#qsmp discourse

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earthstellar · 1 year

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Earthspark: Who is Quintus Prime?

In Earthspark, the Terrans are brought forth into existence by a cave saturated with the power of Quintus Prime’s relic, the Emberstone.

(Quick aside, I love that Earthspark’s title is a direct reference to this. Earth = stone, Ember = spark.)

But who is Quintus Prime, and what is the Emberstone?

Quintus Prime: 10th Formed, Among the First to Go

Traits: Idealism, Perfectionism, Creativity, Growth

As outlined in the Aligned Continuity’s Covenant of Primus, Quintus Prime is described as highly intelligent, being a sort of scientist among the Thirteen Primes.

Now, we can’t assume that the backstory for Quintus Prime will be the same in the Earthspark continuity! However, the Aligned Continuity has given us most of the currently available information on the Thirteen Primes, even if it may not 100% carry over to Earthspark-- We’ll have to wait and see.

But for now, I think it’s worth going over what’s been established for this character in the Covenant:

He has a highly analytical mind, which has been applied for strategic purposes in forming methods to defeat Unicron in the earliest days of the Primes, and for creative purposes in the creation of new and unique lifeforms via his personal relic, the Emberstone.

He was the 10th Prime to be forged by Primus, to help combat the encroaching influence of Unicron upon a delicate and still-new Cybertron.

Famously, Quintus Prime worked alongside Megatronus (The Fallen) and Liege Maximo to create new forms of “beasts”, which led to a serious rift between the Primes-- Many of whom wanted this beast-generating project to be shut down.

This disagreement led to the debate in which Solus Prime was killed by Megatronus, and following her death, Quintus Prime backed down from any responsibility regarding his involvement in the creation of the beasts (possibly out of an inability to cope with the fact that he had personal involvement in the instigating incident, although the concept was Liege Maximo’s idea in the first place)-- Which led to an outright physical battle between all of the remaining Primes.

With the relationship between the Primes irreparably strained, Quintus Prime left Cybertron in search of planets rich in base elements and base metals; Upon finding a suitable planet, he proceeded to create the Quintessons.

It is not known what happened to Quintus Prime, although Alpha Trion guessed that perhaps he was killed by the Quintessons, once they no longer believed him to be useful to them-- But of course, this is only Alpha Trion’s conjecture.

The Emberstone: Restoration and Creation

It has been described most thoroughly in the Aligned Continuity material, in which is has life-giving properties.

Not only can the Emberstone accelerate natural processes with the correct base elements to construct new lifeforms, but it can also restore life in already extant beings-- The Emberstone has been used to essentially bring those felled in battle back to life, although it is not entirely clear if this was outright resurrection (being restored from a fatal wound) or just a form of accelerated healing (being restored from a significant injury that may have been fatal if left untreated).

In Earthspark, Quintus Prime left Cybertron (we do not know if the preceding events were the same in this continuity or if there may be a different reason why he left), and used the Emberstone to seed life across many different planets.

Ultimately, the Emberstone ended its journey on Earth, where it remained in place, until it was discovered and disturbed by the Malto siblings.

Upon being activated by the Malto kids, the Emberstone sent out a surge of life-giving energy, thus creating the first Terrans: Twitch and Thrash.

While we know the whereabouts of the Emberstone, we do not necessarily know where Quintus Prime is.

His presence does seem to be at least partially inherent in the Emberstone itself, although whether this is some kind of cosmic projection or if he may in some way be tethered to the relic directly is not yet clear-- Or if there may be some other circumstance involved.

As Earthspark is only in it’s first season at time of writing, there’s still a lot that hasn’t been established for this continuity as of yet!

But we do know that Quintus Prime, for whatever reason, does have some kind of connection to Earth, and seems able to enact some degree of his own personal power on Earth as well-- Either as an extension of himself channelled through the energy of the Emberstone, or perhaps something else may be at play.

---

Ultimately, I’m really happy to see more of the Thirteen Primes material being re-used or re-adapted to a new continuity, and I’m excited to see where things go from here!

I love cosmic space god-entity stuff, and the Primes have always been extremely interesting to me. :)

As always, thanks to everyone who bothered to read through all this!!! <3

I’m making a list of Earthspark themed posts I’d like to get started on soon, including a few that some of you have messaged to me-- Thank you! :) I’m always happy to take suggestions or talk about stuff in any Transformers continuity that you might find interesting!

It might take me some time to get around to all of my inbox/messages, especially as I work in healthcare so I’m often pretty wiped out after work lol, but I do keep note of every message/Ask I get-- And I really appreciate it! :) <3

#earthspark #tf es #quintus prime #Aligned continuity #transformers earthspark #transformers #maccadam #maccadams #thirteen primes #covenant of primus #lore posting #long post #tf earthspark #emberstone

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nomsfaultau · 8 months

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Fault!SBI Love languages

Tommy: Physical contact. Not even a question. He’s just so incredibly touch-starved. Given the smallest excuse, he’ll sling an arm around Phil’s shoulders or lounge in The Blade’s lap. It makes for a bad combination with his anomalous properties, and he has a habit of unconsciously reaching for people and then jerking away. When talking to people he instinctively leans forward, and more often than not he’s accidentally smack dab in someone’s personal bubble. Tubbo (carefully) headbutts him, but any further level of contact and he gets stressed about contamination. He also tends to puff up when given compliments.

The Blade: Quality Time. In particular, training. The first friends he ever made were through group projects at college w/ Averil, and it carried over to when he demanded Philza become his mentor. When The Blade accidentally acquired a Tommy, the way they became friends was through sparring that was admittedly far gentler than emerald duo matches. Part of him and Tubbo finally bonding is working on projects together, like quilting or making their prosthetics. Not much of a touchy-feely guy, and compliments sometimes make him feel awkward.

The Blood God: Words of Affirmation baby! He loves the crowd roaring his name! Phil gives him compliments mid-battle and it’s such a rush. Once, he praised Tommy by calling him ‘not entirely useless’

Wilbur: Gifts. He grew up owning basically nothing, fighting for everything he had. The idea of just being given something was earth-shattering for him. But after the Foundation exploited that in a way that stripped him of coping mechanisms and exacerbated his preexisting trust issues, gifts became a trigger for him. While he despises receiving them, that doesn’t stop him from giving. Wilbur is the main resource gatherer of the group both for strategic reasons and because he wants to provide for his family. He’ll give even if it means he goes without, be it a jacket or food or a little toy he thought Tommy would like. Half his love language is also chewing someone out while tending to their needs.

Philza: Acts of Service. Whether it’s cooking for his Collected or creating a pyre of bodies in their name, Philza is all about the acts of service. His M.O. is basically attaching himself to a neat mortal he finds and doing whatever he can to help them. If one of his Collected wants something done, Philza will move heaven and hell to do it. Also great for life advice, though his frame of reference for what's normal is pretty wack given the immortality. Additionally, he tries to specifically pay attention to his Collected and try out a variety of love languages to see what they like. So, ruffling Tommy’s hair (and fixing it afterward), sparring with The Blade, getting little presents for Wilbur, practicing active listening with Anderson. He’s still trying to figure out Tubbo, which is hard since they hate him.

Tubbo: ??? Hard to pin down, but I guess Quality Time, as that’s how clingy duo really bonded in Fault. A lot of Tubbos’ displays of affection are paying attention to someone’s needs, such as being there if Tommy has a nightmare or Wilbur isn’t sleeping enough. They tend to recognize pretty quickly if someone is feeling down because of the 24/7 Bug Brother surveillance system buzzing around. Tubbos’ big on just hanging out with people, and even if they aren’t physically present, Tubbo will leave a swarm to be on hand with someone in case they want to talk or need something. Quality Time also feels symmetrical given The Blade is Tubbos’ foil. There's a little bit of Gift sprinkled in, such as Rhodes domesticating baby feral Tubbo via sweets and toys. Also, some Acts of Service, because what makes Tubbo start to trust Philza and The Blade is seeing how hard they worked to take care of everyone.

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ewelinakl · 7 months

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the ask meme!

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

not me answering this 84 years later, whoops.

23. What’s a trope, AU, or concept you’ve never written, but would like to?

there's a bunch, honestly. i love writing AUs, they're so much fun. my top 3 concepts from the pile of ideas for next year so far are a reincarnation AU, political AU (presidential campaign favour), and a gritty & grimy AU about angels and demons

30. Have you ever written something that was out of your comfort zone? If so, what was it, and how did it affect your approach to writing fic thereafter?

I push myself out of my comfort zone quite often, to be honest, especially regarding themes of mental health and dealing with trauma. it's easier to analyse and dissect the thought processes or coping mechanisms of fictional characters than it is to do that with yourself, but still, if the issue you're describing hits too close to home, it can be a deeply uncomfortable experience. the understanding you gain this way is extremely rewarding and valuable, though, and every now and then, I get comments telling me that those parts of my stories are especially hard-hitting and cathartic for the readers, which makes me want to keep doing this. so, long story short, it taught me the art of discovering yourself via blorbo's suffering.

37. Promote one of your own “deep cut” fics (an underrated one, or one that never got as much traction as you think it deserves!). What do you like about it?

my Children of the Many-Eyed God series I wrote for Dishonored, I guess. I had so much fun writing the first two parts of it, and I can't wait to share the final instalment that I'm currently working on. I pretty much wrote the history and lore of Tyvia from scratch, created a brand new god that I adore, and fixed all the things that made me sad in the games.

49. What are you currently working on? Share a few lines if you’re up for it!

too many big projects at once, some of them fairly secret. from those that I can share, we have: ● no one is born a hero (ofmd, bellhands, modern au) - As it turns out, doing his job from Sam’s apartment is far easier than Israel thought. ● we make our choices and take what comes (ofmd, eventual steddyhands, historical fantasy) - “Maybe I think you’re worth the risk?” Sam winks at him cheekily. No amount of cheap embellishments like this could cover up the raw honesty in his voice, though. ● Sea of Regret, Knife of Redemption (dishonored, Daud/Thomas, canon divergence, spymaster Daud) - They walk into the throne room, and suddenly Daud is faced with Jessamine Kaldwin once again, only this time, her eyes aren’t wide open in shock and pain, she’s not screaming and trying to protect her child. This time she’s nothing more than a face on a banner. This time it’s her who stabs Daud in the gut.

thank you for the ask! 💙 (and sorry it took me so long 🙈)

#ask game #my writing

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litrouke-works · 1 year

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January Postmortem

(I know this is a Goncharov blog now, but i ought to wrap up my IFComp entry, I guess. Here are some of my thoughts on the game.)

THE SHORT VERSION

I’m not very good at saying things directly; I prefer to dress them up in stories and let people make of the anecdotes what they will. So we’ll open this postmortem with one such story.

Once upon a time, many bad things happened to me. When I was telling my friend about one of them, she said, “I’m sorry that happened to you.” And me being me, I replied, “Do you mind using a different phrase? Maybe, I’m sorry you had to deal with that or I’m sorry you went through that or wow that sucks – any of those would be fine.”

I’m aware that I’m not the hero of anyone’s story. But even if I’m not the hero, at least let me be the protagonist of my life. Let me deal with things; let me endure things; let me go through them. Don’t let them happen to me as if I’m already stretched out decaying in the ground.

And that’s pretty much all there is to the game. Could’ve saved myself a lot of hours by writing that instead! So thanks for reading, and as a special reward, here’s my playlist for January. Once again, me being me, it’s a playlist of poetry, not music. 😊 Enjoy!

THE LONG VERSION

Before we get into the meat of it, a clarification: I’ll use January to refer to the work as a whole (which I will also call a story, a game, a thing, whatever) and January to refer to the protagonist.

Also warnings for spoilers and for very frank discussions of suicide, gore, bodily functions, vulgar language, etc.

So January’s story has been kicking around in my head for some time, maybe 3-5 years, but I couldn't find a good reason to share it with other people. It was just another apocalyptic story about some sad guy, a genre woefully oversaturated and out of vogue even five years ago. Some of the scenes survived from early drafts nearly verbatim (including the opening line, which has never changed), but most did not. For example, in the canonical version of the story (yes, my personal canon is different from my published canon), January finds a dog as well, who is a perfect delight. But Dog’s arrival botched the pacing of the story and sweetened the scenes too much, so she had to be cut.

Anyway, while I was nudging the idea of January’s story around in my mind, two things happened. First, I was working on a research project about how people cope with major life shifts, especially illness, via storytelling and the re-imagination of self through narrative [see: The Wounded Storyteller by Arthur Frank]. And second, the many aforementioned bad things happened to me. Between my own experiences and the narrative theories I was studying, I felt that I could do something meaningful with January’s story. I wanted to use interactive fiction to show the linkage between moments across time and between the internal and external self, in ways that linear prose can't.

As a result, I think of the story as functioning on three-ish levels.

Level One

First, there is the literal plot. As many reviewers noted, this is the least important of the three. Guy survives apocalypse; his brother and sister-in-law get infected; he feels mortally responsible for their deaths, but can’t quite bring himself to commit suicide; he spends the next year working through the guilt and grief; he adopts Cat along the way; eventually he returns to the other survivors and resolves to stay alive for now.

Happy to answer specific questions about the plot, if folks are curious! But I won’t bog us down with details here.

Level Two

Second, there is the meta plot. As mentioned above, January is a story about storytelling, or more precisely, it is a story about how autobiographical storytelling assists in reforming the concept of self after a major life rupture. Hence the epigraph of the game:

One of story's primary purposes is to lay claim to experience. Autobiographical storytelling can take personal experience back from silence, shame, fear, or oblivion. It says, "I cherish this" or "This haunts me."

It asserts the significance of events in one's life: "This happened to me." "I did this." "This is part of who I am." "This should not or will not disappear, and I act to preserve it by turning it to words and shaping them as story."

Initially this concept was going to be more, let’s say, heavy-handed. More explicit, with four+ versions of each scene involving revisions, removals, and additions of commentary from January as he gradually shook off the coma of grief and refashioned the telling of each scene to better suit his new sense of self.

For various reasons: no. This plan was not only logistically unsound, but also narratively questionable because January did not want to speak for most of the story; he certainly did not want to add cutesy notes to the detritus of his life. So I aimed to unfold the concept in a more natural way, with descriptions progressing from abstracted, painfully detailed and impersonal landscapes, to a more natural flow of action and commentary, to casual cussing and chattiness with the cat, and finally to first-person POV.

Not that it is an entirely linear progression. The narrative—the narrator—the author—all of us argue constantly and intertextually with each other about what should be kept in the story, about what “should not or will not disappear.” Indeed, there were many times that I continued to work on the game only because I promised myself that I'd delete it all when I was done, once I had properly excised this from myself.

I finally managed to counter that argument with, “Well, but what if someone else benefits from it?” I find comfort in consuming media about suicide when I feel that way, and there’s a separate essay here about normalizing and validating mental health struggles, but let’s table that one for now. But knowing how I appreciate that kind of media myself, it seemed petty, if not outright unkind, to refuse to share January.

That particular arguments comes through, for example, in the post-POV-shift train scene. January relates how he peeled the dying woman off the frozen train and wrapped her in a tarp "just in case" she changes her mind, as he did. The woman is, by all accounts, a half-corpse already and actively being devoured by an omen of death, but until you are sitting there feeling yourself die, you don’t know, I promise you, you don’t know whether you will change your mind. And far be it from him to decide for her—so here is the tarp, here is the story. Do with it what you will.

This concept also crystallizes in the final pre-POV-shift scene and the POV shift itself. As January falls ill with fever, he has a nightmarish remembrance from his childhood, opening with, “In the story he told himself about his life, death found him one night…” It’s one of the more inelegant phrases in the game, in the story he told himself about his life, but it’s exactly how it needed to be said. Every scene that has been presented to the reader is part of the story that January tells himself about his life. What you read was not his life. It was not even a factual attempt to recount his life; it is only the version(s) of the story that he chooses to tell himself.

This is critical, both to the reader and to January, and he tries to stress to us the fictionality of his account, many times, in many ways. He says that he cannot have slept for multiple days after the fever and the dream of drinking from the bowl of stars with Cat; he cannot have survived his initial suicide attempt in the parking lot; he should not have heard gunshots by the sisters’ house without glimpsing his pursuer or attracting zombies; he should have smelled the hanged man rotting; he should have noticed the presence of the little girl in the dogtrot house sooner, or she should’ve already been dead. And of course, he should have killed himself after they died. (And probably a cat shouldn’t be able to speak to him or understand him.)

Guilt and grief contribute to the instability of his account, but they don’t fully explain it. I do not want to pitch this as an unreliable narrator whose memories are wracked by trauma—quite the opposite. Rather than treating memories as sacred truths that should (or even could) be accurate, memories in January are tools of self-examination, things to be laid out and sifted through in an effort to process trauma. If the memories need to be reworked, details fudged, inconsistencies introduced, in order to make them fit better into his new self, all the better. There’s no one left alive to tell him that he’s remembering things wrong anyway.

(Sidenote: as someone who tends toward SDAM, I have a pretty irreverent view of memories. And I know that the memories I do have are factually inaccurate. I know this because I transitioned genders in adulthood, and yet all my childhood memories have been revised to fit my real gender, not the one I mistakenly happened to be as a child. In my memories, people always call me by the right name, even though that name didn’t exist twenty years ago.)

I want to highlight one more example of revisionary self-history in January that does not involve the POV shift. In the second scene of the game, in which January explores the dogtrot house, he describes the pain of his bruised ankle thus: “He breathed through the red. He imagined the bruise oozing through his sock like an open wound, dyeing the wool a deep, mashed, mulberry purple.”

Many months later, after January mercy-kills the hanged man, he describes the scene thus: “Red spilled from its neck. Pure blood red, not bilious or spoilt-black. From the collar of his shirt up to his chin, the man's neck was mashed mulberry with deep bruises, and these must have continued into his face, but he could not see the face now and did not want to remember.”

To the reader, chronologically the ankle description comes first. But this is a narrative illusion. Everything in the game has already happened by the time the first scene loads. Thus, when we read the earliest scenes, we have to view them through the lens of the later ones—that is, January himself views his earlier memories through the lens of later events, as all humans do. To be specific, when January tries to think of how to describe his bruised ankle, his mind twitches back to the morbid sight of the hanged man’s throat (that he “did not want to remember” but that insists on being remembered anyway), and he uses that real event as a blueprint to imagine how his pain might appear.

A couple reviewers asked why anyone would bother to read the scenes out of order. I think this is the heart of the answer—because in January’s mind, the scenes do not proceed in order of chronology, they proceed in order of random association, just as you might remember a pair of birthday parties from when you were twenty and when you were twelve. The memories/scenes float together in a pool of associations. They gossip and converse with each other, stealing descriptions, reusing phrases, imprinting later images on earlier events, and referencing later events that the reader hasn’t experienced yet, although January has. Accessing them out of order opens the door to serendipitous connections between descriptions and better reflects the sensation of remembrance, I think—but as we’ve covered, I have a pretty weird memory system, so take that with a grain of salt.

I swear we are almost done with this section. LAST THING, I do want to address the POV shift directly. There is something very me about writing a story obsessed with agency while refusing to give the reader any. Sorry! But this goes back to the fact that January is telling himself this story. He is not telling it to you, you are not a character or an actor here, and so your agency is largely non-existent and unimportant. What matters is January waking up, re-becoming the protagonist of his own story, and eventually claiming ownership of it via the POV shift. I think this is the most obvious part of the game to grasp, so I won’t dwell on it any longer. 😊

Or will I. (Yes, I wrote this section at 1:45am, how can you tell.)

Level Three

So we have the basic plot, we have the meta plot, and now we have… let’s call it, the personal plot, as the third layer of this shitcake. We are now stepping completely outside the narrative/the narrator and into my little brain.

Earlier I mentioned that I was researching how people use stories to cope, especially in the context of illness. Let us use “illness” very broadly to mean “disruptive health event,” anything from a severe injury to the development of a disability to a cancer diagnosis to mental health issues to chronic pain conditions to et cetera. In short, something that fucks you up.

Let us now imagine that many of the bad things that happened to me can be counted as “illness” and that they did fuck me up. Finally, let us allow the author to project their own grief and recovery process onto the two previous levels of plot. Et voila, we have a personal disability plot hiding in the game the whole time.

I don’t want to say too much about this, because one, it is quite personal, two, I don’t want it to affect other people’s readings of January–I don’t want to impose this as the “right” reading, and three, there’s so much overlap between this and the previous section that not much more needs to be said. We are still dealing with a life disruption, a loss of sense of self, an adriftness, a feeling of one’s life traveling on without you, of things Happening to You, a painful self-examination and reconstruction of a new self, and finally an ascent to some kind of agency.

The one thing I do want to highlight in terms of an illness/disability reading is the motif of eating that runs throughout January. Healthy folks may not immediately connect eating to illness, but boy howdy, are they intertwined. Eating is a nightmare for almost any kind of severe health condition. For example: you get the nausea and vomiting from chemo, you get the constipation from pain meds, you get your body trying to self-destruct via diabetes or celiac if you eat this or don’t eat it or eat too much or too little, you get a ravenous appetite from the mood swings, you get your appetite killed by stimulants, you are spitting up acid, you are shitting liquid, your fork won’t stop shaking, and you can’t get the food to your mouth. And so on.

Eating is such a fascinating, multi-valent concept in fiction. In this game alone, it encompasses the zombies’ unrelenting, deranged voraciousness and the tender little sight of January choking down kibble so that Cat feels safe enough to eat with him and the anxious morbidity of January insisting that Cat eat him after he dies. Which is to say, there are so many ways to read the concept of eating, but I’ll limit myself to commenting on it from this angle.

The first several scenes frame food within frustration: it is a necessity (January forces down the kibble in the dogtrot house, thinking of it strictly as “sustenance”), it is a repulsion (the charred meat in the train scene, mostly likely human flesh; the guilty dwelling on meat after the bird dream), and it is a thing-to-be-earned (the mangy cat doesn’t deserve kibble, January remarks, but we get the sense that maybe January doesn’t feel like he deserves it either). Ultimately, food and eating are symptoms of being alive, and that is anathema to January in the early game. Each meal forces him to recognize how hard he is working to stay alive despite the feeling that he ought to be dead. It’s a slap in the face.

In the mid-game, eating/surviving becomes something more rote, still unpleasant but not as guilt-wrought. January eats alongside Cat because that’s what they do. After Cat tries to feed him an oriole when he’s constipated and skipping meals, January later tries to return the favor by luring in a whole flock of birds for sick Cat to hunt. (Is it notable that both of their avian attempts to feed each other are failures?) Of course eating/surviving/being alive also runs the risk of being dead, as highlighted by the scene where Cat seems on the cusp of death after eating some plant he shouldn’t have. While pleading with Cat, January asks what he’s supposed to do with all the food he scavenged for Cat—what is he supposed to do with all this effort at being alive, if it just comes to this again? And the thing is, it will always come to this. All the living in the world will always come to death. This is the heart of January’s own near-death scene, in the next month, when he sees a gray sky full of ghosts and declares “there was no hope in it.” There’s no particular sunburst of revelation after the fever dream, just a realization that he’s still hungry and still alive and that Cat will sit and wait until January’s ready to eat with him.

(Ah, the bowl of stars that he drinks from. That image/phrase is a direct rip from a very famous horror novel, and if anyone can name it, one free cat cuddle to you! [Must supply your own cat.])

I could pick at more details, but you get the gist here. A last note on illness/disability: I didn’t really get into the horror genre until I was unwell, and then I used horror movies both to escape from pain and to realize the pain, to watch someone else suffer and nod from my seat and say, That’s it! That’s it, that’s what’s inside me. You all can see it too, now. Apocalyptic settings are a bit different, but related—it’s not so much about the pain and fear made manifest as the loss. Becoming disabled is very much a private apocalypse. Swaths of society are lost to you. You cannot go there; you cannot participate in the thing; you cannot create what you used to. Please don’t take this as an invitation to debate inclusivity measures—just believe me for a second when I say some doors are closed, and there is nothing you can do but accept it and find a new door to open.

January doesn’t spend very much time lamenting what’s been lost, not in tangible terms like missing pizza or electricity. In fact, he regularly refuses to engage with the remaining shreds of civilization. He’s not comfortable staying inside the apartment of the woman with the painted nails, nor entering the cottage in the garden, and though he makes some allusions to camping in houses from time to time, this is never shown on screen. He only tells us about sleeping outside in his tent. So, we might say that he copes with the apocalyptic loss of society by rejecting any desire to reconstruct it. Instead he forms his own routines, as many disabled people do.

A favorite scene for many reviewers was a short one in which January gives new names to the flowers he doesn’t recognize. Loss perfuses this scene, but so does freedom—the realization that you can shed what was lost and reconfigure what still exists. The flower scene presents a tidy bow, I think, on top of the messy package that is illness, grief, trauma, and autobiographical reality rewritten.

Thanks

Finally, some thanks. Thanks to Sjoerd for teaching me how to use TweeGo, huge huge thanks to Eli (@addictivities) for working with me on producing the art for the game, thanks to @agnesmontague for getting me started thinking about this postmortem, thanks to all who read January, and thanks to those who attempted to read it and said “absolutely fucking not” for their own well-being.

I’m still completely gobsmacked about placing in the top ten, and I really appreciate all the feedback that folks have given me, both publicly and privately. Take care of yourselves, everybody, and if you ever want to talk through stuff, feel free to reach out. <3

#game: january #twine game #interactive fiction #game development #ifcomp

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jandiaries · 11 months

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Conundrum and Chemicals

A nameless main character. That’s who she is. I followed her life and learned about the subtle difference of sleeping from suffering. She was a hateful character but I do sympathize with her.

She slept and suffered, splurged, isolated, medicated herself, hallucinate, commiserate, made revenge, amend, but still, she died in the end...

We sleep in order to regain strength. In her case she sleeps in order to feel the peace that comes with nothingness. She said she just initially wanted some downers to drown her thoughts and judgments, since the constant barrage made it hard not to hate everyone and everything. She thought life would be more tolerable if her brain was slower to condemn the world around her.

Sleeping was her coping mechanism, trauma response, and leisure pursuit, all at once. Only sleeping made her feel good. “Nothing else could ever bring me such pleasure, such freedom, the power to feel and move and think and imagine, safe from the miseries of my waking consciousness”.

She thought that when she wakes up, she’ll be renewed, reborn or become a whole new person. There’s a longing in her character, a void she’s trying to fill. She’s trying to live and find and feel a sense of being.

She then tried a well planned chemical hibernation project. Swallowing Ambien, Rozerem, Solfoton, Ativan, Xanax, Trazodone, Nembutal, Benadryl…Infermiterol, and all the other drugs I could no longer remember. Hoping that it’ll numb the pain away.

It was her state of false happiness.

The moment she takes all those chemicals in, it’s as if she’s a different person. Lost but at the same time present. Her presence was in her created delusion and just doing the unimaginable. All her chemical consumption has already altered her thought process I guess. She did horrible things but I am fully aware that I am in no position to question her morals. She created her own reality to run away from the excruciating pain of her existence. It was her breakfree moment.

She lived a life full of pain. At the end, she managed to say that pain is not the only touchstone for growth. Did she ever feel good? “What a conundrum.” Her psychiatrist would probably say.

-jan, thoughtballoon

June 7, 2023

Book Review: ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation’ a Novel by Ottessa Moshfegh.

My Year of Rest and Relaxation is a 2018 novel by American author Ottessa Moshfegh. ‘MYOR’ is set in New York City in 2000 to 2001 and follows an unnamed protagonist as she gradually escalates her use of prescription medications in an attempt to sleep for an entire year.

I feel like I was with her everytime she drops her core-hitting monologues. I was there as she narrates her life. She is a disgusting woman — for lack of better term to describe “some” of her actions yet I found myself sympathizing with her. Some pages, I just have to sit down, take a sigh and stop. What a woman. Maybe those were all her trauma response? Maybe for the lack of love in her life? Yes she is deprived of love. Does that justify her actions? No, not at all. Maybe I’m over-analyzing and she’s just trying to navigate her life. I do feel sorry for her. She lived a life full of sadness. I feel like I was inside her character. I was trying to understand where she was coming from. Reading the book was a ride. The narrative took me to highs. I know I will not fully decipher why she did all those things. Only she knows and only she can express her pain.

After finishing the book, I can say that it was A LOT to grasp but I did like it. Moshfegh made me feel certain emotions ig. It was good, but I think you should be mindful when you pick this one.

Cover Design: Ravenclaw (WeHeartIt via Pinterest) Graphics: Canva

#book review #books #ottessa moshfegh #my year of rest and relaxation

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godstrain · 11 months

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augheheue also hey guys does anyone else ever think about how wesker never seems to administer the shots of PG67A/W to himself? excella seems to be the one giving him the doses, and assuming he relied on it before RE5, then the responsibility probably was also on someone else who wesker was certain wouldn't try to fuck him up with it- but it raises the question of why he never just self administers.

there's a cutscene where excella is seen giving wesker his dose and she just sorta jabs him in the arm and he flinches like ok theres so much to be said about that, and most of it is WHO INJECTS ANYTHING LIKE THAT (from the healthcare perspective what the actual fuck sort of angle is that to jab someone with a needle??? no prep??? yikes) but the other part is if wesker thinks he's going to be a god why the heck is he reacting like that

my guess is it's the very human PTSD that he has from his childhood. as noted, project w started with like 100+ children from all over the world, but only 13 lived to adulthood. if we're using 18+ as adulthood, then that's a massive yikes- it's also said that dr. marcus had the students in spencer's school infect themselves if they were deemed unfit- and that's also massively fucked up. but even before that, there's the matter of the actual wesker children and what happened to the majority of them.

i'm no expert on literally anything related to genetics, but i know that just because someone has a gene doesn't mean it's expressed??? that's why there are dominant and recessive genes??? per the RE info on wesker:

Prior to his exposure to Progenitor Virus, like the other Project W test subjects, Albert had certain special genes considered "superior" in his blood that made him immune to viral infections symptoms.

idk if there's a way to test for that being an expressed gene in like. a lab via blood draws, but if there isn't, and also knowing how massively fucked up the entire project w was, i'll bet the way this was figured out was by just trying to get wesker sick by various means. and some of those might've been through injections. there's also this in the concept art of the S.T.A.R.S team- saying "believe it or not, wesker is the same age as barry, 38" idk why that's not believable necessarily, some people age with grace, but that implies some OTHER things.

so, let's say something's funky with how wesker ages on a DEEPER biological level- maybe he looks young because he's uhh been experimented on! spencer wanted to be a god and was using the kids in project w so that they would also be able to withstand the virus- and it's said that albert got weird superpowers whereas alex didn't and this may have been due to the fact that alex was sick and albert wasn't! so that means i wouldn't put it past spencer to be doing a bunch of funky experiments on the kids that involved like. slowing down the aging process to try to keep their bodies in some peak condition???

anyway, all of this just adds up to wesker likely having a phobia of needles (and likely a general mistrust for the healthcare system, because all he's ever witnessed and received is MORE FUCKERY), but he knows he needs the shots, but he sure isn't keen on doing it himself? which almost seems counterintuitive- if he's so worried about being hurt by things like this, why wouldn't he do it himself, but the man has NO healthy coping skills so... i guess that's that.

this was extremely scattered but i needed to ramble about it thanks for coming to my tedtalk

#➤ ONE DAY THERE WILL BE ASSOCIATED WITH MY NAME THE RECOLLECTION OF SOMETHING FRIGHTFUL‚ OF A CRISIS LIKE NO OTHER BEFORE ╱ • • • META ❞#needles #ask to tag

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agallimaufryofoddments · 1 year

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Hypothetically Heckling Hyperbolically

Scene: If Huey had been a couple years younger and able to overhear Ronny and Elmer’s peri-drowning conversation...

⁂

(TL;DR)

Ronny: Magic mirror of the sea, who is the unlikeliest to smile besides me?

Huey: Me.

Elmer: True that. Psyche! It’s me.

Ronny: Shit.

Elmer: Cope. I do. Anyway, you’re going to make Maiza smile, and you’re gonna like it. You’ll like it till you drop dead from smiling!

⁂

Ronny: Mortal, I can grant you power beyond your wildest dreams. Perfect immortality. Freezing time. Extreme farsightedness. Command over the human race. Money go brr. Anything. Anything! Think big. Bigger. BIGGER. Think deep.

“After thinking for a little while...”

Elmer: s m i l e

Ronny: Elaborate.

Elmer: Laugh from the bottom of your heart, at the top of your lungs, like you’re having fun, like you’re overjoyed. Woo me like one of your French girls, bright-eyed, rosy-cheeked, lips parted just so in the latest fashion of joie de vivre. Tell me how you smile, you who are called a demon, and what makes you really and truly happy.

Ronny: What? No. Who are you.

Huey: Addict. Smile Junkie. Joyster.

Ronny: Listen. Before you are two buttons. The red one can get you permanently clean on the spot. The blue one gets you a one-time BSOD except the :( is a :). Choose wisely.

Elmer: :)

Ronny:

Ronny: This is the most difficult, most challenging, most unfeasible wish ever asked of me. You ask for what is impossible now, nigh impossible in the near future, and forever the unlikeliest of the unlikely to occur.

Huey: Oh, God, don’t encourage him.

Elmer: so what I’m hearing is that there’s a chance

Huey: Elmer, remember when I asked you “would a man who had no personal experience with happy smiles be able to give them to others?” and you went ‘point taken?’ Think carefully.

Elmer: So, what you want to do, Ron, what you do in this sort of situations is you attach yourself to someone else in similar smileless straits, straits sans smiles to quote your French girls, and you make them your pet—pet project, yeah, and you just, you know, do what it takes until they give you a laugh right from the gut. Ron, I betcha anything you’ll be able to smile after that, I mean, we’re talking my tried and true methods here. And partner, if we reunite, smile then, because you owe me—I love ya, Ron, but I’ll find you, and you’d better be glad that you met me again. ‘I can smile now! How d’ya like them apples?!’ …I’ll even take a reason like that, so please, show me your smile.

Ronny: Methods?

Huey: His only one.

Ronny: Has it ever worked?

Huey: No.

Elmer: It worked on you.

Huey: You know which party he meant.

Elmer: Look, I was going to suggest that Ronny stick close to Maiza, what with the dead brother and other dead so-and-sos being a real bummer and all, but... I guess I could wish for Ronny to tag alone with me until I smile for real instead...

Ronny: Wait. Hold on. Wait, demon, there’s still time to change my wish—I hadn’t pressed it y—Maiza! I wish for Maiza! My mind is made up.

Elmer: Ah, you’ve chosen the blue button after all. I figured you would.

Huey: Dare I ask why you didn’t wish for my smile?

Elmer: Well... When weighing my options, I like to choose the one that has the highest chance of succeeding.

Huey: So that’s why you didn’t wish for a genuine smile to call your own, Mr. Empty Ending?!

Elmer: Words can’t hurt me :). Not if I’m empty, right? You should try it sometime oh wait you are. What was that about failed methods, again? Cheer up! You know you want to you. You’ll never best me in the sans émotions racket, so you may as well give up and smile. Come on. Give up. Embrace failure. It’s futile to grieve the dead, but to be so delusional as to try and Lazarus-Frankenstein your wife when not even Ronny can? Move on. Smile for me like your French mother.

Ronny: Mortal, heed me as I literally drown out your words via an ocean of hurt.

Elmer: Huey’s mom :) would know :) a thing or two about that :). Hey, Huey, look to your right, I think I can see Monica from here! Smile and wave!

Huey: The line is breaking up—sounds—gargling?—can’t hear—

Elmer: Remember, demon, that with but a smile you summon meeeee!

#Baccano!#Baccano #Ronny Schiatto #Huey Laforet #Elmer C. Albatross #Frankenstein won't be written for another 107 years of course.#I know my comedic exchanges are not -uh- funny (see those immortals superlatives reblogs) but I couldn't resist writing this one out.#I was jotting down some thoughts about Elmer not taking advantage of B!'s three Ds of insta-rewards (devouring / demon's wish / drugs) okay #and when I was reviewing the nitty-gritty of the wish itself—where Ronny can't smile on command #so Elmer gives him the hang with and help out Maiza condition with the reasoning that Ronny will smile at the end of it—#I realized :Oh. Elmer you absolute cad. That's your thing. The only thing you ever seem to try these days AND HOW'S THAT WORKED OUT?#Then there's Ronny (making the mistake of) admitting the wish is uniquely difficult. Uh oh.#Elmer *thrives* off the challenging cases. The worst of the problem children. Why? Because *he* is The Most Challenging Case of All.#I have thousands of words of notes/draft fragments for a write-up about how Elmer is drawn to and fixates on the series' mini-Elmers.#Anyway I reread Ronny's 'it's too difficult' objection and could HEAR Huey say you poor stupid fool you've encouraged him #next thing you know I abandon the notes-jotting to spend way too much time writing this post #disclaimer: Huey and his mother are never said to be living in a French village.

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azul-marie · 2 years

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not a request and idk if you've answered this before but who're your faves from hypmic & paralive? ( ´ ∀ ` )ﾉ

hello! i have indeed answered the part for my paralive favorites right here — feel free to give it a quick read! but in short, my paralive faves are: yohei, hokusai, kanata, allen, and zen. (in no particular order, i must add.)

as for my hypmic favorites, they include: ichiro, kuko, rosho, doppo, and sasara.

ichiro — poster boy baby! i honestly fell in love with his overall design when i first got into hypmic, even before i knew too much about the actual project itself, but luckily i ended up being a big fan of his character too. dorky, sweet, handsome, strong, family-oriented? yes, please.

kuko — the feral love of my life!! he’s absolutely one of my faves, hands down. and in my opinion, one of the best characters in hypmic to date! everything about kuko is just…so extra. from his troublemaking, crass attitude, to the wild lengths he goes to for his loved ones. he’s the peak of my favorite “rough/tough delinquent with a heart of gold” type beat i fall for all the time. he’s probably the one singular character i wish to be my irl boyfriend on a daily basis. (lmao)

rosho — love of my Life. he is such a dork and i can’t believe how in love i am with him. love love love how supportive he is of his kiddos + how he wants his students to achieve their dreams. it’s a sentiment that’s extremely close to my heart and to see it so purely from him makes me soft. i also would like for him to be my boyfriend. (please) the moment his nendoroid drops i’m buying him out.

doppo — i’m not sure if there’s a single hypmic fan who doesn’t like/relate to doppo lmao?? it is so funny to me that in the anime, he was mostly ignored by matenro’s fans, when he is, if not, one of the most popular hypmic characters in the entire series. i want to protect him and cook for him and maybe smooch him a bit. in no particular order.

sasara — in all honesty he recently just joined my roster of faves, so i’m still navigating my feelings towards him!! i really like what a wacky character he is lmao…he’s really out here just. Making Jokes. i think his coping of his deeper traumas via humor is also incredibly relatable to most. also, he’s uh…really handsome LMAO i really just looked at him one day and was like “yeah, i have a crush on you i guess.” also love his little wiggles during manga panels.

there you go! all my favorite boys — for now! i really do enjoy hypmic’s entire cast as a whole, but these are the boys near and dear to my heart. thank you for messaging me, and i hope you’re doing really well. ❤️

#sorry i’ve been gone i’ve been watching/rewatching moon knight all week LMAO #prepare for an onslaught of steven grant fics when i return. maybe. possibly. probably.

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the-stove-is-divorced · 18 hours

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Op i have a question about your writing process

I'm trying to make a project rn, and one of the problem I'm stuck at is making characters feel more than just a few trait. Like, characterization wise, what I'm trying to do is make them more,,, humane??

I'm not sure how to describe it but in your writings, characters always feel like their own selfs? Like, they have words they repeat more than others, they notice certain things faster than other certain things, and even the way they talk is /them/

The way they anger or react to things and all of that is usually unique to their own selves and what I'm trying to ask is, how do you characterize your characters? How do you add more than one layer to them? What exactly do you ask yourself to understand more about these characters?

Just, how do you characterize?

(also bonus question how do I find a destination to my writing? Cause there is several ending in my mind and all depends on a specific character, so what one should I choose and why??)

I’m flattered I can hopefully be of assistance!! (*´▽`*) All of these are difficult questions, but I’ll do my best! And thank you kindly! ♡ This got long, but I wanted to make myself clear!

For characterizations, I think about a lot of things that I'm condensing into the main question(s) of:

How and how often do they get in their own way? What do they fear, what do they want, and how do they act upon both? Are they actually successful in both? Either one? Do they think they're successful in either? How do they cope with failure? With victory? What's their mood? And then how would that mood impact their goal, like how their fears will impact their pursuits of xyz.

"Want -> but fear -> so act" setups help me keep characters in character! Like how Mark wants to save lives, but he's scared of confronting his father, so he's convinced someone else should handle his Dad. MK also wants to save the day, but he's scared he isn't worthy, so he's trying to prove himself by dealing with the enemy (mostly) on his own. Steven 2.0 (more fear driven) wants to prove his way of thinking is correct, but is scared his way he's lived was never necessary, so he doubles down to avoid thinking he was wrong. This helps gives their general goals way more shape, as their fears narrow down their decisions, and in turn, makes them feel more human, especially when they make mistakes (getting in their own way)!

Wanting this, but they fearing this, so they do this, also what helps me just destinations! Imma use how much can you fit under your skin as an example again, considering it's actually completed! Keep in mind I am a "chapter by chapter with vague plot points or scene(s) in mind that are barely connected" kind of author, as I am not a detailed planner and will never be ＼٩(๑`^´๑)۶／

Anyways, MK's main problem is he doesn't think he's worthy (via above), and his mood is notably anxious (he has his worst enemy in his head), desperate (to somehow succeed in doing this on his own), and irritable (from stress), SO he's more prone to make mistakes (which he’ll beat himself up about) and thus get in his own way. Now we can guess where the story will go (failure and desperation), because as more things fail, the more MK will unravel, worsening his moods until uh oh! Breaking point. ٩(× ×)۶

It’s also way easier to guess where the story needs to end, emotionally, by how they start. If MK starts the fic thinking he’s not good enough/unworthy, he needs to remember that he always good enough by the end (for a happy ending at least). If he doesn’t depend on anyone to help him, he should succeed only because they are helping him (lesson learned, huzzah!). How this happens depends on how you set this all up and how much you’re gonna bring back. Like, in this fic, MK constantly compares LBD to ice, painfully cold, so by contrast he needs warmth, which meant I needed to bring in something to create that warmth, hence bringing in the trigun furnace in the last chapter!

In terms of specific narrative characterizations from pov, like what words they use, what they repeat, what they stress, paying attention to their dialogue and guessing what they would say, are much harder for me to explain tbh (″ロ゛) !!! I write dialogue by literally imagining whether or not I can hear them saying this (mostly, and I'll re-watch clips of them speaking to help with this). I also consider whether this character would be this honest? This blunt? Additionally, do they ramble? When do they ramble? Do they choose their words carefully, or more loosely? And internally, what do they misunderstand? What do they miss? Do their thoughts contradict their feelings/actions? Are they trying to convince themselves something? And again, mood! Do their fears/anger/pride get in the way of what they understand?

I think misunderstands, misconceptions, limitations help make them feel human. What do they miss? How do they limit themselves? What mistakes do they make? Which sounds incredibly negative, but I found it very compelling, haha! (///￣￣///) Failure and success are equally important for characters, especially what it takes for them to accomplish either.

I hope these are helpful? Again, I've never really reflected on my own process beforehand, and I'm certainty not an expert by a long shot! ヾ(。＞＜)シ A lot of my writing is constant re-working, rewording, complete overhauls and scrapped chunks, if not whole chapters. I pride myself on focusing on consistent characterization (on top of being very flowery and descriptive since it's what I would want to read), as it's infinitely compelling thinking about putting a mf in a situation. If they act out of character, why put them in this situation in the first place?

Again, hope this helps in any way possible! (´꒳`)♡ Please let me know if I need to elaborate on anything, I'll do my best. (´｡• ᵕ •｡`) ♡

#asks #my fics #im so glad ya asked !!! :) i wish you luck on your project!!!!#my writing #i even re-edited this a couple times haha!#im a rambling lil fella i can't help it haha!!!

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policemanofprincesspark · 5 months

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”You have to think like an anti too if you want to figure this out, because you need to go in with the mindset of actually trying to debunk the theory rather than prove it, because, if you're trying to prove it, it's a lot easier for a ton of bias to slip in, like ignoring contradicting evidence.”

This is my biggest problem with the fandom right now. Larry being real, specifically the fanfiction version where they are possessive and protective of each other and larrie fans who are the only fans they actually like between daydreaming about a sugary-sweet happily ever after involving their kids wearing 1D merch to the reunion tour, is treated as a given and all “evidence” involves working backwards from that forgone conclusion. X has to be true for larry to be real, therefore X is true full stop. Larries dismiss everything they don’t like as fake or something the boys were held at gunpoint to do if it doesn’t fit their narrative.

“Harry doesn’t actually want to be an actor, he’s being forced by management in order to make more money off his sex symbol image.”

“Louis doesn’t actually want to move away from a pop sound to something more rock, it’s management trying to alienate the female fan base to court straight men.”

Could these things be true? Sure, but most of the conversations around them don’t bring up any actual evidence of these arguments, instead falling back on “this isn’t the real them.” Which of course they totally know. Actual documentation and discussion of potential industry abuse is being lost in the slurry of fans’ coping strategy for their faves not fitting the perfect image they’ve projected onto them.

YES! I so agree with this. Okay, so, for example, there was that one phone call that was recorded by a fan where Louis was ranting about "all these crazy Larry fans" and asking them if they were recording. I saw SO many other larries literally saying it was fake and it was someone else's voice. I mean, listen, I can't say for a fact that it is his voice, but these people just immediately dismiss everything that they don't like or that makes them angry/uncomfortable. I understand there is a heavy emotional investment into the idea of Louis and Harry being victims, but, in reality, we don't know what's going on.

I am actually going to be working on a post about what I think could potentially be occurring instead of this idea of contractual closeting, by using an example of a gay couple who came out and had very distinct parallels to Louis and Harry. I mean, I'm never going to say I know the how's and why's of their closeting, but I don't think it's as straightforward as "they're victims of illegal contracts!", which is a theory based on a whopping load of nothing. I have seen Rebecca Ferguson and a few other past XFactor contestants who were on the same season as 1D in 2010 or around that time come out and talk about blackmail, coerced contracts, etc., so I don't think you can completely write it off as impossible. If I had to just make a quick guess, I'd say they were being pressured just like anyone else in the industry and that Louis might be scared to come out for some reason or another, and, since there is a lot of money involved concerning Harry, there could be some blackmail or coerced contracts like I said. Anyway, I have more evidence to back up different possibilities (they're just possibilities with some minor evidence, of course). I might make a post covering them all one day.

Here is a snippet of one of the posts I'm working on which talks briefly about Simon's dressing down:

Basically, there aren't any examples I can find of people in the industry being contractually closeted. It's always "I was afraid I'd destroy my career" or "I was afraid I'd be letting my managers/band members down and ruining their careers, and I felt a responsibility." So, if Louis and Harry are being closeted via illegal contracts, this would be an isolated case.

Now, do I think they both want out of the closet? Considering some of their obvious signalling and their "wink, wink" moments (such as Louis pointing at a Harry sign and yelling "yes!" or Harry singing "Lou" instead of "you" and immediately laughing), I don't think they are ashamed of their sexuality or that they enjoy pretending to be straight. But could there be some fear concerning coming out? It's quite possible.

(LET ME MAKE IT CLEAR THAT THESE IMAGES DO NOT REFLECT MY OPINION NOR ARE THEY TRYING TO SERVE AS A LEGITIMATE THEORY; THEY ARE SIMPLY POSSIBILITIES THAT I AM PUTTING FORTH, SINCE THERE IS MINOR EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THEM)

Anyway, yeah. I'm tired of people stating their mere hypotheses as fact when they either have no evidence or very minor evidence to support them (like the contractual closeting theory; which... tbh, when larries act like that theory is fact, it kind of discredits us because it makes antis immediately dismiss the concept of Larry since contractual closeting isn't legal nor has it happened before, when we could just... not act like that theory is fact and instead consider other possibilities and quite frankly the more likely possibilities such as industry pressure or coercion).

#ask #most of our 'theories' aren't really theories but merely discussions about possibilities #we don't know that much #larry proof #larry stylinson

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