#many topics but one of them is impossible to talk about here because person in question will see. next topic then | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

Total funding amounts to $125.3M.

#many topics but one of them is impossible to talk about here because person in question will see. next topic then

rosey-tta · 7 months

Text

is it a controversial topic to say that making the reader's appearance overly detailed, giving them a title and a overly detailed backstory (mary sue backstory often), focusing more on their pov which reveals their personality heavily that some readers would NOT relate too, not making it poc friendly, saying it's gn but using personal pronouns and characters calling them gender specific nicknames (princess/ baby girl...etc), is it controversial to say you didn't write an x reader fanfic but an x OC and you're tricking us to read it?? lmfao i think people have the right to be mad ESPECIALLY if it's not gn or poc friendly when you claimed it was... like i love writers and i appreciate the works ALL of you are putting yall are awesome for giving us this fanfics but PLEASE BFR

if your (y/n) is someone the reader can't relate to it's not x reader. simple as that. idk why ppl are scared of saying this.

PS; i deleted a stupid reply that got mad at x black!reader for being exclusively for black people when black/poc friendly fanfics are already a minority when the harmful majority is very european centered (white people specifically) and even very anti black in some cases. don't twist my post to be fucking racist/sexist/homophobic/fatphobic or ableist because that's not what i'm talking about at all ffs. to the poc and other minority creators who are writing for their people and for unconventional, non-white beauty standards i love you, you're amazing and a straight up war veteran in some of these fandom, geez. (this is for context if anyone looks at the replies. and to tell yall to be decent human being cuz some of you are bold ASF.)

PS 2; i didn't want to address this but, some people pointed out that writing ambiguos x reader is impossible and hard. that's not the case at all, look at the most popular fanfics in a fandom x reader. they ARE ambiguous and general stuff! such as jealousy headcanons, general dating headcanons, prompts, general kinks or the like.... why? because you didn't give the reader too many details or made them mfing black widow or madoka kaname, who'll be relating to that???? you might say "oh i'm writing for myself" or "this is my self-insert don't like it don't read" cool, we all have self-inserts. stop tagging it as x reader however. that's it. tags exist for a reason, and you not using it properly is your problem not the readers who have been misled.

Ps 3 PLEASE READ: ❗❗❗

I read what other people opposing this post said and I absolutely get how difficult it is to write for ambiguous readers. I'm deeply sorry for making it seem as though I'm berating writers when I don't share my work here on tumblr. My post was NOT meant to insult creative writing OR to say that putting the slightest bit of detail on your headcanons, fanfics, scenarios etc is a terrible thing because I assure you it's NOT. But please for the love of god tag your work correctly. THAT'S IT. And give warnings and heads ups about what your writing contains. If it has fem!reader only tag it as fem!reader, if there's mention of physical characteristics specific to one race others or group may not relate to PLEASE give a warning. I know the content here on tumblr is free and I like many here are SUPER grateful for it.

I don't appreciate entitled readers and ik how frustrating it is to get backlash from something that you do for free and it brings you immense joy, but please remember your work is also public and by that it WILL be subjected to criticism and feedback however it may be. And of course I'd never support harrassment or rudeness on any party giving or receiving feedbacks.

Remember that tags and warnings exist for a reason and you're free to write WHATEVER as long as you publicize it keeping in mind the target audience you're reaching. Of course people will not be happy if you state your work is something that ultimately isn't. But imo if you give a prior information then no one should harrass or demand of you anything. This post was made to address the lack of honestly with certain content, the non-poc friendly fanfics and MY PERSONAL OPINIONS. You're free to agree and you're free to disagree.

I read the replies and tags and I understand both sides of the argument, but I also needed to clarify what this post is NOT about. Of course any harrassment or rude comments will be ignored. You're free to have your opinions and preferences and free to say them as long as it isn't problematic.

I also removed the x reader because I understand how it would be hypocritical of me but I truly needed to get people's opinions on a wider scale. Again I apologize if I offended everyone and if I came off as rude or entitled i promise you that's not the case, And you can't even say I think the fanfics should be centered around me since most with the unconventional beauty standards and personality within them do not match me in any way and that's okay 💁‍♀️

#genshin impact #honkai star rail #csm #jjk #fandoms #fandom: discourse #fandom discourse #(y/n)#hopefully i covered everything regarding my take and the feedback i received.#also sorry but i won't allow anon messages since i already got soms nasty ones and I'm not bothering to argue with someone-#that either was crude or gave threats #if you misinterpret my post as something as me restricting writers or being entitled it's on you and your reading comprehension

1K notes · View notes

ambermotta · 6 months

Text

Protection Magic: Some Important Concepts

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

Long post based on my experience and research. Meant to be informative. I don't claim to know the absolute truth.

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

Protection magic is any type of work meant to protect A from B, and there are many ways that this can be done: prayers, charms, talismans, tokens, casting circles, setting up wards, visualization. The list can go on and on because it can be done in many different ways and combining many different methods.

But methods are not the topic of this post today. No, today I would like to talk about some key concepts to keep in mind before getting started on making protections and keeping them effective.

The Importance of Cleansing

Before doing any protection work I like to do a cleansing. Imagine you have an open water bottle, and because it was open, a lot of dirt has found its way into it over time. You decide to seal the bottle so no dirt comes in, but you don't pour out the old water, so you end up sealing it in. Yes, you'll keep more dirt from coming in, but the muck is still there.

It is easier to see this being applied to a physical location, but I personally also apply this to personal protective tokens. I feel they work better when you are taking care of your energies by doing regular cleanses and managing internal negativity.

Important Definitions

Protection ≠ Banishing ≠ Cleansing

I feel a lot of people are under the impression that these are all the same. I think they all work together towards a similar goal, but their jobs are different.

Protection: protecting something from something

Banishing: driving out entities

Cleansing: clearing out energy

You can do cleansing, banishing, and protection at the same time, but that doesn't mean they are the same. You can do a ritual including all of them, but you can also just do a cleansing or just do warding (which is a form of protection).

Note: cleansing is not restricted to “negative energy”. You can cleanse any kind of energy. Exemple: a friend of yours decides tarot is not for them and hands down their deck to you. If you wanna work with that deck it is highly advisable that you do a thorough cleansing of it and then infuse it/consecrate it with the energies you want. It's not that your friend has “bad” energy, it's just that you might not want to work with the same energies they have, or use a tool that has someone else's energy in it.

Not Necessarily a Lazy Job

One important thing with protection magic is that no matter how strong or how successful are at doing it is that it is not failproof. I have yet to see protection work that lasts forever, and there may be a few reasons for it.

Negativity also comes from within

Imagine you have a fish inside an open fish tank. Just like the bottle example earlier, you decide to put a lid on so you prevent leaves from falling into the tank and polluting the water. However, there's a fish, a living being in there, and it produces waste. It is impossible for the fish to live without producing waste. If you don’t regularly clean the water, ammonia and fecal matter will build up.

In this analogy, you are the fish. I am the fish. Humans literally cannot live without ever having a negative thought or feeling, it is part of our existence and we have to live with it. No one lives in constant bliss.

That doesn't mean we have to live in the muck though. That's why cleansing yourself is important.

No one is immune to the environment

Here I have another analogy for you. Imagine you're facing a harsh winter, but you are safe in the security and warmth of your house. Your house is protected from the cold so you don't even mind it. However, you have to go outside. You dress up, go out and you feel very, very cold. You could perhaps wear something warmer, but it will never feel the same as home. Yet it is better than going outside naked, no?

Same thing for energies. You can have protection, but depending on how strong the energy in the environment is you are sure to feel it to at least some degree. However it's best to have some protection than no protection at all.

And there is a difference between Feeling an energy and dwelling in it vs Feeling an energy and not letting it latch onto you.

Energy can wear off, and new energy can build up

Energy is ever changing, ever moving. If you do a strong protection spell once, it can last for a long while, but if you forget about it it will likely lose a lot of its strength over time. Some of what you put out there might wear off and be substituted by something else. The energy can also grow stale, which means it becomes less effective.

But if you do a strong spell every month you will not only make your protections stronger, but also constantly renew the energies and not let them stagnate.

So keep doing cleanses and every now and then give a boost to your protections so they are refreshed and recharged.

Note on "Negative Energy"

One of the main reasons someone might choose to do a protection ritual and a cleansing is to ward off negative energy. But is that really needed? What is "negative energy"?

Negative energy might feel like a sense of heaviness, dread, pain, sadness, feeling ill, angry, sad or anxious. Emotions produce and attract what we can call "negative energy", the same way it can make us feel those things.

And while I personally think nobody wants to feel them, we must understand they are not always bad at their core.

The uncomfortable feelings they can cause may also be a gateway for healing and transformation. Pain tells us there is something that needs to be worked on, that needs change.

If you are feeling negative, ask yourself why. Why does this bother me? What makes me feel this way? What can I learn from this pain?

If you happen to feel negative energy, it is good to cleanse and protect. But I advise you to always look for the source to see what can be done about it or what you can learn from it. Don't just try to use spellcasting to run away from your shit. Own your shit. Deal with it.

Otherwise, it will keep coming back no matter how much protection you have.

Conclusion

It is impossible to always be free from “negative energy” all the time, no matter how strong your protections are. But protections can absorb some of the blows that you would otherwise take and ease the ones you were going to take no matter what.

Protection magic alone will not solve all your problems. It is a great tool to help you keep your center and remain grounded, but it is not usually something you do once and forget. It is a continuous, ever evolving work, meant to be used in conjunction with other types of spellwork.

And most importantly, it can give you some comfort through the many trials of life.

Thank you for reading, and good luck on your path! ♡

807 notes · View notes

wolfiesmoon · 3 months

Text

Countless nights

Malleus x gn!reader

i felt like writing something super cute and lovey dovey and basic after listening to can't help falling in love by elvis presley so here we are lol😌🩷

this is nothing revolutionary that hasn't been done before just so much fluff you'll throw up a furball (made of fictional fluff) by the end

There are many a night which he spends thinking of you.

Lilia had told him about it, a long long time ago. How your chest would tighten, how your face would become warm, how your heart would flutter when gazing at the person you're in love with. But he never imagined that it could feel this amazing, this freeing, this beautiful.

There are many moments he thinks of on these nights...

You run up behind him, yelling the silly little nickname he's grown to love hearing fall from your lips.

He turns around, grinning at the sound of your voice. Truly, you are a sight for sore eyes. Your little furry companion is with you, too, dozing off in your arms.

"It's so nice to see you in the hallways for once." you realise that you mostly see him in front of your dorm when he randomly shows up. Because of that, you kinda forgot that he's also a student at the school and takes classes as well.

"Likewise. It's always a pleasure to see you." He didn't say anything presumptious, so why are you making that excited face all of a sudden? Now he feels giddy.

A silence falls between you.

"Ahaha... Um... I actually have no idea what to talk about... I kinda just ran to you after seeing you..." you admitted awkwardly.

That is... very comforting to hear. All you need is the sight of him to want to be by his side. The warm feeling spreading across his body is very welcome.

He wants to hear you say that sentence over and over, but greed is not a good quality to bear, so he'll settle with hearing it only once.

"Then I suppose you wouldn't mind listening to me talk? Do you happen to be partial to gargoyles?" He takes the opportunity to talk about the passion no one seems to share with him. He's fully expecting you to say no and change the topic, and he wouldn't blame you at all in some regard. He's well aware most humans don't take interest in something as specific as gargoyles.

"I never really thought much about them before. But sure, tell me about it." you actually look really interested, waiting for him to start.

He smiles.

Oh, he just can't help falling in love with you.

"Did you hear about that new ice cream place that opened in town recently?"

When you asked him if he could spare 2 hours of his day just for the two of you yesterday, he was certainly not expecting you to open with this.

"Lilia told me you like ice cream, and I was pretty curious about the taste myself." you wonder to yourself if there's any funny flavours you wouldn't find in the human world. If so, you're definitely trying them out.

"So, uhhh... wanna go try it with me?"

You don't even realise how happy you've just made him. He has to hold back the wide smile that threatens to spread across his face.

"Hahaha, you're so strange... Though I certainly wouldn't mind." You seriously just want to... hang out with him? What a pleasant surprise, indeed. It makes his heart beat with excitement.

"Let's go!" you start running down the hill to get to town, excited to share ice cream with him.

"Aw man, it's almost impossible to choose." you're contemplating between three different flavours at the moment.

"Shall I choose for you, then?" Malleus suggests. He already picked the flavour he wants and is waiting for you to make your choice. Not that he's annoyed by that. The longer you take, the more minutes he can spend by your side. How greedy of him.

"Go ahead." you sigh defeatedly. You're truly thankful he can put an end to the awkward situation of you just staring between 3 different flavours for like, 2 whole minutes now. You're creating a line behind you, no doubt.

"You should get the strawberry flavour." Malleus recalled a story of Lilia's in which he told him that strawberries are a symbol of love in a country he visited. He feels a bit cheeky, sneaking a subtle hint in like this.

"Uh, sure! I'll have one scoop of strawberry!" you raised an eyebrow slightly at his satisfied smile. Why is he smiling now, of all times?

If he's happy, you're happy, you suppose.

The two of you decided to walk around town while eating the ice cream. It was a nice change of scenery.

You were telling Malleus about a funny potionology mishap you had with Grim and Ace today when someone bumped into you, making you lose grip of the ice cream.

It fell splat on the ground, making it no longer edible.

"Oh come on..." you looked down at the wasted ice cream sadly. It was really good, too.

"I can return it to its original form, do not worry." Malleus suggested, already about to do it when you gently grabbed his wrist. His eyes widened slightly and a strange tightness enveloped his chest.

"No need. Just hanging out with you is enough. Enjoy the ice cream for the both of us." you're really fine with just watching him. He seems very happy when eating ice cream, which you can't get enough of.

"...If you wish." he felt his whole being warming up at your sweet words.

Oh, he just can't help falling in love with you.

"Child of man. What is the meaning of this?" his expression darkens when he sees your fingers wrapped in bandages.

"Of wha- Oh, you mean my bandages? It's, uhhh, a bit embarrasing. And also a suprise." you hid your hands behind your back, not wanting him to worry about them too much.

"Tell me." he looked quite scary in this moment, almost like he was ready to kill. Is he really that worried over it? It kinda makes you feel giddy.

"It'll ruin the surprise, I'm just saying." you shifted your weight from one foot to the other. His terrifying gaze didn't falter however, so you gave up.

"Roses are really important symbols in Briar valley, so I've heard. So I kinda wanted to give you a hand-picked rose boquet for your birthday tommorow, but I was dumb and didn't use gloves to de-thorn the roses. So that's why my hands look like this." you still felt a little bad ruining the surprise, but giving Malleus peace of mind is much more important.

"Oh... So it was that, I see." Malleus still witheld a somewhat cold, scary expression. He can't stand to see you hurt, in any way. And knowing it was all for him makes him feel even worse.

Still... you wanted to make him happy so much that you willingly hurt yourself to see it happen. Warmth rushes to his face at the thought of you handing the boquet to him. That's quite a common way of confessing love among humans, is it not?

He can't wait for his birthday all of a sudden.

On these nights, he just can't help falling in love with you.

#˗ˏˋ ★ ♡ 「Wolfie’s other works」 ♡ ★ ˎˊ˗#twisted wonderland x you #twisted wonderland x yuu #twisted wonderland x reader #twisted wonderland x mc #twst x reader #twst x yuu #twst x you #twst x y/n #twst x mc #malleus x y/n #malleus x reader #malleus x yuu #malleus draconia x mc #malleus draconia x reader #malleus draconia x yuu #malleus draconia #malleus twst

352 notes · View notes

nu-carniviva · 4 months

Text

A censored version of Nu: Carnival is coming to the app store... Which is not good

When this was first brought to my attention, I honestly didn't believe it at first. I mean, why would I? Nu: Carnival has advertised itself as an adult-only game since it's release. I rarely go on Twitter since it's a total shithole, but that's how I found out that the rumors were true. Nu: Carnival - Bliss, they're calling it. The overall plot, events, and gameplay will be the same. But many crucial changes will be done to the dialogue, CG, and audio. Long post ahead, but I'll be ranting about it below

Why is this a bad move?

There are multiple reasons as to why making a censored, teen friendly version of Nu: Carnival is a horrible decision. I might not get them all, but here are a few I can think of off the top of my head:

It is literally impossible to separate the nsfw from the source. Whether the devs like it or not, they made an nsfw game. After the first half of the prologue, the game opens with porn. You are introduced to two characters at the time — Aster and Morvay. That right there is already an issue. Morvay is an incubus. He is a sex demon who wears leather lingerie. While there is certainly more to his personality, his is very existence is sex. Sex is what keeps him alive and fed. Morvay is very open about his sexual desires and the topic of sex as a whole. He doesn't find it shameful or taboo. So... What are they going to do with Morvay? He can't be removed since he's bonded with Aster. Censoring him will have him take a MAJOR hit. Now that leads me to the second part of this bullet point: sex is a crucial part of the plot. Essence is what keeps Klein stable. Eiden and his clan's job is to use their essence to fix the gem altars so said altars can keep the essence regulated throughout the continent. While there are several ways to replenish one's essence, the most effective way is through sex. Sex also plays a crucial role in expanding on the plot and the characters. Sex scenes aren't just there for entertainment, there is genuine lore within the dialogue. Through sex, Eiden bonds with his clan members in the most intimate and personal ways. He sees his clan members at their most vulnerable moments, and through that they share a deep connection. You can see when sex scenes go from Eiden and whoever the clan member is having sex just to have it to having sex because they genuinely care for each other and want to physically bond. I could delve deeper into this topic, but I'm sure you all understand by now what I'm trying to say. Sex is not just an accessory or perk. It's part of the worldbuilding

Minors will not be able to escape nsfw within the fandom. Since the game's release, the fan base has been entirely made up of adults. Since we are all adults, we freely talk and post about the nsfw parts of the game. You go on any social media platform where Nu: Carnival is discussed, and you will see nsfw. It's a very casual topic in the fandom, and in a way it's something that bonds us together… As weird as that may sound. My point is, making a censored version of the game is pointless, because the source itself in inherently nsfw and the fan base is full of adults making nsfw content which is usually uncensored since the artists expect for anyone in the fandom to only be adults

Minors in fandoms often bring drama... Hear me out on this one. Not to sound like one of those "grr minors dni I hate minors" people, but kids in fandoms often bring drama and discourse. As aggravating at it is, I have to admit that it isn't entirely their fault. When you're in your early teens, you're starting to discover yourself. You become very opinionated and defensive over your beliefs because you're trying to figure out who you are and where you stand in life. You're trying to gain independence and autonomy. It's normal... But it's very draining. Since Nu: Carnival has an all-adult fandom, there isn't a lot of drama at all. Sure, you're going to have stupid people saying stupid shit to start drama, that happens everywhere, but those people are typically ignored because it isn't too common. With kids coming into the fandom and starting unnecessary drama, it'll be so much harder to avoid. Not only that, but kids don't have as much media literacy as adults do. It's not an insult, but simply a fact. Nu: Carnival delves in a LOT of heavy themes in the game. Some of which are stated outright while others require you to read in between the lines to pick up on them. Since the fandom is all adults, it's easier for us to handle these topics and discuss them maturely

Why are the devs doing this?

My guess? Money. The devs are part of a company after all. At the end of the day, all companies want to make money. By making a game they can put on app stores, the game becomes more visible to a broader audience. People who have never heard of Nu: Carnival before will see what appears to be an innocent anime game when it's far from that. All it will take is a simple google search for people to see the the game is very much nsfw and not something minors should indulge themselves in. It's dangerous for both parties involved, both the minors and the adults

But hey, whatever's bringing in the money, right? Sigh...

181 notes · View notes

sgiandubh · 21 days

Note

Once someone shows facts about anything then there will be something to discuss. After 10 years everything anyone has about Sam and Caitriona has been opinion. All the Sam and Caitriona pictures and videos together have been acting or promotional, so not reliable as to personal life. All the pictures about Sam with anyone other than Caitriona are short life and appear set up and his interviews about personal life are awkward. Caitriona, aside from talking briefly about her son, is for the most part private. So agree, disagree. So far no one has truth, facts or anything more than speculation.

Dear Facts Anon,

You are the same Anon regularly popping in here with her deaf drumbeat and her rather fragile English, and I should ignore your very primitive and desperate attempt to curb my enthusiasm. But I am not, because this is the only answer you, your sock accounts or any other Anons are going to get from me on this topic.

Perhaps you chose to lie to yourself and you are comfortable with it (not my problem, of course), but we do have pictures of SC that are neither promo, nor acting. I shall not add insult to injury and enumerate them here, since that would make you look and probably even feel like a fool. These have been mentioned to death, over many years, to no possible avail. To be honest, dialogue about these has always been impossible, across the Great Divide or even across those tiny rivulets of nuanced opinions. Because every time something does not seem to fit, it is dismissed with insults, flimsy accusations, counter-narrative and calumny. In anger. You call that 'a discussion', Anon?

You write, with confidence: 'Once someone shows facts about anything then there will be something to discuss'. Facts have been shown, more than once. Facts are still being discussed, under the counter, never in public. Primarily because of the disgusting collective reaction to the coffee run revelations, something many wanted to see, many pressured to see and when it was finally there, lo and behold: feather and brimstone and insults and accusations. How this served the very idea of 'discussion' is just beyond any logic. If that served to something, it was certainly to put a halting stop to any open discussion about anything: people have feelings, people have self-esteem. Show me the masochist that would come back for more insults, after what happened and still does. It served as cautionary tale to many, including myself.

The intellectual gap across the Great Divide is a reality. Calling us 'mental' will not help anything. You have nothing to do on this page and you shall receive nothing from me. You are undeserving, Anon. I do not know you and I do not trust you. Trust being the operative word, here.

#anon #fandom #shitshow

85 notes · View notes

mister-tom-a-dildo-lover · 2 months

Note

Since we're on the topic of what makes Harry who he is what about the things that make Voldemort who he is? I feel like many people seem to forget what Voldemort was actually like these days when interacting with fan content. I wrote a oneshot last year and the one review it got was how out of character Voldemort was when I began it in the middle of the boneyard scene using 400 words of his monolog from the book itself! "Voldemort wouldn't act like that." Yes he would! He did it for a whole chapter actually he loves to talk about himself!

That's something the stans of Dumbles do. You dare have him do his bad canon shit in your fic, and have someone call it out for once, and suddenly you're bashing him! It's so unfair!

Voldy monologues in Ch. 34 of GoF. He sabotages his own guaranteed victory just so he could take some time to show off and pat himself on the back. Could have solved all of his problems right there, but noooooo. He wants everyone to know about how smart he is.

I would say the things that make Voldemort who he is are:

Being the product of a loveless marriage.

Growing up as an orphan in a tumultuous time period.

Developing a debilitating fear of dying because of how he grew up.

Being obsessed with power and control in everything as a result of being a powerless orphan that no one cared about.

Developing lofty ambitions and a superiority complex because of all of this.

Having the urge to constantly show off to assure himself that he's special and better than others.

Obsessing over collecting the belongings of famous people so he can have what others don't and assure himself that he's better.

All of that leads to what he became. It is a lot harder to accept changes to Tom Riddle's character than is to accept them from Harry Potter's character. Because we grew up with Harry. We see Harry grow for years. Everything we have on Tom Riddle, that he has not shared with us personally, was given to us through Dumbledore's biased, stalkery memory collection(mostly from people who didn't even like him). But that doesn't meant it's impossible to think of a still murderous drama queen as being an In-Character TMR/Voldy if the rest of his personal stuff changes due to fic reasons.

But no one out here is like, "Ohh, you just wrote an OC and passed it off as Tom Riddle! If you don't have him with Abraxas as his best friend, then it's OOC!"

#tom riddle #lord voldemort

23 notes · View notes

callsigndragon · 1 year

Text

Seeing Red | Ch. 16: Dada to the rescue ✍️ 📲

Word count: 2.5k

Warnings: mentions of food, mentions of uranium mission, mentions of death, Red and Nat have a nice talk, someone gets sick.

A/N; Okay so, I've been doing some research of how a 2.5 y/o is supposed to talk and they throw short sentences here and there, you have to keep in mind that is H A R D to write down how a kid talks, and the only experience I have with babies is with spanish ones, so it's a whole different story. So bear with me. Also, is this totally influenced by me having a migraine the other day? Yes. Absolutely.

Masterlist on pinned!

It’s been a rather eventful morning. Problems have been mounting, from Jake's tardy arrival and overstuffing Liam with toys to Cyclone entering the briefing room with your son. After that, luckily, Jake took Liam with him to see his F-18, and all the group followed, as if he were the head of a rather small and chaotic family.

When you think about it, he is. After Maverick decided that it was time to stop doing crazy things and start enjoying life, he married Penny, proved to everyone and himself that he could be a good teacher at Top Gun, and left the squad leader position to someone else.

The expected successor was, obviously, Rooster. But he didn’t want to be in charge of that many lives. It was something that still scared him. And he wasn’t a good choice in Cyclone's eyes because he deliberately crashed his plane so he could help Maverick, going against direct orders from the Vice Admiral.

Yeah, there was no way Rooster could be the team leader.

So the next one in line was, without a doubt, Hangman. Aside from Maverick, he is the only naval aviator on active duty with two confirmed air-to-air kills. It started well, with Jake following the rules, and for once, it seemed like he would play by the book. But old habits die hard, and when you’re used to doing things on your own without having to worry about anyone else, having to lead a group becomes a challenge. Cyclone told you that he didn’t leave anyone behind like he usually did if he was working with his squad, his family.

However, when some new pilots joined the group for a short period of time last year, Jake didn't waste a second and left them behind. And that’s when the problems started again.

It’s surprising, however, how Jake turned back into his old self, and the whole squad was there to support him, not once saying anything wrong. Deep down, every pilot knows that they can trust their leader. And they would follow Jake to hell and back if he asked them to.

When your trip to the tarmac was over and Liam had fulfilled his dream of being inside one of those planes he loves so much, you all went back to the briefing room, where you finally prepared for the class you need to teach tomorrow. Part of you wanted to focus on the topic at hand, but it was impossible because Jake was sitting in the front row, with Liam sound asleep and his small face pressed against his father's broad chest.

A part of you wanted to record the whole scene so you could rewatch it in the future.

There’s something about him being this completely different person that amazes you. Sometimes it seems like he’s the same man he was before, but then he drops everything to take care of his son, a kid that he has known for only a few days. But being a father was something he always dreamed of, and you can’t deny that he’s doing a good damn job.

Is this the same man who refused to work with new pilots because he didn’t know them?

It’s hard to believe, honestly.

The man that sat in front of you was gently caressing Liam’s back while his other hand held Liam’s, as if he was afraid that at any moment, someone would enter the room and take him away from him.

No. This isn’t the same Jake Seresin you knew.

“Hey, Red!” You raise your eyes from the paper in your hands as Nat enters your office. “Did you have lunch?”

“I just came back from dropping Liam off at my house. He didn’t want to go to daycare, and my mom is still here.” You explain, putting the papers away. “Wanna go and get something?”

She raises her hands, showing you paper bags with food in them. “We have a lot of catching up to do, girl.”

“I know the first thing you want to ask is how I hid my pregnancy from you.”

“Yes, please, explain.” She begs, sitting down and giving you one bag of food. “Cause I literally went to your house at Christmas that year and there wasn’t a baby around.”

“He was at my mom’s house. Look, I didn’t want Jake to find out because someone else told him.”

“Yeah, I know where you’re coming from, but three years? How did you do that?” She says while eating her sandwich.

“With extreme caution. Whenever I want to go to a park with him, I usually drive to another city. He never went to daycare, my mom was there to help me. But now, she’s going back home to bring Lady and probably, now that Jake knows, she’s gonna try and leave again once she brings the dog.”

“Is Charlotte still rooting for Jake?” Nat chuckles, opening her water bottle.

“Since the day he left. I know she doesn’t know anything, but she has this... ‘feeling’. And keeps insisting on the idea that Jake had a reason.”

She watches you for a few seconds before answering. “Do you think he had a reason?”

You sigh, carefully leaving your sandwich on the table. “Nat, you know Jake better than me. I met him five years ago, but you? You've known him since way back. Do you think he would do such a thing without a reason?”

Nat looks at the sandwich, deep in thought. “I think something really bad happened, and he didn’t have any choice left.”

“We were texting before, and he tried to tell me, but said that it was ‘too dangerous’.”

“He followed Bob’s advice?”

“Bob told him to talk to me?” Since when does Jake accept advice from other people?

“Bob is a good man. He’s the one who stays quiet but sees everything. He’s the type of man you want on a suicide mission. He’ll always have your back.”

You nod slowly, her words sinking in. That’s not the type of man Jake would have as a friend. He really has changed.

“It’s like I don’t know him.” You finally say, sandwich long forgotten and a dull ache on the side of your head. “Has he changed so much in three years?”

“He changed in three weeks, Red. You don’t know the shit we went through.”

“You mean the uranium mission?”

“Yeah… We pulled ten G’s on a steep climb”

“On an F-18? The stress limit is 7.5!”

“As I said, we went through a lot of shit.”

“Was Jake flying the mission?”

Nat shakes her head. “He was waiting back at the carrier in case he was needed. And he was.”

“What happened?”

“Mav saved Rooster with a Cobra maneuver and then crashed. Rooster went against direct orders and crashed his own plane to save Mav. They found an old F-14 at the enemy air base and used it to fly back to the carrier, but they were being followed. If Jake had arrived a second later, those two would have died.”

“And all that happened in one morning?”

"Actually, I think it was a few hours."

“Holy shit. I suppose that’s when Jake and Bradley became friends.”

“Yep.”

“And that was in October?”

“End of October, beginning of November. I can’t remember the dates. Why?”

“I was in my last month of pregnancy, and I had a feeling that something was really, really wrong. I thought it was Liam, but... I don’t know. I’m going crazy, Nat.” You let out a nervous laugh, all the events of the week finally getting to you.

“Look, if I’ve learned something with Mickey and his grandma, it's that when you have a hunch, it’s not just a hunch.”

“Mickey’s grandma?”

“Camila. She’s an absolute legend around here. She and Roberta, Bob’s grandma, got drunk at Mav's wedding. It was hilarious. Camila was flirting with Jake.” Nat tells you between laughs, her eyes filling with happy tears.

“I missed you a lot, Nat. And I’m sorry I hid Liam from you.”

“Eh, you did what you had to. I won’t understand what it is to care for another human being in that way until I have my own kids.”

“For now, you can be Liam’s grandmother.”

“Me? You’re kidding.”

You smile, getting up to hug her. “I wanted to ask you since he opened his tiny eyes for the first time.”

“Shut up, or I’ll cry.” She hugs you tight, laughing and tearing up at the same time. “Well, now I’m crying!”

“Oh poor baby.”

“I’ll punch you Red; don’t push it.”

You laugh together, feeling as close to her as you were three years ago. It’s so sad that you had to distance yourself from her, but you haven't worked together in almost four years, so it was difficult to meet up. But you’ve called and texted her during these years, even though it wasn’t the same as this.

“So, I’m gonna drop the one million dollar question,” She says, collecting all the remnants of the food left on the desk.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Are there any chances of you and Jake getting back together?”

“I like the version of him I’m seeing, and I would be lying if I said that watching him with Liam doesn’t make me feel things, but he still hasn’t said why he left, and I need to know.”

“And if he told you?”

You consider the answer for a second. You could lie to her, but she would know. “If it’s as dangerous as he says it is and he was only trying to protect me, I’ll think about it.”

“I think Mav knows.”

You sit down, open your papers, and prepare to return to work. “Yeah, he told me. I’m a bit mad that he knows before me, but he talked about Mav, Penny and her daughter as his adoptive family.”

“They have a strong bond, Red. It’s like the family he always wished for. I think it all began after his mom died two years ago.”

You drop your pen. “His mom died?”

“I don’t know the deets, but yeah. They didn’t talk too much, right?”

“I’ve never met someone from his family. They weren’t invited to the wedding, remember?”

“Yeah, I know. Maybe you should wait until he tells you; you don’t want him to think you’re gossiping around about him.”

“It’s exactly what I’m doing, though.” You blurt, feeling the headache getting worse. You just want the day to end and to go home.

“He doesn’t need to know. Anyway, I’m going to do some paperwork for tomorrow’s class. We still have lots of things to talk about, Mama Seresin.”

You groan. “Is everyone going to call me that?”

She nods happily while exiting your office, leaving you alone with tons of paperwork.

Jake is getting worried. He is aware that you arrived home earlier today, with Charlotte having to return home to fetch Lady. She said that a road trip with a baby was tiring enough, and she didn’t need a dog added to the equation. So she is now going back to prepare for her second road trip.

So why aren’t you answering his texts? He had been waiting for a while in case you'd been feeding or bathing Liam.

He calls you, and you pick up right away, but he hears a voice he wasn’t expecting. “Hello”

“Liam?”

“Dada!” He cheers, babbling lots of words in his own language that Jake doesn’t comprehend.

“Hey bubs, where’s Mama?”

“Mama it’s hurt”

Jake swears his heart stops for a split second. “Mama’s hurt?”

“Yes. Mama hurt”

Jake, who had been sitting in his car for ten minutes now, turns on the engine and puts the phone on speaker while he drives to your home. “Buddy, where’s mama?”

“Mama! Mama!” Liam drops the phone, and Jake can hear him running to wherever you are. Jake drives faster, thanking God that your house is relatively close to his.

When he gets there, he sees the lights from outside the house, with the doors and windows closed. It doesn’t seem like someone had broken in. Good, that’s good. Jake breathes a bit better. He walks to the door, and opens it easily.

“Come on, Red. You don’t go around leaving doors unlocked.” He mutters to himself, walking in and locking the door after him. “Liam?”

“Dada!” Liam walks out of the bathroom; he seems to have been crying. Maybe whatever is happening to you has scared the kid. “Come with me.”

Liam grabs his dad’s hand and takes him to the bathroom, where he sees you sitting on the floor, upper body leaning over the toilet, throwing up. Migraine. He has been through enough of them with you.

“Okay buddy, you’re gonna go to your room and play, okay? I’ll help Mama.”

“No! I stay with Mama.” Jake sees in his son’s eyes the same fire he saw in you. He’s not leaving you alone. He wants to protect you.

“You two are exactly the same,” he sighs, walking inside the bathroom and grabbing a towel.

“Jake? What are you doing here?” You say, trying to get up from the floor.

“It doesn’t matter now.” He wets the towel and kneels down, cleaning your face. “Did you take your pills?”

“Yeah, a while ago.” You whisper while flushing the toilet. “I just want to sleep.”

“Do you still have that headache hat?” He mutters while carrying you in bridal style to your bedroom, Liam follows close behind, determined to be with you at all times.

“Freezer.”

He lays you down in your bed, closing the windows and shutting the blinds, creating a dark, quiet room that will help you ease the pain. Liam follows Jake to the kitchen, observing every moment without saying a word.

He gets the hat from the freezer and kneels down, grabbing Liam’s hands. “Liam, Mama is gonna be okay. Her head hurts.”

“Can I kiss her head?”

“I’m sure that will make her feel better. Come on”

He walks into the room with Liam on his hip, helping you put on the hat. “I’m gonna stay here, okay?”

“Liam needs to go to bed. He has eaten dinner already.” You whisper, voice strained and hoarse.

“I think he’s not going to bed anytime soon.” He moves Liam close to you, and your son kisses your cheek and your head.

“Feel good, Mama.”

“Come on, bubs. Let’s go read a book.”

Liam, who is now on the floor, goes to his room to search for a book. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

“Thank you, Jake.”

“Any time.” He whispers, softly caressing your cheek before walking out of the room and softly closing the door.

Tag list: @purplevortexx @shrimping-for-all @caitsymichelle13 @callmemana @abaker74 @starkleila @topgunmenbefinebruh @blue-aconite @tayrae515 @alexxavicry @xoxabs88xox @mercurio23 @smells-like-perfect-senses @dempy @djs8891 @indynerdgirl @countryclubswifey @lauenderhaze @avaleineandafryingpan @poppyalice2001 @emorychase @wildxwidow @agentwayne17 @shanimallina87 @khaylin27 @fudosl @rhirhikingston @hotch-meeeeeuppppp @ducks118 @teacupsandtopgun @impossiblebaglecowboyfreak @marissat1998 @blairfox04 @phoenix1388 @potato-girl99981 @sarahjoestewy-blog @phantomxoxo

307 notes · View notes

our-aroace-experience · 4 months

Note

Hi! I just kind of... want to write about my experience here, I hope that's okay. This is sort of a vent related to my identity + aroace discourse so if anyone doesn't feel like seeing it, feel free to scroll!

So I'm most likely aroace, and I feel comfortable and secure in my asexual identity, but when it comes to identifying as aromantic, I always... just feel very conflicted. Am I aromantic? Most likely yes; I've never had a crush, don't have a strong urge to be in a romantic relationship, etc. and I'm in my early 20's so it's not like I'm "too young to know" or whatever else it is that people say to invalidate others' experiences. But I feel like some part of me doesn't like that part of my identity. I sometimes wish I could go out somewhere, like to a club or something, and have a sudden magical movie-like experience of meeting a girl and kissing her and suddenly feeling something new; or I wish I could meet someone, that I'm attracted to aesthetically, and truly start liking them romantically, like actually get a crush and not be able to stop thinking about them 24/7. I wish I was proven wrong about me being aromantic one day.

But also... I'm not sure if it's something that I actually want, if I could ever actually be in a romantic relationship and like it, or... if I'm simply aromantic and just don't feel comfortable in my identity, so much that I fantasize about it changing.

I'm also autistic so I suppose me not having any crushes might be related to that as well; I struggle with making connections and getting to know people in general. Also I can imagine a "type" I could have; I know who I'd like to have a crush on. But I've never been able to actually... make myself feel anything romantic. And when I think about the concept of how a romantic relationship is even supposed to start, how people just... apparently start flirting with each other and just decide to date? The sole idea feels so foreign and impossible to me.

When I was younger I feel like I was pretty certain I was aroace, and I was proud of that, felt confident about my identity. I think when it changed was actually when the "are aroace people lgbt or not?" discourse started popping up around 2018 or so. Back then, I've seen most people say that "being asexual and aromantic isn't enough to be called lgbt because you're not oppressed enough", many of my close internet friends included. Before that time, I always thought of asexuality and aromanticism as lgbt identities; didn't even suspect that anyone would think otherwise, so I was just... very surprised when all of a sudden I was seeing a bunch of people say that aroaces don't belong in the lgbt community (unless they're another identity that "counts"); it was like all of a sudden every single person was hating on asexuality and aromanticism, making fun of every aroace person who'd write about their experience, calling asexuality "boring" or "not valid" or "fake", talking about how aphobia wasn't real, etc. etc. And I think seeing that, especially from people who I considered friends, who'd always had "good" views on other social issues, made me be like: "Oh. Maybe what they're saying is right? Maybe I should get more educated on that and stop trying to invade other people's spaces?" I felt as if I couldn't have any say in the discussions, since I was aroace, and it was mostly people of other sexualities discussing it, people who "had it worse"; so I simply felt as if it wasn't my place to be like "you're wrong, I have a place in this community too" because... well, I was aroace - the identity that was being discoursed about and made fun of at the time, not someone who "had any say in the topic". And I think with time, since I kept seeing people go "aroace people are not lgbt" over and over again for literal years, I kind of accepted that and started... I don't know, thinking of my identity as "less"? Less important, less valid, etc.

Prior to the discourse I felt happy about finding my identity, about realizing who I am, I felt happy that my experiences were relatable to others as well and I felt welcomed within the lgbt community; I felt like I was a part of a community that understood, that was accepting. I was actually proud of being aroace. But after seeing all the discourse, I kind of... stopped feeling good about being aroace. I felt mostly ashamed of it; alienated from people who I thought were "like me". Eventually I even stopped identifying as "aroace" and changed it to "unlabeled" because now I'm even not sure who I am, because I'd prefer not being aroace. I know I wouldn't feel comfortable being with a man, I don't think so at least, but... I think I'd like to have a crush, I fantasize about being able to get a crush and be with a girl romantically, even though I never wanted any romance when I was younger. I kind of... feel like I'd feel so much more valid if I could just say "I'm an ace arospec lesbian" (or some other identity) rather than being like "I'm aroace but maybe not, it's complicated." But it's a thought that also makes me feel bad, because if I am in fact not capable of actually falling in love with someone, then wishing and fantasizing about the possibility that maybe one day it'll finally happen... makes me feel like I'm also invading other people's spaces. Which just sucks, and is not something I'd like to do. And I'm also aware that if I am just aroace and will stay single forever, I won't be in as much actual irl danger as other sexualities, like I know that. I know life would be harder if I was in a same-gender relationship and it'd be genuinely dangerous for me. But that feeling of validity, of feeling supported and accepted by an actual big diverse community... I miss that. And even though as of the last 3 or so years I stopped seeing mostly "aroace aren't lgbt" takes from other lgbt people, and started seeing almost everyone treating aroace ppl as a part of lgbt again, I still feel some of that... unsureness in my identity. I feel ashamed to say that I'm most likely aroace and I feel like I always have to add hundreds of disclaimers like "but I'm not cishet and maybe I like girls but I'm not sure, but I'm still figuring it out" etc. etc. in order to not be ridiculed, in case a person who likes making fun of aroace people happens to be reading it.

So, overall... I know this is probably such an unserious problem to have, I know people have it way worse, it just kinda feels like... even if I am aroace, I will likely never be able to proudly say it again with confidence, just in case it turns out that I'm not one day, or in case that's not enough for other people. Not sure if anyone can relate to that but if anyone does relate, or wants to add or say something... uh, yeah!

it’s very ok for you to share your experience here, that’s the whole point of this blog! i’m sure there are definitely people out there who relate to you!

#our aroace experience #aroace asks #aromantic #asexual #aro #ace #aroace #long post

34 notes · View notes

rainbowsky · 10 months

Note

hi rainbowsky, love your blog and your very articulate and sane view of things. It’s been very calming and comforting when there’s so much noise (and hate) in the world. So, thank you!

Curious your take on wyb wearing a bandana hanging from his left belt hook, at the Shu Uemura event today. And not a designer bandana, like the Chanel one he had on his backpack on recent trip to Japan.

I immediately thought of 1970s San Francisco gay culture, men would signal their orientation by hanging them from left side, right side, back pocket (L/R). Not thinking too much about color significance since red is Shu Uemura’s brand color. I don’t know anything about the new ad campaign he’s doing with them, but 1970 and 1971 were on 2 posters behind where he was seated.

It just flashed on me so I’d thought I’d ask. 🧐 🤡

Hi Hellopedey! Thanks, I'm glad you're enjoying my blog! 😊

Inquiring minds want to know: is DD trying to signal to the world that he wants to stick his fist up their ass for Shu Uemura?

You aren't the only person to take note of this. I've seen people mentioning hanky code in the tags of reblogs of my post of the photos from that event, and I've seen people talking about it on Twitter, too. It's become quite a topic since the event.

This is a question that has come up a few times in the past, but alas - it's often impossible to find old posts on Tumblr, so rather than being able to point to my previous post about it I will just re-answer.

Fake, fan fiction, CPN.

Long story short: I don't believe for one hot second that DD is using hanky code. There are a lot of reasons I feel this way, and I'll get to that in a minute, but the number one thing I want to bring home for people is that:

Everyone is allowed to wear hankies without assumptions being made about their sexual activity/preferences.

Including you, Hellopedey, and every other reader. Maybe that's not as much of a relief to some readers as it would be to those who happen to be queer and heavily sexualized by others, but it should take a load off some minds. 😅

You know that old saying, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar*?" Well, sometimes a hanky is just a hanky. I'd go so far as to say that a hanky is almost always just a hanky. Even if worn by a gay man.

*Incorrectly attributed to Freud, the origin of that quote is actually unknown.

Here are just a few reasons it's obvious to me DD isn't signalling (and I can't believe I have to say this, because it seems obvious to me):

Location, location, location. Please remember that hanky code is used when people are looking for sex. DD is at a brand event. He's not looking for sex.

His outfit is likely put together by a stylist, and that stylist is unlikely to be trying to hook him up with people for sex.

Hanky code isn't much of a Thing with young people these days. There's no need for it, since now all anyone needs to do to hook up with someone based on preferences is tick off a few boxes on Grindr or other apps (even in China).

Hanky code is pretty Western-centric. It's unclear whether it's even used in China.

As was discussed in the notes, bandanas are popular in hip hop fashion and in other fashion styles DD often wears.

Hankies are a very widely/wildly popular fashion accessory worn by people from all walks of life. Both GG and DD have worn hankies a lot, including for their fabulous Happy Camp dance, and in this context, it really is just a fashion accessory.

I'm going to say this as gently as possible, because I get it that people are just being clueless and oblivious, and that they don't intend to offend, but it really tweaks something in me as a gay person that so many fans are casually willing to make the assumption that DD is sexually signalling at work.

This goes back to the whole oversexualization in the fandom thing that I often lament.

I think fans - especially turtles - get so used to scrutinizing everything for signs and signals of GG and DD's sexual and romantic proclivities that common sense and GGDD's basic humanity are often overlooked. Fans could also stand to do a bit more to reflect on how their behavior and attitudes might (unintentionally) come across as offensive and homophobic* to queer people.

*Not saying this is where you were coming from, Hellopedey, but I hope all fans will reflect on it.

Please read this post for more info on that, because it's important.

PS] For those looking for something salacious about GG and DD, how about checking out the lyrics for the song they danced together to on Happy Camp? That's a pretty racy song for a couple of 'straight' guys to be dancing together to. 😅

#bjyx #yizhan #lgbtpride #ggdd in the public eye #some guys are not straight guys #ask

57 notes · View notes

dailyadventureprompts · 2 years

Photo

Heavy Topics: Elemental Madness and Mental Health

To catch everyone up on the discussion that’s been going around regarding the depiction of “madness” in TTRPGs, there’s a long tradition in media of portraying those suffering from breaks or disruptions to their mental health as dangerous and alien. This has not only stigmatized those people most in need of sympathy and aid but has slowed down a lot of discussions regarding mental health and by doing so created an environment where ignorance, neglect, and traumatic abuse can be perpetuated.

At the same time, this concept of “madness” as it exists in media has taken on a life of its own, seen as an almost elemental force that can pervade the world and eat away at the inherent order of things like an acid of the mind. This sort of madness has mechanics in many game systems, with characters having to resist and treat it as they would poison or a magical curse. The problem arises when these systems begin to interact with real mental health concerns: I’ve played games where taking PTSD or Alcoholism as a flaw at character creation got me more skill points, to say nothing of Lovecraftian horrors inflicting schizophrenia or obsessive compulsion as an AOE attack.

TLDR: What we have here is a topic that needs to be handled with nuance, a situation that TTRPGs have been historically bad at. On one hand as someone who wants his hobby to be welcoming and who has had long struggles with mental health, I don’t want to include things in my game that could be alienating or othering. Conversely, there is a place in gameplay for both mental strain and psychic fuckery but those systems need to be handled with tact and placed at a remove from mental health conditions which should be something dealt with more on the character side of things. If we really want to cement this gap, I propose separating “elemental madness” into an actual force that doesn’t just afflict the mind, but reality itself, afflicting the targets and their surroundings with a dreamlike surrealism.

I’ll talk about my reasoning behind elemental madness below the cut, as well as why it’s fucked up to try and deal with real mental health issues through game mechanics.

Madness as genre conceit: Every culture has superstition surrounding mental health, but as the western enlightenment gave way to industrialization the old thoughts about demons and visions from god gave way to the concept of insanity as illness, and that those experiencing or expressing abnormal behaviours or beliefs should be confined just like those suffering from any other form of contagion. It was this tradition that intersected with one of the most prolific writers of the 20th century: Howard Phillips Lovecraft and the xenophobia that underlined his work

youtube

Lovecraft was terrified of the unknown, in that if he didn’t understand something he was very likely to write a short story about it being the vessel for a life ruining/world dooming horror. Central to his work is the idea that there are things one can learn that can break the human mind, entities so vast or so terrible, truths so impossible, that it destroys a person’s ability to reason and leaves them to gibbering terror (his natural state apparently). This is the form of madness that d&d has inherited, the sort of thing that has cultists pledging themselves to gods intent on ending the world, and villains acting in nonsensical ways because they have to do something in order for the story to make sense.

Madness in this way is a crutch for lazy writing, a means by which an author can move their narrative chess pieces about without having to write REAL justifications for why they’re acting this way. Saying that a serial killer is “crazy” lets you skip past writing about how cycles of abuse and social pressures can lead someone to kill, the same way that a cult performing vile rites saves you from having to write a reason for people to be brought to that extreme, or to examine your own justifications for why this group should be the enemy

Madness as a Mechanic: Personally I don’t believe there’s anything truly beyond human comprehension, both in that we’re imaginative beings and if we really did encounter anything outside of what our rudimentary organic perceptions could perceive, we’d simply come up with a working model and deal with it, much in the same way that we’ve done with quantum physics. This is one of the reasons I’ve never been on board with lovecraftian horrors that break the brain just with their mere strangeness. That said, I’m a firm believer in the idea that our minds can break down, as I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to rebuild from such a break down and prevent another one. As such, here’s a scattering of thoughts regarding mental health and how it should and shouldent be handled

By far “stress” is a more useful mechanic to track than a building “madness” or depleting “sanity” pool, because stress can be applied to all manner of situations. Everyone understands that there’s a wide veritety of things that can stress you out, from having to rough it over multiple days in the wilderness to seeing a friend fall in combat to confronting a horrifying monster. Stress buildup could switch off the refresh rate of abilities over time, or cause a character to act out should it reach some kind of threshold, leaving it up to the player to decide what kind of outburst is appropriate for their character (mental health event included).

D&D’s madness tables do an okay job representing various short-circuits in the brain, aside from the indefinite madnesses, which hew a little too closely to real world. These tables are usually used when the character is suffering some form of psychic trauma or attack, so it’d be better for the indefinite side of the table to emulate longterm scars such an attack can do.

Dealing with mental health challenges on the character side rather than the mechanical side allows us to sidestep a whole bundle of troubling implications. If my depression or anxiety could be removed with a restoration spell, what about my autism? sixty years ago homosexuality was considered a mental defect, could that be taken away with 100gp worth of diamonds and a quick trip to the local cleric?

Madness as Surrealism: Yeknow what’s scary? When your lack of control over your life and environment manifests and once fundamental forces like causality and reason begin to break down. This is why genres like ARG horror and the new weird are taking off, and why projects like the Backrooms are resonating with such a wide audience. We’ve gone beyond the horror that we might be trapped in a space with someone who’s violently out of touch with the world, and have entered into a horrifying new era where we are trapped in a world that’s violently out of touch with us. THIS is the toolbox I want to play with, rather than the dementophobia of lovecraft’s era, where I can paint with everything form Escheresque architecture to glitch-horror to the revelator ravings of abrihamic doomsayers.

This to me fits far more with the theme of horrors outside of reality trying to press in, and gives a wider pallet of options to pull from if I don’t want to muck about in any mental health baggage my audience might be dealing with.

#heavy topics #mental health #cw mental health #dm advice #dm tip #dm tips #dm tools #writing advice #self harm #Cultists #homebrew mechanic #d&d mechanics #madness

207 notes · View notes

leqclerc · 8 months

Note

I really enjoyed your blog, until I realized that you were trying to force enmity between Charles and Carlos when it's clear that they clearly like and respect each other as teammates. You don't seem to support the team, but rather Charles or Sebastian (who, wow, has had less interaction with Charles than with Carlos, but swears they love each other), which you should make clear when entering your blog that you don't like the team but have a preferential fanaticism for Charles.

Anyway, I respect what you think, but the way you always put Carlos in the wrong and guilty of everything is totally ridiculous.

Byee ✨

It's been a while since I got one of these 🤔

You don't relate to my content and don't agree with my opinions, which is fine, to each their own. However, I have to point out that I never exactly concealed my preferences, and, with all due respect, if the url, icon, header, sidebar gif, sidebar description and pinned post on my blog aren't enough to give me away, then I really don't know how to make the message any clearer. Furthermore, I don't support Carlos and I never have, even long before Ferrari was on his radar. I have never hid that either, and the lack of solo posts about him, lack of fan edits, or other reblogged content from Carlos fans should indicate that.

As for supporting the team and how "valid" your fan experience is based on who you support, because apparently that's been a trending topic for a while now, certainly within the self-declared Tifosi circle... I've followed Ferrari in one way or another for 8 years; I've witnessed three different lineups in that time, and I've formed my opinions based on what I've seen and how I've felt in reaction to that. I am under no obligation—and this applies to everyone—to like or even support a driver just because he signed on to drive for the team for a certain period of time. Obviously the ideal situation is liking both drivers and being equally happy when either of them succeeds, but let's be honest, how often does that happen? And I'm not talking about people who follow a team regardless of the lineup, because that's a slightly different kettle of fish.

F1 as a sport places so much emphasis on the driver as a person—and this notion has only been amplified in recent years. The human aspect of F1 is equally as important and compelling as all the technical elements. Hell, the whole idea behind the Driver's Championship is to crown a champion out of the drivers on the grid. And I think for most people that championship brings more excitement and is more keenly followed than the Constructor's one. Even the whole idea of teammates functions differently here than it does in most team sports, with the inherent rivalry aspect. I'm sure many of Carlos's fans migrated from McLaren to Ferrari when their favourite driver did—if we're painting everyone with the same brush, then where is the scrutiny regarding the other side? I don't believe every Carlos fan is automatically also a devoted Charles fan, because frankly that's statistically impossible. Or is one only a "fake Tifoso/a" if they have a preference for Charles? Is there just one fixed "valid" way of being a fan?

On a lighter note, I'm glad it wasn't all bad all the time and that, at one point, you did find something you enjoyed on my blog. I hope you manage to find like-minded people who run blogs that reflect your opinions 👍🏻

#replies #anonymous #idk if the merc or red bull or [insert team name here] have the same level of drama about the validity of being a fan #or failing in your fan duties if you have a preference for one of the drivers over the other - or *gasp* dislike one of them #but it's sure been a point of contention in the ferrari sphere #other than that i'm not sure what else to say i mean. this is tumblr and a part of how the website functions is venting and shitposting #it's like that warning you get on ao3 about how if you continue it means you're basically agreeing to see such content #we're not entering a binding agreement you can backspace out of here at any time

17 notes · View notes

narrans · 3 months

Text

The Orion's Daughter : To Lands Beyond | Chapter Ten : The Odd Learned

**~~~~~**

Chapter Ten | The Odd Learned

**~~~~~**

I have officially done it – I am now the town odd ball. It has taken twenty years since moving here, leaving me a young woman of twenty-seven, but I have finally managed it.

Granted, this was not a title I initially welcomed, but it seemed fitting.

Known now as the Orion’s daughter and the most unlady-like woman in town, I – Terrilyn Lun – was known around town for my various “odd behaviors.” Sure, I often wore my combination of pants and skirt into town. Yes, I did keep my blades on hand, often wearing one or the other on my hip as well as a dagger on my thigh or by my ankle. I absolutely was seen around town reading under trees or by fence posts, chatting with anyone and everyone nearby if they wanted to talk.

I didn’t feel odd, but, in a weird way, I could see their point. Some of the things I did were a bit unusual, but it was no different than some of the men in the town. Perhaps it was because it was uncommon for a young woman to do these things.

In the end, I didn’t care about their opinions. I lived by my momma’s phrase and Steele’s encouragement to live life how I wanted and to pursue the things that made me happy.

I was friends with beggars and gypsies, nomads and traveling scholars who started to come and visit Steele. They were interested in his culture and opinions on certain issues. One wanted to write about his life imprisoned as an innocent man. Others were curious about his perspective as an Orion living in our land. Some even wanted to learn Steele’s language because, for us, it was almost impossible to find someone who understood it in its entirety.

I involuntarily became some kind of liaison between these scholars and Steele. Initially, they kind of brushed me off. It seemed like they couldn’t believe that I could speak Steele’s native language and that I could manage answering many of the base questions they had about Steele and his culture.

Eventually, word seemed to get around to all of these university students and scholars seeking a topic to study and eventually publish on. They started to come and find me, or I would find them talking to Steele while he was out in the fields or by the ocean working or enjoying the breath of the day.

Each person I talked to said the same thing – you are very well learned.

My guess was that they meant that I was well learned for a woman, but I didn’t mind. I knew my worth, and I was going to prove it to them. The first opportunity came when one of the scholars asked me if I came from an affluent family, to which I laughed and told him no. He gave me some notes as well as a list of names of people to write to if I was interested in attending university, and he was not the only one.

There were several scholars who gave me names of professionals and scholars who, according to them, would be very interested in teaching me and learning from me based on my extensive knowledge, specifically about the Orion.

To me, this was one of the greatest opportunities I had ever had in my entire life. Steele had done so well teaching me, and now I had the chance of pursuing something I had a true passion for – learning.

The universities on the continent were far away, and it took several convincing conversations to both my mother and to Steele, which surprised me, to let me possibly attend. Their main concern was me being out in the world on my own so far away where no one would possibly be able to assist me, but I wasn’t worried. I knew how to handle myself and how to solve a plethora of problems.

Eventually, Steele came around and agreed that there was little he could teach me now and that if it was my passion that I should consider it. He spoke of his land and how our cultures were different in this way. Steele told me that it was expected in his land for both men and women to attend university and further their studies to begin a professional career.

Here, in our land, it was almost unheard of for a woman to attend university and to become a scholar of any sort. Tutored and educated, yes, but not at the well-known schools.

All of the scholars who came to visit Steele were men. Only one of these young minds brought his wife with him and, even then, she wasn’t exactly a conversationalist. She kept her conversation to gossip she had heard on the road and rumors she heard about Steele.

Boring.

Dull.

The guy, Glif Tian, was much more entertaining to talk to.

The more I interacted with the intellectuals from far off universities, the more I wanted to attend.

So, late one evening, I used an entire ink well and most of my lantern light to compose letters to all of the universities where I received names from. I wrote to them about my skills in the Orion’s language as well as herbs, stones, strategies, and histories I knew. I included a list of books I had studied, which was far less than what I had actually read and asked for their favor in letting me attend university.

It might have been a long shot, but it was worth taking. I wanted this, more than anything. This was how my adventure began. This was how it all started for me. I just needed one “yes,” and then I had my ticket to the lands and worlds beyond this small town of Creewood. Just one chance was all I needed. The real question was who was going to give me that chance.

~~~~~^*^*^*^*^~~~~~

Continue

Beginning

~~~~~^*^*^*^*^~~~~~

Book One: The Orion’s Factotum

8 notes · View notes

reikunrei · 1 year

Text

Observations on the Behavior of Lights in Stranger Things - What Really Happened to Will in Season 1?

Recently, I watched all of Stranger Things again with the purpose of keeping an eye out for interesting details that I might have missed while just casually watching. This resulted in the flickering pattern of the Christmas lights in the Byers’ house in season 1 catching my eye, and now my question is:

Was it really Will talking through all of the lights in season 1?

I do believe that he’s responsible for certain instances, such as the “blink once for yes, twice for no” conversation with Joyce. However, I’m not so sure about many of the other moments.

While I do have several possible theories for what could be happening, my goal with this post isn’t to propose any one theory (or multitude of theories) as an explanation or as fact. I’m not that confident in myself! Rather, I wanted to catalog and share all of the different ways that the lights behave throughout the show, who is present in each scene, what activities are being performed, and how that makes certain scenes across seasons link together to possibly explain the disparities in season 1.

I haven’t seen anyone talk in-depth about the behavior of the lights, despite it being such an important visual element in the show, so I wanted to share my observations and thoughts and see if anyone else has ideas as well! I won’t be getting too off topic, and will only briefly mention details and information other than the lights to offer any necessary context, or things I find interesting to aid in some of my theories. Therefore, this might not be a totally complete and comprehensive post! I’ll get into personal interpretations and theories later, but I want to start with merely the objective appearance of the lights and how they aid in displaying the possible lore of the show.

Anyway, buckle in, because this is gonna be long as fuck!

First, let’s start with objective observations of how the lights behave throughout the show.

Here’s a list of descriptions of what each “type” is and the names I’ve attributed to them. I’ve also provided some visual examples for clarity, which I took only from season 1. Apologies for the low quality, I just used the free adobe gif converter tool lmao.

Flicker: Could be blamed on “faulty wiring” or a loose socket; the light appears to go on and off. Examples include the first time we see Joyce follow the lights leading to Will’s room in season 1, or when Terry manipulates the lights to lead El through the house back to the TV room in season 2.

Bloom: When lights suddenly become impossibly bright. Examples include when the lightbulb in the Byers’ shed gets bright when the Demogorgon corners Will, or when El uses her full strength against 001 in season 4 in the lab.

Strobe: When the lights require a photosensitivity warning; going on and off rapidly, leaving split seconds of no light. Examples of this include when the Demogorgon appears at the Byers’ house in season 1, when they’re fighting the Flesh Flayer in season 3, and when 001 is on his rampage in season 4.

Flutter: I might use this sometimes to describe when a light flickers, but it’s much softer and doesn’t necessarily appear to turn on and off; rather, it might merely get brighter and dimmer. Also like “faulty wiring.” Examples of this include when the light in the door at the Wheeler’s house reacts to the teens passing through in the UD in season 4, and the lights at the Russian prison when the Demogorgon is still locked in its cage.

Snap or Blink: When lights flick on suddenly, but aren’t turning rapidly on and off. Examples of this include some of the ways the Christmas lights behave in season 1.

Glow: When lights fade in and out softly without also becoming impossibly bright. Examples of this include when anyone interacts with lights from the UD.

A lot of these definitions are very subjective, and many of them are likely to overlap with each other, and I might view one scene as behaving one way, while you might think it’s another, and that’s fine! Any scenes that aren’t very distinctly different will likely end up grouped together anyway.

And now, for the longest part of this post: the play-by-play of each instance the lights do (or don’t) act up throughout the whole show.

I considered removing this list and just sticking with the parts I find relevant for my discussions later in the post, but I didn’t want to cherry pick. I also considered putting this at the end of the post for supplemental reading for anyone who was curious, but I feel that it’s important to objectively see the behavior of the lights first, and I want you to draw your own parallels and conclusions before my biases and interpretations come into play! But you can also just skip it if you want to, I can't stop you.

I haven’t added any timestamps or what episode each scene happens in, but I feel like they’re specific enough that you could go searching for them if you wanted to see it for yourself. And I encourage you to do so! It’s really quite fun to track down all of the discrepancies like this, imo.

Anyway, let’s go!!

Season 1

When Will first comes across the Demogorgon on his bike, the headlight flickers and goes out very briefly before turning back on.

When Will tries to call 911, as soon as it picks up, rather than getting the operator, we hear static and indistinct screeching/growling. Then, the chain lock on the door comes undone and he drops the phone, which is now beeping with its off-hook tone.

When the Demogorgon appears in the shed behind Will, the lightbulb doesn’t flicker, but it does bloom bright and then abruptly switch off when the two of them disappear.

When Hopper investigates the shed later, as he touches the hooks where the gun had been, the lightbulb flickers once and then goes out. He notices some damaged shelves and other messed up objects in the back corner, and investigates with a flashlight, which holds on steadily. Then Callahan comes into the shed and startles Hopper, which also makes the light flicker once and come back on.

The first time the phone rings at the Byers’ house, Joyce answers and hears Will’s breathing. There’s static, his breathing, and then a garbled chitter from a Demogorgon (subtitles say “garbled voice chitters”), followed by a growl and the phone getting fried. The lights do not flicker.

The phone rings the second time at the Byers’ house and Joyce answers. She hears Will say, “Mom,” and the lights in the house flicker/flutter briefly.

Then, the phone gets fried again and the lights flicker at the same time.

Then, the light in the hall ahead of her on the wall flickers/flutters, followed by the lamp at the end of the hall, and then the stereo in Will’s room blares “Should I Stay or Should I Go.” We also see the lights flickering under the door. When Joyce opens the door, the stereo is playing but no lights are flickering.

After she stands there for a moment, the lights flicker, and she touches a lamp that then surges super bright, and then everything abruptly turns off. Then, the Demogorgon starts to come through the wall and Joyce flees the house to try to drive away. However, the stereo turns on again and the lights flicker in Will’s room, and she goes back in.

Karen and Holly visit Joyce after she has up all the Christmas lights. One string of lights leading to Will’s room blinks on one bulb at a time, until a dozen or so are lit. Then, they all blink off at the same time, and then repeat the single-blink pattern again. Holly follows it to Will’s room.

We see the circle of lamps that Joyce has set up around Will’s bed, and all of the bulbs are blinking on in a repeating pattern, around in a circle. They speed up, getting faster and faster when Holly stands in the middle of them all, until they suddenly all go out. Then, Holly sees the Demogorgon begin to push through the wall, but Joyce and Karen find her first.

Joyce is at home when another string of lights starts blinking in the living room. Chester barks at it until she notices and follows it. A dozen or so blink on in a line, one bulb at a time, then all go out, and it repeats several times until Joyce follows it to the crawlspace in the wall. The trail of lights only stops after the bundle of white lights glows the first time.

The bundle of white lights glows when she asks if Will is there. They fade in and fade out. They don’t appear to be any brighter than they would be normally plugged in, but it’s possible that they might be brighter than normal. Then, she asks him to blink once for yes and twice for no. I also noticed that, when she’s holding them while they’re off, we can still see the filaments of the bulbs like they’re hot. With every question she asks, they glow in the same exact way.

Joyce makes the alphabet on the wall, and with the way it’s laid out, it’s one bulb per letter. There’s no extraneous bulbs floating between letters or anything. When those come on, they blink like the trails of lights did before, and sometimes they blink relatively fast between letters.

Joyce receives the RIGHT HERE and RUN messages. After the RUN message, all of the lights in the house start strobing and the Demogorgon breaks fully through the wall and Joyce runs out of the house.

When Nancy crawls through the gate in the tree, her flashlight flickers and turns off for very brief instances, but always comes back on. When she gets closer to the Demogorgon, it flickers more.

When Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve are at the Byers’ house, the lights start strobing when the Demogorgon shows up. When it disappears while they’re in Will’s room, the lights go back to normal and stay on. Steve makes to leave, but the lights start strobing again as he watches from outside.

The lights suddenly all go out, leaving Nancy and Jonathan in the dark, as it looms up behind Jonathan, and the lights begin strobing again when it attacks him and pins him to the floor.

The lights continuously strobe as they fight with the Demogorgon, and they only stop once it disappears after getting caught in their trap.

As Joyce and Hopper walk through the UD Byers’ house, the Christmas lights glow as they walk under them, fading in and out and following their presence, rather than blinking like we’d seen them behave before. We also see one of the street lights flutter/flicker as they walk down the street.

When El uses her powers to fight the agents at the school, their flashlights and the lights in the hall flicker and strobe.

When the Demogorgon shows up at the school, they strobe.

When Will coughs up the slug in the bathroom, the lights flicker when he goes in and out of his vision of the UD.

Season 2

When we see Kali use her powers for the first time, no lights flicker.

The games and lights at the arcade only flicker after Will falls into his UD vision, then they turn off completely.

When we first see the lab burn the gate, none of the lights around them flicker.

When Will sees the Mind Flayer out his front door in the middle of the night, none of the lights flicker.

At the same time, the alarms at the lab start going off as their research equipment inside the UD gets fried, and the lights only stop flashing when it gets fixed in the following episode.

When we see El use her powers sparingly at the cabin, the lights don’t flicker.

This includes when she “finds” Mike.

When Dustin finds Dart in the trash can, the light above it doesn’t flicker at all. Even when Dart gets worked up, no lights react.

When Will finds Dart and is startled out of the bathroom, he goes out into the hall and looks around like he senses something. Then, the lights all start flickering/strobing until it turns into the UD.

When El has her frustrated outburst at the cabin with Hopper, she shatters all of the windows but none of the lights appear to react.

When El “finds” Terry, no lights flicker.

When Hopper first goes into the tunnel, his flashlight doesn’t flicker. It holds steady the entire time he’s down there.

Terry makes the lights flicker/flutter in a trail around the house until El joins her in the TV room again. Then she changes the channels until it hits static, and El is certain it’s Terry telling her she wants to talk.

When Steve and Dustin go into the storm cellar after Dart, no lights flicker.

When Hopper goes down the lift to see the extended gate, no lights flicker.

When Kali and El confront Ray, El makes the TV turn off, but the lights don’t react otherwise. When Kali makes him see them as kids, the lights flicker between their changing appearances, but this may have been a deliberate choice on Kali’s part for the drama of it all.

When El strangles Ray, the lights don’t react.

When the Demodogs come up the elevator shaft, the lights don’t flicker. They also hold steady even when they break through the glass, the only flashing is that of the alarm.

Then the power through the whole lab goes out. The lights flicker as they go out, but otherwise the rest of their time before they return power is completely dark. Flashlights don’t even flicker as they maneuver through the building.

When Will screams, “Why am I tied up?” in the shed, the lights in there and in the house begin flickering/strobing. They only stop when he deflates and settles back in his chair.

When Will figured out where they were, it didn't make the lights react.

When they’re at Hopper’s cabin, the electricity doesn’t go wack when Will wakes up right away.

The flashlights don’t flicker when the kids go down into the tunnels, not even when they light the hub on fire.

When the Mind Flayer finally tries to leave Will’s body, then the lights start flickering. They continue when he strangles Joyce. The lights only stop when the Mind Flayer is totally gone from his body and flees the cabin.

When El closes the gate, the lights bloom super bright. The car headlights, the lights at the cabin, and likely elsewhere that we don’t see. Then, they gently fade back to normal when she finishes.

Season 3

When the power goes off the first time the Russians turn on the key in Hawkins, it just flat shuts off like a normal blackout. The second time, just the magnets fall and we don’t see another power outage.

When Billy gets dragged into the steel works, the lights don’t flicker or anything. This could just be because there’s no real power at the warehouse, but there are some lights on the outside and his car is still there. None of these appear to react in any way.

When Billy runs out, we still don’t see any lights react and his car works fine. Only when he gets to the phone booth does anything happen. When he recalls what just happened before speaking to the 911 operator, it’s possible lights may have been flickering inside the steel works, but it may just have been a visual stylistic choice to have dark frames interspersed in his memory. Still, it’s reminiscent of the strobing of lights.

The light in the phone booth flickers, the phone gets distorted and full of static, and then the power completely shuts off as he’s plunged into his UD vision.

When Heather meets the Flesh Flayer, we again see no lights flicker.

When Billy is first trapped in the sauna, no lights flicker. After he busts through the window and Lucas hits him with the Wrist Rocket, the lights finally begin strobing as he’s “activated.” At the same time, Mrs. Driscoll becomes activated at the hospital and the lights start strobing in her room.

The lights continue to strobe as Billy and El face off, and they appear to strobe even faster when El uses her powers on him. When El throws him through the wall, the lights keep flickering, and finally stop when the Mind Flayer picks Billy up and walks him away.

When Tom shows up at Driscoll’s now-empty room with Nancy and Jonathan, the lights inside start flickering, and then the lights in the hall start up too. As they’re chased by Bruce, the lights across the entire floor are strobing heavily. Nothing is flickering on the main floor where the kids are.

The lights seem to ease up just a little when Nancy and Jonathan get far enough away from Bruce, but they speed up again when he catches them up.

After the two of them are killed, the lights start to slow down but are still flickering. Now we also see that the lights on the main floor begin to flutter, light enough that Will is the only one to notice it first.

Then, the lights upstairs begin strobing again as the bodies melt. When the Tom and Bruce sludges meet, the lights go out completely for a few beats, leaving us in darkness, before abruptly and rapidly strobing as the creature stands up and roars. They continue to strobe as El fights it and flings it out of the window.

As the Flesh Flayer gets closer to them at the cabin, the lights begin flickering/fluttering very sparingly. When the first tendril breaks through the wall, they flicker faster, and may technically be strobing, but it’s not as noticeable with the soft cabin lighting. They don’t get any more or less intense when El uses her powers.

When we first see the blood from El’s wound “come alive” on the floor of the supermarket, the lights don’t flicker. They only flicker when Billy shows up and touches it to confirm it’s El’s.

When El uses her powers to save the Scoops Troop, it doesn’t make any of the lights go off. The only lights that flash are the car headlights, but that’s because she set off the alarm deliberately.

When the slug on El’s leg first starts moving, no lights react, and they continue to behave normally even when Jonathan cuts the wound open and fishes in her leg. When E uses her powers to rip it out herself, though, the glass of the storefront behind them shatters and the lights flicker/strobe. Once it’s out and flung away, they go back to normal.

When the Flesh Flayer first shows up on the roof, the lights don’t react. They only start to flicker and strobe when it settles on the floor of the mall and roars. While the Flesh Flayer is present, the lights continue to strobe throughout the whole mall.

An odd discrepancy is that when they all get outside to try to leave, the outdoor lights aren’t flickering despite them having clearly been flashing when Steve saw the mall from Wheathertop. They also don’t flicker when the Flesh Flayer crawls over to chase them in their car.

As El, Mike, and Max are running back into the mall in the back halls to flee from Billy, the lights are strobing. They continue when Billy gets El back to the food court.

The lights continue to strobe as they fight with the fireworks, and keep strobing in the same amount when they run out of ammo and Billy and the Flesh Flayer face off. They continue even when Billy dies.

The lights only stop once the Flesh Flayer is in a heap on the ground after the key is destroyed. Some lights do keep flickering, but it appears to be from structural damage.

When we see the Demogorgon in the pit in Russia, the lights flicker when it comes out of its cage.

Season 4

When we see the beginnings of the massacre, no lights are reacting. When Brenner wakes up, they are. By the time Brenner makes it to the Rainbow Room, the lights have stopped.

When Chrissy is in the bathroom, the lights start strobing when “her mom” makes the comment about loosening her dress. Then the door is rattled as they continue to strobe, before suddenly stopping.

When Chrissy first falls into her trance in Eddie’s trailer, the lights don’t flicker. In her trance, we see the lights flickering in her house. This happens at the same time as when Eddie tries to wake her up and the lights in his trailer flicker. They become more strobe-like when she lifts into the air and is killed.

Max tells Dustin that the lights in her trailer flickered too, also fairly close to strobing, but only for a few brief seconds. They stopped just before Eddie ran out of his trailer.

When the Hawkins gang all leave the trailer park, the Chrissy gate starts to grow (though still looks more like a water stain) and the lights flicker and the trailer shakes briefly.

In Max’s trance at school, none of the lights flicker in or out of the trance.

When Victor tells Nancy and Robin about his history, we see Henry sitting in the house drawing and the light behind him flutters.

When the murders happen, it starts with the radio coming on and flipping through channels. The lights only begin to flicker when Victor tries to touch the device, and they continue as he tries to escape with the kids. When Victor comes out of his trance, the lights are back to normal as Henry lays on the ground.

When El is first in NINA, when she gets the memory “wrong,” the lights flicker and go out before “resetting” the memory.

When the Hawkins gang first gets to the Creel house, the lights are all off, no power at all. When Steve and Dustin go upstairs, one of the overhead lights flutters to life very briefly.

After El runs in and out of doors at HNL, she stops in the hall frustratedly and the lights flicker until they turn off, and the memory resets again.

The light next to Max and Lucas starts glowing and pulsing, flickering lightly, then goes out when Max tries to touch it. The flickering/glowing moves to a new spot. They are glowing, fading in and out, with a slight flickering mixed in, as Vecna moves past them.

We see the circle-of-lightbulbs memory, and when 002 does it, they move very fast. It’s hard to tell if they’re snapping on and off as he makes the light move around or if they’re fading in and out because of how fast it is. When El tries it, one bulb glows and flutters very weakly, then fades out before she can get it to move.

The exercise is interrupted by sudden memories of the massacre. Her hands are covered in blood, she’s suddenly alone, and when she walks out into the hall toward the Rainbow Room, the lights are strobing.

The Hawkins gang gets together in the Creel living room (?) and the chandelier above them glows and flutters. Then, it goes out and they run around with their flashlights. Their flashlights glow as they follow him to the attic. We can see off screen that the light in the attic is fluttering/flickering.

Then, as they all stand under the light, the bulb and their flashlights begin to glow and pulse, no flickering now, just a steady fading brighter and dimmer. When Patrick is killed, all of the lights bloom impossibly bright, before all of the bulbs shatter one by one in quick succession.

When El uses her burst of power when she tries to escape NINA the second time, the lights around her bloom super bright, and some shatter, sending sparks flying behind her. After the outburst, some of the lights are still flickering, but more like they’ve been damaged.

During the pushing exercise at the lab, the lights don’t flicker, even when El uses her grief to give her strength.

In any other snippets El gets of the massacre, the lights around her flicker.

When Steve approaches Watergate, his flashlight holds steady, and continues to hold steady the whole time it’s in the UD.

Season 4 continued bc of the way text posts work i guess

When they get to the UD Wheeler house, the lights at the door in the RSU flutter gently. Then, Steve hears Dustin talking. They try to mess with the lights, but when Nancy tries a nearby table lamp, it doesn’t react at all. The light switch also doesn’t work. Then, they see the sparkly particles around the chandelier when the flashlight beam runs over it. When they touch it, it glows and pulses, getting brighter the closer they are.

When the demogorgon in Russia roars from behind its door, the lights outside flutter, but it could also be shoddy wiring.

When they use the pegboard lightbox, the particles appear in the UD after they turn it on. The lightbox glows and fades when they use it, no flickering at all.

The door to the demogorgon pit opens and the lights are the same, just very sparingly fluttering. They actually start flickering when the Demogorgon rushes out. They continue even when Hopper gets the spear in its mouth, and they flicker in the Demogorgon cage once Hopper and Antonov get inside. However, when they get out the other side of it, those lights aren’t flickering at all.

The lights in RSU Eddie’s trailer don’t flicker when they get the gate open.

When El takes Soteria out of 001, the lights strobe and flicker, and only stop once it’s out and the two of them settle.

When Nancy is in her trance, we don’t see any lights in the RSU flickering.

When El leaves the closet to find 001, the lights in the hall are flickering. They begin strobing the closer she gets to the Rainbow Room. They’re the most intense in the room itself and only stop once 001 has killed 002.

When Nancy goes through the Creel house in Vecna’s mind, she follows Henry and sees lights fluttering around/behind him.

When Henry turns back the clock, we don’t see any lights flicker.

When El and 001 face off, the lights strobe rapidly. When El gets the memory of her birth as 001 has her in the air, about to kill her, the lights continue to strobe, but also bloom impossibly bright as she gets up the strength to fight back. She gets him through the window and pinned to the wall as the lights strobe. Lights in real life in NINA even begin to flicker. In the memory, the lights go dim, but continue to flicker as she dematerializes him. Then, as the red gate glows in front of her, the lights in the rest of the room go out completely. The vines crawl inside the gate and it closes, and the lights flicker back on and hold steady when Brenner enters the room.

As Nancy walks through Hawkins lab during the massacre, the lights are strobing. “Take a seat, Nancy.” The lights flicker and go out, and when they flicker back on, she’s tied to the tattoo chair. When Vecna shows her his plan, the lights strobe rapidly.

The lights in the prison are still flickering as the Demogorgon runs around in the pit. When they get to the room with the tied up Demodog, the lights are strobing in there as well. When Hopper kills it, the lights stop. The presence of the part of the Mind Flayer (?) doesn’t seem to make the lights react.

When El wakes up and uses her powers for real, all of the lights in NINA flicker and strobe.

When El forces the door open to leave, the lights flicker and continue to do so when she fights with Brenner. They only stop when the drugs kick in and she falls to the ground.

When Erica finds Vecna, the lantern glows and pulses rhythmically with his presence.

When El gets in the pizzeria bath and starts to find Max, the lights flicker rapidly. They get more and more intense, closer to strobing, the farther she goes. Then, once she’s settled in Max’s mind, they continue to flicker/strobe, but not overbearingly so.

As Max runs through the Creel house in her trance, the lights flicker.

When the Russia crew gets back to the prison, the room where the Demodogs were has some lights flickering, possibly also from damage.

In the RSU, the lights aren’t flickering at the Creel house; not the lantern nor Lucas’s flashlight.

The flashlights of those in the UD Creel house don’t flicker.

In Russia, as they wander closer to where the creatures are, the lights flicker more and more.

The lights at Eddie’s trailer don’t react, even when the bats attack.

The lights in the pizzeria strobe faster when El starts fighting Vecna. No lights react in Max’s mind.

While El is choking and during Mike’s speech, the lights in the pizzeria are a little more subdued but are still flickering. They pick up speed and intensity when she gets her strength back.

When the Demogorgon is killed in Russia, the lights stop.

When the gate in the Creel house opens, the lantern doesn’t react in any way. The lights in Eddie’s trailer don’t react either, other than from structural damage when the gate bursts outward. The lights of the nearby trailers don’t react. Even the lights at the Wheeler house don’t react during the “earthquake.”

The lights in the pizzeria are still flickering as El tries to save Max, but less intense than before.

When El tries to go into Max’s mind at the hospital, no lights in the room react.

Tired of reading? Too bad! Time to get into my personal thoughts, baby.

What Can We Infer from Each of These Different Behaviors? What Scenes are Linked to One Another?

Obviously, there’s going to be moments where the lights are used for stylistic reasons, and so they may behave in a certain way purely because it “looks nice.” However, I want to mention again my whole reason for noting down all of these observations:

The fact that we have been told that, whenever any lights react in season 1 (other than the strobing when the Demogorgon appears), they should be attributed to Will. And yet, there is a distinct difference in the way a person interacts with the lights from within the UD and when they’re affected by some other energy or manipulation. Specifically, the way the colorful Christmas lights behave early on in the season when “Will” is manipulating them, and when they react to the presence of Joyce and Hopper in the UD.

If they were purely for visual stylization, they likely would have behaved in the same manner: either all of them would have glowed and faded in and out, or they all would have snapped on one at a time. The fact that they behave so differently has me so interested in what was really happening there.

So, certain behaviors can be linked to certain kinds of scenes:

Flickering lights most often occur during lower-energy moments, or almost like “transitional” details within a scene. This includes the light in the shed flickering on and off when Hopper investigates; when visuals change such as the visions of the RSU vs UD, or even when Kali changes her and El’s appearance to Ray; when the Demogorgon is present, but not on a rampage. It also happens as a way to grab the attention of a character. This includes the lights flickering in the Byers’ house to get Joyce into Will’s room; Terry “talking” to El in season 2; and, while less deliberate, grabs the attention of Will in season 3 in the hospital. It also often happens in conjunction with something else that requires more of our attention, and appears as an additional background detail. This includes when the lights flicker as the Byers’ phone gets fried and when the Chrissy gate grows minutely. Out of any kind of light behaviors, this one feels the most “unimportant,” for lack of a better word. It’s used in a lot of different situations, which can only loosely be linked to one another simply because it’s a different behavior from the more notable or “important” ones.

Blooming lights happen very sparsely, and so it’s very easy to pick out. The only times lights bloom impossibly bright are when the Demogorgon finds Will in the shed; when Joyce touches the lamp in Will's room; when El closes the gate in season 2; when Patrick is killed; when El fights off the guards at NINA when she tries to escape after her first bath (and tbh this one is a little more up in the air for me, as it’s not as blatantly an example of this phenomenon); and finally when she garners the strength to fight back against 001 in the HNL massacre. That is a total of 5 (or 6) times in the entire show thus far. It’s been most frequently tied to El using her powers during great moments of strength, but it’s also connected to Vecna when he obtains another victim, which he admitted was a way to acquire El’s powers. Overall, the blooming lights happen during extremely high-energy moments in which an action requires a lot of effort, and seems to be directly tied to El and Vecna’s powers. That leaves the season 1 Demogorgon as the only outlier, but we won’t touch that just yet!

Strobing lights are what I would consider to be the most recognizable light behavior in Stranger Things. They’re tied to very high-energy, chaotic moments. They occur most frequently whenever a Demogorgon appears and is on a rampage; when the Mind Flayer appears and is on a rampage; when El uses her powers to fight back against someone other than the Demo-monsters (such as in the school in season 1 when they’re cornered by the HNL agents), or in generally high-stress situations such as removing Soteria from 001’s neck and finding Max; and when Vecna and 001 use his powers.

Fluttering lights are a little harder for me to pick out, as you probably noticed with the several times I accompanied it with “flickering.” For the most part, fluttering lights are something soft and inconsequential. More like the last ripple on the surface rather than the drop of water itself, if that makes sense. It’s also most often tied to something more akin to actual electrical damage or faulty wiring than anything actually being supernaturally manipulated, at least in my opinion.

Snapping or Blinking lights are also extremely sparse. The only actual moments I feel 100% confident in attributing this label to are the Christmas light trails in season 1, and even that only happens twice. I also connect it to the alphabet, as they do individually blink on and off rather than fading into light. It can also be attributed to the circle of lamps that Joyce set up in Will’s room, and that scene immediately reminded me of the circle-of-bulbs experiment we see El’s memory of in season 4. However, as I stated previously, it was hard for me to tell if the bulbs were fading on rather than snapping on when 002 was manipulating them, and when we saw El try it, the bulb faded in and glowed gently rather than merely snapping on. However, it’s not a stretch to assume that a light could just be snapped on by using their powers if they were fine-tuned enough.

Glowing lights are most often connected to manipulation from the UD. This includes the bundle of white lights, the colorful Christmas lights that glow when Jim and Joyce pass under them, anytime the Hawkins gang follows Vecna’s presence in the Creel house, and when the teens talk to Dustin, Lucas, and Erica in the Wheeler house. I took zero notes of any glowing lights in season 2 or 3, because at that time, there was nobody in the UD that we were immediately concerned with.

So, now that all of the evidence is laid before us, we return to my main question:

What was going on with Will in season 1?

We’ve established that when someone physically touches or interacts with a light in the UD, they glow in the RSU, fading in and getting brighter the closer you get to it. So, why do the Christmas lights behave so differently?

When I first noticed how they blinked on in their little trails in the scenes with Holly and Joyce, part of me thought that maybe it was something that was retconned later, and it was always meant to be Will physically interacting with them to get the attention of the people in the RSU. However, I knew that this could be tested when Joyce and Hopper were in the UD. So, I eagerly waited for that scene in the final episode.

And, boy, when I tell you I was excited, I was excited.

It was immediately proven that when someone physically interacts with lights from the UD, they glow and fade rather than blinking on and off. It was a deliberate choice to make the Christmas lights in “Will” scenes blink on in rapid succession, and a deliberate choice to make them fade in and out when Joyce and Hopper passed underneath them. We see the lights behave in the same way throughout season 4, where we’re directly shown people interacting with them in the UD.

So, automatically, those blinking trails and the alphabet are an obvious outlier and cannot be immediately attributed to Will’s physical manipulation.

Now I want to discuss some specific scenes and details I found interesting or important, both in the way they connect to moments in season 1, and simply for the lore of the UD and its inhabitants:

In season 4, when Nancy first runs to one of the lamps in the Wheeler house to try and turn it on, it doesn’t react. We don’t even see any of the glowing particles around it. This made me wonder if the light possibly no longer exists in that spot in the house in the RSU, since we know that the UD is stuck on November 6, 1983. Nancy makes a point to pick out all of the things that are different in her bedroom, so it’s easy to believe that a simple table lamp may have been moved to another spot, so that its mirror in the UD is no longer accurate, and therefore there is no power in the RSU to manipulate in that spot. I tried keeping an eye out for it in shots of the RSU, but couldn’t spot it to prove whether this was a correct assumption.

I also want to highlight again the similarities between the circle of lamps in Will’s room in season 1, and the circle-of-bulbs exercise we see in season 4. The lights in Will’s room do not blink on randomly like they do the first time Joyce goes in there, or when the lights strobe around a whole room. These lights continuously blink on in a circle over and over again, and speed up, appearing much like how the circle-of-bulbs looks when 002 is manipulating them. Even when they get going really fast, they don’t lose their pattern, and they do not behave like Will’s in the UD running around in a circle through these little spots of glowing particles. I’m extremely drawn to how similar it is to the scene in season 4, and I can’t help being convinced that we’re meant to tie them together.

The alphabet is also interesting to me. It makes sense that it would be Will talking to Joyce, trying to communicate that he’s right there, that she needs to run before the monster shows up, but the behavior of the lights is too similar to the blinking trails to fully believe they’re being physically manipulated by someone in the UD. I’ll say that when I was watching the scene, I hesitated a little bit, and am not entirely certain where to place these lights. While they do blink on and off rather than explicitly fading in and out, they don’t appear to be as snappy as the trails from before. There are also moments where it looks like some of the letters that are farther apart blink on too fast, seemingly faster than Will might have been able to achieve with his physical body.

I was also very interested in the fact that, when Joyce is explaining to Hopper that she “just talked to Will,” she’s far more insistent on the glowing bundle of white lights being Will rather than the alphabet. It could just be because she’s trying to not make herself out to be crazy, but they could have very easily made her insist on the alphabet being Will as well. Throughout season 1, there’s several instances where she talks about how she can “feel” Will, and even admits that she can no longer “feel” him after she hacks open the front wall of the house when she saw Will there. I’m inclined to believe that she somehow can feel him. Whether it be supernatural or pure motherly instinct, something is telling her that Will is there or that he isn’t, and so when she insists that the bundle of lights was Will, but doesn’t insist that the alphabet was, too, that sticks out.

I was also intrigued by the fact that Terry could manipulate the lights in her house when El showed up. Did Brenner try to place powers into grown adults, before giving up and going for children, and then genetically engineering them from birth? I’m not going to get too into this whole line of thinking right now, because the history of his experiments deserves a whole post of theories on its own, but I wanted to point out the fact that Terry did manipulate the lights and the TV, or at least El was led to believe that was the case, especially because the way those lights behave is very similar to the way the lights in the Byers’ house flutter and flicker when Joyce is first led to Will’s room. In both cases, the lights are trying to grab their attention.

The fact that the Demogorgon seems to be able to open temporary gates is confounding to me. Overall, the way the Demogorgon appears throughout the entire first season is very bizarre, and doesn’t seem to be normal Demogorgon behavior. We don’t really see a lot of the abilities of a Demogorgon throughout the rest of the show, but I feel like it’s safe to say that it’s not normal for them to be able to open gates because otherwise the one trapped in the Russian prison would have tried to escape into the UD already. The way it appears is either in the blink of an eye with no sound or hole it was climbing out of, or it pushes through the wallpaper or drywall very viscerally. The way the walls seem to stretch and rip is extremely notable to me; we never see this happen anywhere else. Plus, how can it open gates? And why are they temporary? It leads me to believe that Vecna might be opening the gates for it to go in and out, but because his true power doesn’t lie in opening gates like we’ve been led to believe with El, they simply might not be strong enough to stick around. It should also be noted that even in the instances that the Demogorgon tears through the walls or ceiling, there is never a scratch left when we return to the same spot later. The only time a hole is left in the wall is when Joyce hacks through it with the ax.

In season 1, while the Christmas lights fade in and out as Joyce and Hopper pass through them, the street lights outside instead flutter. The main difference between these two is that the Christmas lights were off, while the street lights were on. Perhaps this means that when lights are off, they have room to turn on without getting overpowered. Meaning, if the lights are already on, they don’t have room to “fade on” and thus might flutter instead as the power surges greater than the bulb or socket can handle.

We see something similar to this in season 4 when the Hawkins gang are following Vecna around inside the Creel house. The lights do glow and fade into being whenever he’s present near one, but they also often have a flickering quality. This could possibly be attributed to the fact that the power has long been cut off at the RSU Creel house, so rather than manipulating an existing electrical current, he’s forcing power through dead sockets. It also could possibly be because he’s no longer entirely human, and we have yet to explicitly see the presence of a Demo-monster in the UD make a light glow on when it draws near. Instead, a Demo-monster only ever makes lights flicker or strobe. Therefore, the way the lights in the Creel house behave could be because Vecna is part human and part Demo-monster.

Now you might be saying, but Wilbur, the light in the shed in season 1 glowed and bloomed super bright! That one didn’t flicker! And to that I say, yes, you’re right! Where else have we seen that phenomenon? When El uses her full-strength powers and when Vecna kills his victims.

Theories

As I stated at the start of this post, I don’t have any single theory, or even any multitude of theories, that I’m married to. I will not be disappointed if any of my ideas do not end up proven correct in the show. But I will be upset if no explanation is given at all lol. Some of these theories also won’t be super fleshed out, and ultimately lead to more questions than answers, as many of them are just brief thoughts that would require further research that I haven’t done! Rather, I want to present them for folks to chew on in their own way.

The question at the core of all of these theories is: What was really going on with Will, the Demogorgon, and the UD in season 1?

Will has powers and he was manipulating the lights outside of his physical body. I am 100% on board with the “Will has powers” theory, though I don’t believe they’re powers in the way El or Henry or 001 have powers. If anything, he might be closer to Henry, in that it’s something he was “naturally born with,” while it’s becoming more and more obvious that El’s powers were genetically engineered, either from the drug experiments Terry endured or due to some level of “breeding” using Henry’s genetics. It also could have been something he gained when he entered the UD, rather than having it the whole time in the RSU, which is even something Mike proposes in season 2. While the lights that glow and fade are directly tied to a person’s physical presence, the lights could behave in other ways if being affected by a mental energy input.

Vecna (or some other version of him) was present with Will in the UD. The way many of the lights behave in season 1 can be linked with ways Vecna, Henry, and 001 make the lights behave in season 4. It can be assumed that 001 also performed that circle-of-bulbs exercise in HNL, and he could have become very skilled at it, and therefore could have made the same thing happen in season 1 with the lights in Will’s room to lure in Holly as another victim for the Demogorgon.

El was present with Will in the UD, perhaps from the future/an alternate timeline. Similar to the Vecna version of this theory, many of the ways the lights behave in season 1 can be connected to other ways they behave in the presence of El in later seasons. First example that comes to mind is the brightly blooming lightbulb in the shed. This could also be linked to Vecna, but the way it goes so bright without bursting makes me think of all the times El has done the same thing when using her powers. How was she connected to the Demogorgon, then? Was the Demogorgon going to kill Will, but El swooped in to save him, thus resulting in the surge of power as she perhaps fought or distracted the Demogorgon long enough for Will to slip away and hide? We don’t see the lights bloom when Barb gets taken, so there has to be some other factor making that happen, especially also because the Demogorgons and other Demo-monsters are never again connected to bright blooming lights, only flickering and strobing. Also no I’m not going to further explain the alternate timeline thing, you just have to trust me on it if you’re not already aware of that set of theories.

Both El and Vecna were present with Will in the UD in varying ways, and they’re both affecting the lights in different scenes. If I had to pick one theory to go with, it would be this one. We’ve already established that the lights behave in ways similar to Vecna and El’s powers rather than merely from physical manipulation, but the intention behind some of the scenes contradict. For example, the blinking trail of Christmas lights in the Holly scene results in a threatening outcome, with Holly seemingly being lured into a trap for the Demogorgon. Meanwhile, the blinking trail in the bundle of white lights scene leads to a non-threatening outcome in which Joyce gets to talk to Will and nothing bad happens immediately after. Therefore, Vecna could have been the one present in the Holly scene, while El was present in the Joyce scene, leading her to Will’s hiding spot in the UD so that she could receive confirmation that her son is alive and talk with him, giving both her and Will hope of rescue. For all three of these theories, I believe it could be happening to make the timeline go in a specific direction, with Vecna trying to get his desired outcome with Will, while El fights against him in order to rescue her brother instead. The way the Demogorgon pops in and out of temporary gates also makes me think one or both of them are there creating these openings for it. We even see two different kinds of entrances with the Demogorgon: forcing itself through walls and stretching/breaking them, and intact gates that it and others (like Nancy) crawl through before they’re swallowed back up by the RSU and closed. Based on the context of the different scenes in which these differences appear, I would attribute the stretching/breaking scenes (multiple times with Joyce; Holly; at the school) to Vecna, as he doesn’t have the direct ability to open gates unless he has a victim to go with it, and I would attribute the intact gates (potentially the scene in the shed; the tree; the leftover gate in the school) to El. Similar to the threatening vs. non-threatening scenes with the lights, we have the same distinction with the gates. In the “Vecna” scenes, someone’s life is always in danger and the Demogorgon is dropped in as a way to cause more carnage and chaos. In the “El” scenes, the presence of the gate is a way to create safety. I can’t explicitly assume that there was a gate in the shed scene, since we never actually see one intact and the only evidence of any UD residue is when Brenner and HNL come to investigate, but the one in the tree could be interpreted that way, as the Demogorgon drags the dead deer into the UD before it can entirely register the presence of Nancy and Jonathan and pose a threat to them. And even though Nancy endangers herself by crawling through it, it remains open long enough for her to get out but leave the Demogorgon locked inside. The gate in the school that El exits out of at the start of season 2, while likely the gate that the Demogorgon created when it showed up, somehow managed to stay open, when other instances of the Demogorgon bursting through the wall didn’t leave a scratch, and it allowed El to return to the RSU.

The Demogorgon is actually a person entirely corrupted by the UD. Whether it be Vecna or El (or I’ve seen some sort of vague mentions of it somehow being Brenner), it’s entirely possible that all of these light manipulations are coming from the Demogorgon itself, and it’s somehow much more sentient than the later Demo-monsters that we see.

The Demogorgon is just a Demogorgon, but is being directly ordered by the Mind Flayer and/or Vecna. Similar to above, the Demogorgon could be doing all of these manipulations, but rather than the power coming from the Demogorgon itself, it’s more of a vessel for Vecna or the Mind Flayer, and thus the manipulation is being channeled through the Demogorgon. Maybe they just happen to use the Demogorgon because it managed to get out of the gate and into the RSU.

Closing Thoughts

We’ve slowly but surely been learning more about how the UD behaves, and how our characters manipulate the world they exist in. However, as I stated earlier in the post, it mostly leaves me with more questions than answers. I have plenty of ideas, sure, but this post does not contain the entire plethora of necessary information to formulate an entirely solid theory. I merely wanted to present the observations I collected of the lights throughout the show, and any other details that have stuck in my mind as tangentially related, and bring them into the conversation of just what happened with Will in season 1, why so much of it is so different from other information we’ve been given about the UD and its creatures, and how it will tie into the ending of the series.

All I’m certain of is that these disparities I’ve noticed – these behaviors that I’m confident were not manipulations by Will’s hands – are not flukes and shouldn’t be ignored. They’re deliberate and important, and I think they’re a gigantic clue about what was really happening, and can lead to why it was happening.

If it wasn’t all Will, then who was it? If it wasn’t all physical manipulation, then what was it? Why was the Mind Flayer/Vecna so hellbent on getting Will in his clutches again in season 2? Why can he still feel the Mind Flayer in season 3 and Vecna in season 4? How is he still tied to the UD? How will time travel or alternate timelines tie into the strangeness of season 1?

Was it all merely because the Duffers didn’t know they’d be getting more than 1 season, so they made artistic choices to keep it coherent as a standalone story? But then why not show us anything of Will in the UD, other than him in Castle Byers? Why have the disparities in the way the lights behave? Why have the intention/context of scenes in which the lights behave similarly contradict each other?

What really happened with Will in season 1?

If you made it all the way to the end of this post, first of all, I thank you. But second of all, if you want to humor me, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter as well. Was there anything I missed? Was there a connection you noticed that I didn’t talk about here? Are there other scenes you think are equally important even if they don’t directly tie back to moments in season 1?

Thanks for reading! Go crazy with me!

#stranger things #will byers #i honestly dont know what else to tag this as #i say things #ANYWAY come read my deranged 10k words of LIGHTS BULLSHIT #i should maybe wait to post this tomorrow now that it's late #bc i spent 45 minutes deciding last minute that i would make gifs after all LMAO #BUT i just need it to be DONE

48 notes · View notes

shuxiii · 11 months

Text

Everyday pt.18

Hanni Pham x reader pt1, pt2, pt3, pt4, pt5, pt6, pt7, pt8, pt9, pt10, pt11, pt12, pt13, pt14, pt15, pt16, pt17, pt19

A/n apologizing in advance 😋 credits "every day" by david levithan.

Day 6026

I feel guilty about how relieved I am to be a normal size the next morning. I feel guilty because I realize that while before I didn’t care what other people thought, or how other people saw me, now I am conscious of it, now I am judging alongside them, now I am seeing myself through Hanni’s eyes. I guess this is making me more like everyone else, but I feel something is being lost, too.

Lisa Marshall looks a lot like Hanni’s friend Yeeun—light brown hair, mole on her left cheek , dark brown doe eyes. She is not someone you’d go out of your way to notice if you saw her on the street, but you’d definitely notice her if she was sitting next to you in class.

Hanni won’t mind me today, I think. Then I feel guilty for thinking it.

There’s an email from her waiting in my inbox. It starts like this:

I really want to see you today.

And I think, That’s good. But then it continues.

We need to talk.

And I don’t know what to think anymore

The day becomes a waiting game, a countdown, even if I’m not sure what I’m counting down toward. The clock brings me closer. My fears pound louder.

Lisa’s friends don’t get much out of her today.

Hanni’s told me to meet her at a park by her school.

I’m early, so I sit on a bench with Lisa’s copy of an Alice Hoffman novel, stopping every now and then to watch a jogger push by. I’m so lost in the pages that I don’t realize Hanni’s here until she sits down next to me.

I can’t help but smile when I see that it’s her.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey,” she says.

Before she can tell me what she wants to tell me, I ask her about her day, ask her about school, ask her about the weather—anything to avoid the topic of her and me. But this only lasts for about ten minutes.

“Yn,” she says. “There are things that I need to say to you.”

I know that this sentence is rarely followed by good things. But still I hope.

Even though she’s said things, even though she’s implied there’s more than one, it all comes down to her next sentence.

“I don’t think I can do this.”

I only pause for a moment. “You don’t think you can do it, or you don’t want to do it?”

“I want to. Really, I do. But how, Yn? I just don’t see how it’s possible.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’re a different person every day. And I just can’t love every single person you are equally. I know it’s you underneath. I know it’s just the package. But I can’t, Yn. I’ve tried. And I can’t. I want to—I want to be the person who can do that—but I can’t. And it’s not just that. I’ve just broken up with Minji—I need time to process that, to put that away. And there are just so many things you and I can’t do. We’ll never hang out with my friends. I can’t even talk about you to my friends, and that’s driving me crazy. You’ll never meet my parents. I will never be able to go to sleep with you at night and then wake up with you the next morning. Never. And I’ve been trying to argue myself into thinking these things don’t matter, Yn. Really, I have. But I’ve lost the argument. And I can’t keep having it, when I know what the real answer is.”

This is the part where I should be able to say I’ll change. This is the part where I should be able to assure her that things can be different, show her it’s possible. But the best I can do is to give her my deepest fantasy, the one I’ve been too self-conscious to share.

“It’s not impossible,” I tell her. “Do you think I haven’t been having the same arguments with myself, the same thoughts? I’ve been trying to imagine how we can have a future together. So what about this? I think one way for me to not travel so far would be if we lived in a city. I mean, there would be more bodies the right age nearby, and while I don’t know how I get passed from one body to the next, I do feel certain that the distance I travel is related to how many possibilities there are. So if we were in New York City, I’d probably never leave. There are so many people to choose from. So we could see each other all the time. Be with each other. I know it’s crazy. I know you can’t just leave home on a moment’s notice. But eventually we could do that. Eventually, that could be our life. I will never be able to wake up next to you, but I can be with you all the time. It won’t be a normal life—I know that. But it will be a life. A life together.”

I’ve pictured us there, having an apartment to ourselves. Me coming home each day, kicking off my shoes, us making dinner together, then crawling into bed, with me tiptoeing out when midnight approaches. Growing up together. Knowing more of the world through knowing her.

But she’s shaking her head. There are tears becoming possible in her eyes. And that’s all it takes for my fantasy to pop. That’s all it takes for my fantasy to become another fool’s dream.

“That will never happen,” she says gently. “I wish I could believe it, but I can’t.”

“But, Hanni—”

“I want you to know, if you were a person I met—if you were the same person every day, if the inside was the outside—there’s a good chance I could love you forever. This isn’t about the heart of you—I hope you know that. But the rest is too difficult. There might be girls out there who could deal with it. I hope there are. But I’m not one of them. I just can’t do it.”

Now my tears are coming. “So … what? This is it? We stop?”

“I want us to be in each other’s lives. But your life can’t keep derailing mine. I need to be with my friends, Yn. I need to go to school and go to prom and do all the things I’m supposed to do. I am grateful—truly grateful—not to be with Minji anymore. But I can’t let go of the other things.”

I’m surprised by my own bitterness. “You can’t do that for me the way I can do that for you?”

“I can’t. I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

We are outside, but the walls are closing in. We are on solid ground, but the bottom has just dropped out.

“Hanni…,” I say. But the words stop there. I can’t think of anything else to say. I’ve run out of my own argument.

She leans over and kisses me on the cheek.

“I should go,” she says. “Not forever. But for now. Let’s talk again in a few days. If you really think about it, you’ll come to the same conclusion. And then it won’t be as bad. Then we’ll be able to work through it together, and figure out what comes next. I want there to be something next. It just can’t be …”

“Love?”

“A relationship. Dating. What you want.”

She stands up. I am left stranded on the bench.

“We’ll talk,” she assures me.

“We’ll talk,” I echo. It sounds empty.

She doesn’t want to leave it like this. She will stay until I give some indication of being alright, of surviving this moment.

“Hanni, I love you,” I say.

“And I love you.”

That isn’t the question, she’s saying.

But it’s not the answer, either.

I wanted love to conquer all. But love can’t conquer anything. It can’t do anything on its own.

It relies on us to do the conquering on its behalf.

I get home and Lisa’s mother is cooking dinner. It smells amazing, but I can’t imagine having to sit at the table and make conversation. I can’t imagine talking to a single other person. I can’t imagine making it through the next few hours without screaming.

I tell her I’m not feeling well, and head upstairs.

I lock myself in Lisa’s bedroom, and feel that’s where I’ll always be. Locked inside a room. Trapped with myself.

Day 6027

I wake up the next morning with a broken ankle. Luckily, I’ve had it for a while and the crutches are next to my bed. It’s the one thing about me that feels newly healed.

I can’t help it—I check my email. But there’s no word from Hanni. I feel alone. Completely alone. Then I realize there’s one other person in the world who vaguely knows who I am. I check to see if he’s written me lately.

And indeed he has. There are now twenty unread messages from Haruto, each more desperate than the previous one, ending with:

All I ask is for an explanation. I will leave you alone after that. I just need to know.

I write him back.

Fine. Where should we meet?

With her broken ankle, Kasey can’t exactly drive. And since he’s still in trouble for his blanked-out joyride, Haruto’s not allowed to use the car, either. So our parents have to drop us off. Even though I don’t say it is, mine just assume it’s a date.

The hitch is that Haruto is expecting me to be a guy named Akira, since that’s who I said I was last time. But if I’m going to tell him the truth, being Kasey will help me illustrate my point.

We’re meeting at a Mexican restaurant by his house. I wanted somewhere public, but also somewhere our parents could drop us off without raising eyebrows. I see him walk in, and it’s almost like he’s dressed for a date, too—even if he doesn’t look sporty, he’s certainly trying to be his best self. I raise one of my crutches and wave to him; he knows I have crutches, just not that I’m a girl. I figured I’d save that for in-person.

He looks very confused as he’s walking over.

“Haruto,” I say when he gets to me. “Have a seat.”

“You’re … Akira?”

“I can explain. Sit down.”

Sensing tension, the waiter swoops in and smothers us with specials. Our water glasses are filled. We give our drink order. Then we’re forced to talk to each other.

“You’re a girl,” he says.

I want to laugh. It freaks him out so much more to think he was possessed by a girl, not a guy. As if that really matters.

“Sometimes,” I say. Which only confuses him more.

“Who are you?” he asks.

“I’ll tell you,” I reply. “I promise. But let’s order first.”

I don’t really trust him, but I tell him I do, as a way of inspiring a reciprocal trust. It’s still a risk I’m taking, but I can’t think of any other way to give him peace of mind.

“Only one other person knows this,” I begin. And then I tell him what I am. I tell him how it works. I tell him again what happened the day I was inside his body. I tell him how I know it won’t happen another time.

I know that, unlike Hanni, he won’t doubt me. Because my explanation feels right to him. It fits nicely into his own experience. It what he’s always suspected. Because in some way, I primed him to remember it. I don’t know why, but when my mind and his mind concocted our cover story, we left a hole in it. Now I’m filling in that hole.

When I’m done, Haruto doesn’t know what to say.

“So … whoa … I guess … so, like, tomorrow, you’re not going to be her?”

“No.”

“And she’ll …?”

“She’ll have some other memory of today. Probably that she met a boy for a date, but that it didn’t work out. She won’t remember it’s you. It’ll just be this vague idea of a person, so if her parents ask tomorrow how it went, she won’t be surprised by the question. She’ll never know she wasn’t here.”

“So why did I know?”

“Maybe because I left you so fast. Maybe I didn’t lay the groundwork for a proper memory. Or maybe I wanted you to find me, in some way. I don’t know.”

Our food, which arrived while I was talking, remains largely untouched on the table.

“This is huge,” Haruto says.

“You can’t tell anyone,” I remind him. “I’m trusting you.”

“I know, I know.” He nods absently, and starts to eat. “This is between you and me.”

At the end of the meal, Haruto tells me it’s really helped to talk to me and to know the truth. He also asks if we can meet again the next day, just so he can see the switch for himself. I tell him I can’t make any guarantees, but I’ll try.

Our parents pick us up. On the drive back home, Kasey’s mom asks me how it went.

“Good … I think,” I tell her.

It’s the only truthful thing I tell her the whole ride.

#newjeans fanfic #newjeans #hanni #hanni x reader #Hanni pham #newjeans imagines

27 notes · View notes

olderthannetfic · 2 years

Note

I want to ask I noticed I get talked over a lot by my friends in our discord server I wonder is it because I am not assertive enough in what I say? Like I told them many time I feel like they don’t noticed what I say but they haven’t improved it’s still the same old I say something then everyone ignores me and keeps talking. So I stop bother saying anything because no one seems to care about what I have to say. So what am I doing wrong? Because this seems to happen in every group chat I am in everyone just talks over me.

It's impossible to diagnose from only your own impressions.

Here are some guesses for possibilities:

Your ask has grammar errors and is repetitive and poorly punctuated in a way that makes it un-fun to read. Perhaps your English skills are weaker than those of other people in the chat, and that makes your content less pleasant to engage with.

These people tolerate you, but you're not really friends. They're not intentionally shunning you: they're just paying more attention to people they're more interested in.

Your posts are all off-topic

That last one is the most likely to me based on years of observing nerds. If you're bad at social cues and context or you're swept away by a passion for your latest fixation, it's easy to be perpetually off-topic. Just because you said something doesn't mean it was a natural progression of the conversation, and if people were enjoying that conversation, they may not want to get sidetracked onto whatever you brought up.

I don't know if this applies to you, but common behaviors of this type include bringing up:

personal trauma, often with a lot of details when the conversation wasn't about personal stuff, much less such heavy and intimate personal stuff

your own problems and needs when the conversation is focusing on giving someone else support

your own fanworks when the focus was on praising another group member or on reccing things by strangers

your specific kinks, ships, favorite characters, favorite canons, etc. that no one else is into because you're desperate for fellow fans

stuff that actively grosses out the other chat members (e.g. repeatedly discussing piss kink when nobody else ever joins in)

your headcanons and OCs, especially if you don't show frequent, genuine interest in other people's headcanons and OCs

anything else that makes you sound like that bird rights tweet:

Basically, some people try to make chat All About Me repeatedly, and the only way to have a good conversation is to let these embarrassing faux pas slide without saying anything.

Or you might be on-topic but just pointlessly repeating something that someone else just said more eloquently. People might respond directly to that other person and not even realize they're ignoring you because what you said was essentially the same point.

It's possible these people are just jerks and you need better friends, but if this problem happens in every group chat, I think it's time to consider whether you are being boring or annoying in some way. Is there something you can do to change so your friends won't want to ignore your comments anymore?

One thing I am certain of is that assertiveness is not the answer.

Demanding more interaction can sometimes make people feel guilty, but it won't generally change their behavior. They're responding at an instinctive level to the cues you give off, and changing those cues is the only way to change their responses.

And look, as an aside, I'm not trying to shame the socially awkward. I've been that deeply annoying person who feels the need to bring up their fixations despite the fact that no one cares. Learning to gauge interest a little better did wonders for me even if I'm still that same person and I intentionally only associate with other obsessive nerds.

Is there someone with good social skills to whom you can show the actual chat transcripts, anon? I don't think you're going to get to the bottom of this without getting into the specifics. And while I'm perfectly happy to look at chat transcripts, it's not usually polite or kind to put private things like that on a public blog like this.

103 notes · View notes

Last Seen Blogs

snehalpatil789

Untitled

zanpyreanor

Pyreanor Chronicles

the-vinyl-huss

Undetermined

silhouette143

Silhouette143

the-white-wolf-of-sharakhai