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#I have so many more screenshots of the WORK I put into getting this fucking thing but I'm not gonna bother attaching them
the-2nd-random-kid · 1 year
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So i heard that the orv movie is real
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blazingblorbos · 1 year
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YOU
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PIECE OF SHIT IT’S FINALLY HERE
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I have gone through hell and back to grind for you. I saw my life flash before my eyes, my dearest memories and grandest moments were laid out in front of me as I was at the nearing the ends of my efforts; I was losing ALL HOPE.
good god now I can finally claim to be the #1 Baizhu haver. After some 200 WEAPON BANNER PULLS
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eyrieofsynapses · 5 months
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why Aurora's art is genius
It's break for me, and I've been meaning to sit down and read the Aurora webcomic (https://comicaurora.com/, @comicaurora on Tumblr) for quite a bit. So I did that over the last few days.
And… y'know. I can't actually say "I should've read this earlier," because otherwise I would've been up at 2:30-3am when I had responsibilities in the morning and I couldn't have properly enjoyed it, but. Holy shit guys THIS COMIC.
I intended to just do a generalized "hello this is all the things I love about this story," and I wrote a paragraph or two about art style. …and then another. And another. And I realized I needed to actually reference things so I would stop being too vague. I was reading the comic on my tablet or phone, because I wanted to stay curled up in my chair, but I type at a big monitor and so I saw more details… aaaaaand it turned into its own giant-ass post.
SO. Enjoy a few thousand words of me nerding out about this insanely cool art style and how fucking gorgeous this comic is? (There are screenshots, I promise it isn't just a wall of text.) In my defense, I just spent two semesters in graphic design classes focusing on the Adobe Suite, so… I get to be a nerd about pretty things…???
All positive feedback btw! No downers here. <3
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I cannot emphasize enough how much I love the beautiful, simple stylistic method of drawing characters and figures. It is absolutely stunning and effortless and utterly graceful—it is so hard to capture the sheer beauty and fluidity of the human form in such a fashion. Even a simple outline of a character feels dynamic! It's gorgeous!
Though I do have a love-hate relationship with this, because my artistic side looks at that lovely simplicity, goes "I CAN DO THAT!" and then I sit down and go to the paper and realize that no, in fact, I cannot do that yet, because that simplicity is born of a hell of a lot of practice and understanding of bodies and actually is really hard to do. It's a very developed style that only looks simple because the artist knows what they're doing. The human body is hard to pull off, and this comic does so beautifully and makes it look effortless.
Also: line weight line weight line weight. It's especially important in simplified shapes and figures like this, and hoo boy is it used excellently. It's especially apparent the newer the pages get—I love watching that improvement over time—but with simpler figures and lines, you get nice light lines to emphasize both smaller details, like in the draping of clothing and the curls of hair—which, hello, yes—and thicker lines to emphasize bigger and more important details and silhouettes. It's the sort of thing that's essential to most illustrations, but I wanted to make a note of it because it's so vital to this art style.
THE USE OF LAYER BLENDING MODES OH MY GODS. (...uhhh, apologies to the people who don't know what that means, it's a digital art program thing? This article explains it for beginners.)
Bear with me, I just finished my second Photoshop course, I spent months and months working on projects with this shit so I see the genius use of Screen and/or its siblings (of which there are many—if I say "Screen" here, assume I mean the entire umbrella of Screen blending modes and possibly Overlay) and go nuts, but seriously it's so clever and also fucking gorgeous:
Firstly: the use of screened-on sound effect words over an action? A "CRACK" written over a branch and then put on Screen in glowy green so that it's subtle enough that it doesn't disrupt the visual flow, but still sticks out enough to make itself heard? Little "scritches" that are transparent where they're laid on without outlines to emphasize the sound without disrupting the underlying image? FUCK YES. I haven't seen this done literally anywhere else—granted, I haven't read a massive amount of comics, but I've read enough—and it is so clever and I adore it. Examples:
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Secondly: The beautiful lighting effects. The curling leaves, all the magic, the various glowing eyes, the fog, the way it's all so vividly colored but doesn't burn your eyeballs out—a balance that's way harder to achieve than you'd think—and the soft glows around them, eeeee it's so pretty so pretty SO PRETTY. Not sure if some of these are Outer/Inner Glow/Shadow layer effects or if it's entirely hand-drawn, but major kudos either way; I can see the beautiful use of blending modes and I SALUTE YOUR GENIUS.
I keep looking at some of this stuff and go "is that a layer effect or is it done by hand?" Because you can make some similar things with the Satin layer effect in Photoshop (I don't know if other programs have this? I'm gonna have to find out since I won't have access to PS for much longer ;-;) that resembles some of the swirly inner bits on some of the lit effects, but I'm not sure if it is that or not. Or you could mask over textures? There's... many ways to do it.
If done by hand: oh my gods the patience, how. If done with layer effects: really clever work that knows how to stop said effects from looking wonky, because ugh those things get temperamental. If done with a layer of texture that's been masked over: very, very good masking work. No matter the method, pretty shimmers and swirly bits inside the bigger pretty swirls!
Next: The way color contrast is used! I will never be over the glowy green-on-black Primordial Life vibes when Alinua gets dropped into that… unconscious space?? with Life, for example, and the sharp contrast of vines and crack and branches and leaves against pitch black is just visually stunning. The way the roots sink into the ground and the three-dimensional sensation of it is particularly badass here:
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Friggin. How does this imply depth like that. HOW. IT'S SO FREAKING COOL.
A huge point here is also color language and use! Everybody has their own particular shade, generally matching their eyes, magic, and personality, and I adore how this is used to make it clear who's talking or who's doing an action. That was especially apparent to me with Dainix and Falst in the caves—their colors are both fairly warm, but quite distinct, and I love how this clarifies who's doing what in panels with a lot of action from both of them. There is a particular bit that stuck out to me, so I dug up the panels (see this page and the following one https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-20-30/):
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(Gods it looks even prettier now that I put it against a plain background. Also, appreciation to Falst for managing a bridal-carry midair, damn.)
The way that their colors MERGE here! And the immense attention to detail in doing so—Dainix is higher up than Falst is in the first panel, so Dainix's orange fades into Falst's orange at the base. The next panel has gold up top and orange on bottom; we can't really tell in that panel where each of them are, but that's carried over to the next panel—
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—where we now see that Falst's position is raised above Dainix's due to the way he's carrying him. (Points for continuity!) And, of course, we see the little "huffs" flowing from orange to yellow over their heads (where Dainix's head is higher than Falst's) to merge the sound of their breathing, which is absurdly clever because it emphasizes to the viewer how we hear two sets of huffing overlaying each other, not one. Absolutely brilliant.
(A few other notes of appreciation to that panel: beautiful glows around them, the sparks, the jagged silhouette of the spider legs, the lovely colors that have no right to make the area around a spider corpse that pretty, the excellent texturing on the cave walls plus perspective, the way Falst's movements imply Dainix's hefty weight, the natural posing of the characters, their on-point expressions that convey exactly how fuckin terrifying everything is right now, the slight glows to their eyes, and also they're just handsome boys <3)
Next up: Rain!!!! So well done! It's subtle enough that it never ever disrupts the impact of the focal point, but evident enough you can tell! And more importantly: THE MIST OFF THE CHARACTERS. Rain does this irl, it has that little vapor that comes off you and makes that little misty effect that plays with lighting, it's so cool-looking and here it's used to such pretty effect!
One of the panel captions says something about it blurring out all the injuries on the characters but like THAT AIN'T TOO BIG OF A PROBLEM when it gets across the environmental vibes, and also that'd be how it would look in real life too so like… outside viewer's angle is the same as the characters', mostly? my point is: that's the environment!!! that's the vibes, that's the feel! It gets it across and it does so in the most pretty way possible!
And another thing re: rain, the use of it to establish perspective, particularly in panels like this—
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—where we can tell we're looking down at Tynan due to the perspective on the rain and where it's pointing. Excellent. (Also, kudos for looking down and emphasizing how Tynan's losing his advantage—lovely use of visual storytelling.)
Additionally, the misting here:
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We see it most heavily in the leftmost panel, where it's quite foggy as you would expect in a rainstorm, especially in an environment with a lot of heat, but it's also lightly powdered on in the following two panels and tends to follow light sources, which makes complete sense given how light bounces off particles in the air.
A major point of strength in these too is a thorough understanding of lighting, like rim lighting, the various hues and shades, and an intricate understanding of how light bounces off surfaces even when they're in shadow (we'll see a faint glow in spots where characters are half in shadow, but that's how it would work in real life, because of how light bounces around).
Bringing some of these points together: the fluidity of the lines in magic, and the way simple glowing lines are used to emphasize motion and the magic itself, is deeply clever. I'm basically pulling at random from panels and there's definitely even better examples, but here's one (see this page https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-16-33/):
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First panel, listed in numbers because these build on each other:
The tension of the lines in Tess's magic here. This works on a couple levels: first, the way she's holding her fists, as if she's pulling a rope taut.
The way there's one primary line, emphasizing the rope feeling, accompanied by smaller ones.
The additional lines starbursting around her hands, to indicate the energy crackling in her hands and how she's doing a good bit more than just holding it. (That combined with the fists suggests some tension to the magic, too.) Also the variations in brightness, a feature you'll find in actual lightning. :D Additional kudos for how the lightning sparks and breaks off the metal of the sword.
A handful of miscellaneous notes on the second panel:
The reflection of the flames in Erin's typically dark blue eyes (which bears a remarkable resemblance to Dainix, incidentally—almost a thematic sort of parallel given Erin's using the same magic Dainix specializes in?)
The flowing of fabric in the wind and associated variation in the lineart
The way Erin's tattoos interact with the fire he's pulling to his hand
The way the rain overlays some of the fainter areas of fire (attention! to! detail! hell yeah!)
I could go on. I won't because this is a lot of writing already.
Third panel gets paragraphs, not bullets:
Erin's giant-ass "FWOOM" of fire there, and the way the outline of the word is puffy-edged and gradated to feel almost three-dimensional, plus once again using Screen or a variation on it so that the stars show up in the background. All this against that stunning plume of fire, which ripples and sparks so gorgeously, and the ending "om" of the onomatopoeia is emphasized incredibly brightly against that, adding to the punch of it and making the plume feel even brighter.
Also, once again, rain helping establish perspective, especially in how it's very angular in the left side of the panel and then slowly becomes more like a point to the right to indicate it's falling directly down on the viewer. Add in the bright, beautiful glow effects, fainter but no less important black lines beneath them to emphasize the sky and smoke and the like, and the stunningly beautiful lighting and gradated glows surrounding Erin plus the lightning jagging up at him from below, and you get one hell of an impactful panel right there. (And there is definitely more in there I could break down, this is just a lot already.)
And in general: The colors in this? Incredible. The blues and purples and oranges and golds compliment so well, and it's all so rich.
Like, seriously, just throughout the whole comic, the use of gradients, blending modes, color balance and hues, all the things, all the things, it makes for the most beautiful effects and glows and such a rich environment. There's a very distinct style to this comic in its simplified backgrounds (which I recognize are done partly because it's way easier and also backgrounds are so time-consuming dear gods but lemme say this) and vivid, smoothly drawn characters; the simplicity lets them come to the front and gives room for those beautiful, richly saturated focal points, letting the stylized designs of the magic and characters shine. The use of distinct silhouettes is insanely good. Honestly, complex backgrounds might run the risk of making everything too visually busy in this case. It's just, augh, so GORGEOUS.
Another bit, take a look at this page (https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-15-28/):
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It's not quite as evident here as it is in the next page, but this one does some other fun things so I'm grabbing it. Points:
Once again, using different colors to represent different character actions. The "WHAM" of Kendal hitting the ground is caused by Dainix's force, so it's orange (and kudos for doubling the word over to add a shake effect). But we see blue layered underneath, which could be an environmental choice, but might also be because it's Kendal, whose color is blue.
And speaking off, take a look at the right-most panel on top, where Kendal grabs the spear: his motion is, again, illustrated in bright blue, versus the atmospheric screened-on orange lines that point toward him around the whole panel (I'm sure these have a name, I think they might be more of a manga thing though and the only experience I have in manga is reading a bit of Fullmetal Alchemist). Those lines emphasize the weight of the spear being shoved at him, and their color tells us Dainix is responsible for it.
One of my all-time favorite effects in this comic is the way cracks manifest across Dainix's body to represent when he starts to lose control; it is utterly gorgeous and wonderfully thematic. These are more evident in the page before and after this one, but you get a decent idea here. I love the way they glow softly, the way the fire juuuust flickers through at the start and then becomes more evident over time, and the cracks feel so realistic, like his skin is made of pottery. Additional points for how fire begins to creep into his hair.
A small detail that's generally consistent across the comic, but which I want to make note of here because you can see it pretty well: Kendal's eyes glow about the same as the jewel in his sword, mirroring his connection to said sword and calling back to how the jewel became Vash's eye temporarily and thus was once Kendal's eye. You can always see this connection (though there might be some spots where this also changes in a symbolic manner; I went through it quickly on the first time around, so I'll pay more attention when I inevitably reread this), where Kendal's always got that little shine of blue in his eyes the same as the jewel. It's a beautiful visual parallel that encourages the reader to subconsciously link them together, especially since the lines used to illustrate character movements typically mirror their eye color. It's an extension of Kendal.
Did I mention how ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL the colors in this are?
Also, the mythological/legend-type scenes are illustrated in familiar style often used for that type of story, a simple and heavily symbolic two-dimensional cave-painting-like look. They are absolutely beautiful on many levels, employing simple, lovely gradients, slightly rougher and thicker lineart that is nonetheless smoothly beautiful, and working with clear silhouettes (a major strength of this art style, but also a strength in the comic overall). But in particular, I wanted to call attention to a particular thing (see this page https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-12-4/):
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The flowing symbolic lineart surrounding each character. This is actually quite consistent across characters—see also Life's typical lines and how they curl:
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What's particularly interesting here is how these symbols are often similar, but not the same. Vash's lines are always smooth, clean curls, often playing off each other and echoing one another like ripples in a pond. You'd think they'd look too similar to Life's—but they don't. Life's curl like vines, and they remain connected; where one curve might echo another but exist entirely detached from each other in Vash's, Life's lines still remain wound together, because vines are continuous and don't float around. :P
Tahraim's are less continuous, often breaking up with significantly smaller bits and pieces floating around like—of course—sparks, and come to sharper points. These are also constants: we see the vines repeated over and over in Alinua's dreams of Life, and the echoing ripples of Vash are consistent wherever we encounter him. Kendal's dream of the ghost citizens of the city of Vash in the last few chapters is filled with these rippling, echoing patterns, to beautiful effect (https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-20-14/):
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They ripple and spiral, often in long, sinuous curves, with smooth elegance. It reminds me a great deal of images of space and sine waves and the like. This establishes a definite feel to these different characters and their magic. And the thing is, that's not something that had to be done—the colors are good at emphasizing who's who. But it was done, and it adds a whole other dimension to the story. Whenever you're in a deity's domain, you know whose it is no matter the color.
Regarding that shape language, I wanted to make another note, too—Vash is sometimes described as chaotic and doing what he likes, which is interesting to me, because smooth, elegant curves and the color blue aren't generally associated with chaos. So while Vash might behave like that on the surface, I'm guessing he's got a lot more going on underneath; he's probably much more intentional in his actions than you'd think at a glance, and he is certainly quite caring with his city. The other thing is that this suits Kendal perfectly. He's a paragon character; he is kind, virtuous, and self-sacrificing, and often we see him aiming to calm others and keep them safe. Blue is such a good color for him. There is… probably more to this, but I'm not deep enough in yet to say.
And here's the thing: I'm only scratching the surface. There is so much more here I'm not covering (color palettes! outfits! character design! environment! the deities! so much more!) and a lot more I can't cover, because I don't have the experience; this is me as a hobbyist artist who happened to take a couple design classes because I wanted to. The art style to this comic is so clever and creative and beautiful, though, I just had to go off about it. <3
...brownie points for getting all the way down here? Have a cookie.
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gurugirl · 6 months
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The Warning | bfd!harry
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best friend's dad!harry x reader | forbidden relationship
Summary: You and Harry are trying to heal after coming clean to everyone and Mrs. Styles comes to you with a warning.
Word Count: 4.5k
Warning: 18+ only, smut, angst, mentions of cheating and divorce, age gap, an uncomfortable confrontation
Best Friend's Dad!Harry Masterlist
You missed the occasional texts from Fae. Goofy memes or links to TikTok videos she knew you’d like. Recipes for you two to try. Screenshots from conversations with guys on Tinder.
There was nothing but silence from her for weeks at that point. And being blocked by her on every social media site you two were both on was glaring. It hurt. But what could you do? You’d categorically fucked up. There was no coming back from what you’d done to her family.
Most of your mutual friends were on Fae’s side and had also blocked you. Which you deserved and expected to be honest.
Harry slowly moved his things in. It took a couple of weeks. Every time he went home he tried to go at a time he thought his wife, well, he was calling her his ex now, wasn’t going to be there.
But, that afternoon, when he came home after you’d just had the worst shift you’d ever had in your life he was clearly upset. On edge.
And even though you’d had a terrible day you wanted to make sure he was okay, “Hey, are you all right?” You hugged one of his arms to your body after he sat a box full of his things down.
He smiled at you and brushed his fingers up the back of your neck, “She was there. It was awful. She’s just so full of rage toward me. And I get it, but it took a lot out of me. Better now, though,” he dropped his face to yours to kiss your mouth.
His kisses and his touches always made you feel better too. It was like everything outside of your little apartment was crashing down around you both, but as long as you stayed inside together you’d be okay.
He told you how his day at work was and then you both sat down on the couch and cuddled together, “How was your day at work, baby? I haven’t asked how your day was yet.”
You placed your chin on the top part of his arm as you looked up at him, “Horrible. Caressa is really mean. I think she’s trying to make me quit.”
Harry’s brows pulled together as he wrapped his arms around you, “Really? What has she been doing?”
“Well, last night she put me at the back. I had too many tables and no one to help because the bussers and floaters don’t go into the back when the restaurant is busy. They usually have two people waiting at the back to cover things but I was by myself so it was really stressful and the people I served were getting impatient with me so my tips were awful. And today I only had 2 tables my entire shift so I barely made any tips at all. I asked her if she could give me at least one more when a group came in but she just stared at me and laughed like I was crazy for asking,” You frowned. “Oh, and she updated the schedule without telling me. She’s got me off for five days in a row where I was supposed to be working all those days.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about this last night?” He rubbed his hand up and down your back.
“I just didn’t feel like rehashing it last night. Didn’t want to think about work at all.”
Harry pulled you into his body until you were sitting in his lap with your legs on one side. You rested your head on his chest and closed your eyes. Everything was better when you were with Harry.
“Quit your job. You don’t deserve to be treated like that. And if she’s trying to sabotage you then it’s not going to be worth it to fight for it when you’re not making tips anyway.”
You sighed. It already looked like that’s where it was heading. Caressa had been cold to you since she learned it was in fact Harry that she’d seen that day. Of course, she sided with her friend and started treating you like the tramp you were.
You and Harry made dinner together and then cleaned up the kitchen after eating, “Have you heard anything from Fae?” You asked.
Harry shook his head, “Not yet.”
You frowned, “I hope she comes around.”
“I think she will. Eventually.”
You hoped he was right.
When you’d both finally climbed into bed together you snuggled into Harry like you always did. And even with the stress of everything going on outside you two always found a way to unwind together and being intimate (which usually included sex) seemed to help you both calm down and sleep well through the night.
Harry’s hand dragged up and down your back, as you nosed at his shoulder with your thigh hitched over his hip, “I love you, baby. Can I make you feel better?”
You smiled in the dark, “I think we both need to feel better.”
Harry’s chuckle vibrated from his chest as he dropped his hand to your bottom and pushed at the fabric of your panties until they were down around your thighs.
He kissed you gently and ran his hand over your breasts and then downward to your labia.
You pushed at Harry’s underwear and slid your hand under the band and smoothed your palm over his cock.
With mouths connected you both gently got one another worked up. Harry’s fingers soon became messy with your slick arousal, and Harry’s cock hardened with the stimulation from your hand rubbing over his shaft.
“You want to be fucked, little girl,” Harry teased as he spoke against your lips.
“Yes, I do, Mr. Styles. Please.”
Harry groaned. He enjoyed it when you called him Mr. Styles or Sir. Lately, it had just been Harry as things seemed so serious with everything going on.
“Mmm… love that,” he smiled into the kiss as he pushed you down to your back and quickly rid himself of his underwear as you kicked yours the rest of the way down your legs.
He ran his tip through your pussy lips and inhaled deeply as he pushed into you. You felt yourself stretch around him and moaned in relief.
“It’s so good with you, sir. I need you,” you cooed.
Harry’s languid strokes long and deep always had you weak. You felt his fingers wrap around the back of your neck as he brought his mouth against yours with a whimper.
It might have been the quietest sex you’d ever had together. Harry kept his unhurried pace, deep and searing while he kissed you. Your body was on fire. You’d come soon.
But then his next words against your lips changed the mood and had your head spinning and your heart pounding, “Wanna be my wife? Have my babies, Y/n? Want to show everyone you’re mine?”
His harsh rut into you had you inhaling a sharp breath as your eyes popped open and you arched your back into him., “Yes, Harry…”
“Yeah? Wanna be my Mrs. Styles? Have your pussy fucked and filled every day?”
“God… fuck yes, Harry…” you groaned loudly and somehow you felt yourself grow wetter at his words.
“M’gonna give you a big ring and keep you properly fucked, baby. Okay? Show everyone this is real.”
His words were thick and deep and with his lips against yours, you could almost taste them. It made your mouth water. That you’d be his wife and get his cock every night. Prove everyone wrong. Give him a few babies. It was just a fantasy at that point but it sounded exactly like what you wanted.
“Oh my god…” you gasped. Harry was fucking into you harder and your bed began to rock and your quiet sex turned wet and loud. He still had his hand at the back of your neck, almost cradling your head as he gently squeezed and kissed you, his cock spreading you apart as he thrust deeply hips pasted to yours. “This is real. You and me,” you moaned.
You felt Harry begin to quiver over your body as he gasped, “Want all of you, baby. Want every inch of you to be mine.”
You nodded as the tip of your orgasm started to wind its way through your system, “Every inch of me is yours. From the first time you fucked me, Harry.”
He lifted himself slightly and pulled himself out to his tip before driving back into you, repeatedly fucking himself into you in punishing strokes.
You grunted at each plunge and clung to his love handles as you unraveled loudly.
“There you go,” he groaned, “Sweetest girl. Gonna give this to you every day, baby,” he began to thrust erratically, his hips swaying and grinding into you.
Your ears rang as your orgasm wiped you out. You heard Harry loudly moan in time with his thrusts just as began to come inside of you. You felt the sharp punches of his cock against your cervix as he unloaded himself within your pulsing walls. Just like you loved. The final moment of your orgasm with his long dick reaching into your cervix making you ache and swell as he throbbed and pumped into you.
You’d happily be his wife and give him babies and rub it in everyone’s face with how wrong they all were about you and Harry. This man was the love of your life.
.           .           .
“I can’t believe you’re hooking up with Fae’s dad,” Paloma whispered to you as you sat at the little table in your favorite café. A café you and Fae often met up at.
“Well, we’re not just hooking up. But yeah. I feel really bad about everything but...” you trailed off as you shrugged and took a bite of your pastry.
She nodded at you excitedly. Paloma was a mutual friend of yours and Fae’s. She was always closer to you, though. But when she found out about your affair (thanks to Fae) she called you to get the tea directly from the source.
“I always thought her dad was so hot. It’s crazy that this is real. That he left his wife for you? You know that’s not typical, right? Usually, affairs don’t wind up with the man leaving his wife for his side piece.”
 You cringed. You hated that was the perception. But you let it slide. You figured she wouldn’t exactly understand everything but it felt good to talk to someone about it who wasn’t your mother.
“I know. That’s why when we started everything it was just going to be like… not serious you know. We’d end things before it got to be too much. Before anyone found out or got hurt. But we both fell in love. I don’t know how we could have stopped it.”
“Fae despises you and her dad. When she called me I was confused because she never reaches out to me but then I realized she wanted to make sure as many people knew as possible,” Paloma laughed, “I mean… I was shocked but I’m still your friend. I can’t judge you for what you’ve done.”
“So you don’t think I’m a bad person?”
She chuckled, “Well, I don’t agree with what you did but I could never think you’re a bad person. You can’t help who you fall in love with.”
You drank your hot tea and tried to enjoy yourself with your friend but the longer you and Paloma chatted, the more you missed Fae. No one could replace Fae. She was your other half in so many ways.
“Can I ask you a really personal question? You don’t have to answer if you don’t want.”
You shrugged, “Okay. Sure.” You had an idea of what she was going to ask based on the fact that you’d gotten onto the topic of birth control.
“Is he good? Now that I’m thinking about him like that I can imagine he is.”
You breathed out laughed through your nose and smiled as you looked down into your tea, “He’s good. Yes.” You weren’t sure how deep into it you wanted to get but you’d entertain her for a bit.
“And I bet he’s got a big… dick.” She whispered the word dick quietly.
That’s where you drew the line. You sipped your warm tea and turned your gaze to the corner of the room where someone was just taking their seat.
“I shouldn’t have said that,” she spoke, drawing your attention back to her.
“It’s okay. I’m not sure I want to talk about that anymore, though. Tell me what you’ve been up to.”
It turned out that Paloma didn’t have much to say about herself. She gave you the tiniest bit of information, where she was working, that she’d dated someone a couple of months back and that it didn’t work out, and how she was planning a vacation to Cancun. But that’s it.
It felt strange to divulge such personal things to someone who gave you so little in return. And you should have known that’s what was going to happen. She wanted the dirty details about you and Harry. She wasn’t there to be a friend. Not really. She wasn’t rude but you saw that her motivation was to sate her curiosity.
Maybe you were better off just confiding in your mother. Though, she never asked you things about how sex was with Harry. She always only wanted you to be happy and doing your best.
And it would have been fun to discuss in detail how good you were getting it with Harry. And if Fae weren’t his daughter you’d do that with her. Tell her all about how insane his body is, how strong he is, how big his cock is, and how he eats you out almost every day. You’d totally brag about him with her if things were different. But instead, you were stuck with Paloma who you didn’t want to give too many details to. And besides, you and Harry were still healing. To talk about how he was in bed didn’t seem right. Especially when you didn’t know who she was going to tell.
You stopped at the grocery store on your way home to get some things you needed and you picked up one of those cheap grocery store flower bouquets. Harry had stopped having them sent when shit hit the fan and he moved in. You didn’t know if it was because they were so expensive or just because he hadn’t thought about it what with everything going on, but you figured a small bouquet might feel nice to have in the apartment.
But when you pulled into your building’s parking lot you saw, what looked like Mrs. Styles’ car parked at the front. Of course, perhaps it was someone else’s, you were a bit paranoid lately. You always had your eyes roaming around just in case you accidentally ran into her or Fae.
With one arm occupied by your grocery bag and your other hand holding the small bouquet, you slowly walked up the steps toward your door and thought, maybe it wasn’t Mrs. Styles. Perhaps it was actually just someone with a car like hers. Plus how silly for her to confront you. What good would that do anyone?
“Y/n. I’ve been waiting for you.”
You heard her voice before you saw her and then felt her pull your bag from your arm, “Let me help you. Looks like you’ve got your hands full.”
You felt your vision blur and shade in with red as your heart pummeled in your chest, “Oh. Thank you, Mrs. Styles.” It was difficult to hide the shock you felt. You were sure she saw it.
You put your key into your door to unlock it and did some quick math in your mind for when Harry would be coming home. You didn’t want to be with Mrs. Styles alone. In your apartment.
“Cute. Kind of small,” she commented as she walked into your home behind you. She’d never visited before. “I’ll set this in the kitchen here, then?” She pointed to what was very obviously your kitchen.
“Yes. Sure. Thank you.”
She sat the bag on the countertop and you laid the bouquet on your little round kitchen table. You didn’t know what she wanted. What her intentions were. You weren’t sure you wanted to know.
She leaned her hip to the counter and crossed her arms over her chest as she looked at you, taking in your outfit. You felt like you should have dressed nicer. Maybe you would have put more thought into your outfit if you knew you’d be seeing Mrs. Styles. You were wearing jeans with holes in the knees and a hoodie.
You kept thinking of things to say to fill in the very uncomfortable silence. One was that Harry would be home soon, but that felt wrong to say to the woman who was still married to him. Another was to ask her how she’d been doing. Also, not a good question to ask.
“Uh, would you like some water?” You walked toward the cupboard to pull out a couple of glasses. Even if she didn’t want one you needed it.
“No, thank you.”
You nodded to yourself as you poured a glass with water and took a gulp to soothe your dry throat.
“Would you like to sit?” You carried your glass to the kitchen table and gestured at it as you looked back toward her.
Her eyes pierced through you coolly, “No, thank you.”
You leaned your bottom into the table and looked down at your linoleum floor. You hated this. You had no idea how to do this with her. Whatever this was.
“Did you,” you looked up at her eyes, “Want to talk? Or…?”
“I don’t know that you and I have much to discuss that won’t end with hurt feelings. I just came here to see you again and say my peace. It was hard for me to remember what you looked like in my mind. I always imagine you as a high school girl even though I know you’re an adult and I’ve seen you as an adult. Kind of like how I see Fae still. My little girl,” she smiled. “And so with you, you were still a high school girl in my mind’s eye. Quiet. Polite. Fae’s closest and dearest friend. A warm and bright girl that I loved like my own daughter,” her words were razor blades.
“But I couldn’t imagine what you looked like anymore now that you’ve done something so unlike the girl I used to know. I needed to see you for what you are now. The person who’s sleeping with my husband. Who threw away a relationship with my daughter, who is the most beautiful and loving young woman anyone could ever know. And now I see it. I never saw it before but it was always there wasn’t it?”
You shook your head, “I never wanted to hurt–“
“No one ever does, Y/n. No one with any amount of good in their heart ever wants to hurt anyone much less themselves. But you’ve done it haven’t you? You’ve hurt Fae. You’ve hurt me. You’ve hurt Harry. And worst of all is that you’ve hurt yourself.”
She wasn’t wrong about anything she said. You had caused a lot of pain. You hurt people that meant a lot to you. Mrs. Styles, at one time, had meant a lot to you. But now it felt like she was a stranger in your apartment. Someone you didn’t want there.
“I get it, now, though. Looking at you. I was so confused at first. I thought why would Harry even look at you in that way? So I just came here to see if I could make sense of that and you as you are now. And… yeah I see it. You’re lovely. Definitely his type. And you’re sweet too. God that makes it so hard to hate you. I really wanted to hate you too but instead, I just hate Harry now. Because this is really his fault in the end. I mean, don’t get me wrong,” she laughed incredulously, “I don’t like you one bit anymore. But I can’t hate you.”
You couldn’t keep eye contact with her. It felt like you were being incinerated.
“Harry’s had a lot of women after him in the past. Even after we were married women would flirt and try to get close to me just so they could get closer to him. It was funny because I noticed all of that. I was aware of what they were doing. Even had to cut a good friend out after she drunkenly admitted she wanted to sleep with him. He’s such an attractive man. Believe me, I know. I always knew other women found him sexy. But with you? Never had a clue. Wouldn’t have ever imagined it.”
You felt numb. You had no idea how to respond or even if you should.
“Anyway,” she pushed herself away from the counter and clapped her hands together with a faux smile, “That’s all I wanted to say. I hope you’re prepared for him to break your heart. Because this won’t last, Y/n. I don’t want him anymore but I’m just giving you a warning. If he can throw away a 24-year marriage for a 24-year-old girl whom he has nothing in common with, then just expect him to do something that catches you off guard.”
She walked past you to your front door and you listened as she opened and closed it behind her. You couldn’t move from your spot. You tried to breathe to calm yourself and not overthink the words she said.
You knew that she was angry and some of what she said was an attempt to get under your skin. To make you feel bad. Which you already did feel bad, of course. But now it felt suffocating. Felt like there were cracks starting to gape and widen between you and Harry but you needed to not allow that, as hard as it was. Hard not to take heed of her advice and note how other women wanted him and how he strayed from his wife whom he was married to for 24 years.
When Harry finally came home you didn’t know how long you’d been standing there at your kitchen table. You hadn’t moved a muscle. Your groceries hadn’t been put away. The flowers were still lying on your table. You were caught in your mind and battling not to allow your doubts about Harry to overcome you. Because you knew he loved you, you reminded yourself.
“Baby,” He wrapped his arms around your front as he stood behind you and kissed your temple, “Got groceries and flowers?”
You nodded shallowly.
He kissed you again and then you felt his face next to yours, could see from your peripheral that he was looking at you. He pulled his arms away and stepped to face you, pulling your hands into his, “Honey, what’s wrong?”
You slowly brought your gaze to his and immediately you felt better. His eyes. His concern. His warmth. And you could see the way he loved you. He loved you. You stepped toward him and put your arms around his middle and smushed your ear into his chest as you finally let your tears pour.
Harry drew his arms tight around you, “Baby, what happened? Tell me what’s wrong?”
You choked out a sob and squeezed him even more.
Harry sat down in a chair, and kept you with him, pulling you into his lap as he cupped your face and tried to look at you, “Sweetheart, you’re worrying me. Did something happen?”
You nodded and pushed your face back into his chest. You wished you could stop your tears and just tell him but you could barely sputter a word out.
He rubbed your back and gently rocked you as you cried in his arms and wetted his nice button-shirt with your tears.
When you felt better and felt like you could speak, your first words came out sounding so tiny and pathetic, “I’m sorry.”
“Shh, shh, shhh…” he softly hushed you, “Don’t be sorry, baby. Can you tell me what happened?”
You sniffed and looked up at him, “She… your wife. She came here.”
Harry’s face dropped, “What happened? What did she say?”
“She just wanted to see me and tell me what she thought about everything. I couldn’t even speak I was so nervous. She wasn’t here long.”
He nodded and used his thumbs to wipe your tears, “I will have a talk with her. She should not have come here. She has no business to do such a thing.”
You leaned into his touch as he wiped your tears.
“What did she say to make you so upset? Talk to me.”
“Just that you’ll hurt me eventually and you and I have nothing in common. She wasn’t mean, though. Everything she said was true about me. How I hurt everyone. And she said that other women want you too and…” you swallowed. You could hardly put your thoughts together coherently.
“I’m not going to hurt you, Y/n. And you know it’s not true that we have nothing in common. You and I get along perfectly. She’s just upset. You know that right?”
You nodded.
“And I don’t care how many women find me attractive, or even how many men find you attractive. None of that matters. You know that.”
“I know. She was just upset. It just scared me that I had to confront her alone. And I hate how she looks at me now. I’m the woman who took her husband.”
When your tears had finally dried, Harry helped you put the groceries away and put the flowers in a pretty vase to display.
“I need to have flowers delivered again. These are pretty but I like the ones Florero delivers.”
You wrapped your arms around Harry’s middle and looked up at him, “You’re so sweet but you don’t have to. I know those were expensive. I just thought any flowers would look nice so I picked them up on a whim.”
“You deserve flowers from Florero, baby,” he kissed your forehead. “I just forgot about it since everything that happened and moving here with you. But you still deserve nice things.”
You really didn’t feel like you needed nice things. Harry had never done all that much in the way of spending money on you. It was flowers, some jewelry, food, a toy. Things like that. But you were happy to just have him. You were happy that he was yours. And as awful as it was to feel the way you did, you were glad he chose you because you were always going to choose him.
Harry smushed you against his chest, “You know how much I love you, Y/n. I would choose you over and over again. No matter how hard it gets. Never let anyone’s words convince you otherwise.”
And there wasn’t a single part of you that didn’t believe him.
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mummydommythe3rd · 2 months
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BLACKMAILED PART 1/3
I watched the latest video you sent me and laughed as I typed out my response.
"Good! That's enough practice! Now altogether! Do a curtsey, showing the bulk of your diaper, say 'Oh, I have to make poopies!', crouch down, and then smile into the camera and say 'Making Poopies make me so horny!' Then you can release your enema. God it? Go!"
A few minutes later I got the perfect video back. I had to hold back a laugh as I watched you humiliate yourself.
I hadn't even meant for it to go this far, but you were so gullible and easy to convince. When I first saw your profile on that kink site, and saw that one of your listed kinks was 'blackmail'...the plan had been growing and taking shape in my mind.
I messaged you and you informed me that you wanted to be blackmailed into doing all kinds of sexy things, whatever I wanted. Luckily for me 'sexy' is a very broad term that can describe many things to lots of people...including diapers.
The first thing I did was ask you your address and the numbers of a few people close to you. After all, is it even a blackmail kink if there's no danger?
After that, the tasks started easily enough. 'go suck your dildo and send me the video.' then it was 'wear a pair of panties'. It was somewhat of a challenge since you were still living at home, but soon I had you jerking off in your 'borrowed' panties, and fucking yourself with increasingly larger dildos.
Then I sent you your first package of diapers. You tried to rebel, you said this was too far...but I just responded with: "lol, stop fussing and go put on your diaper... Unless you want your mom to watch a fun video of you licking your jizz from her panties." You, of course, crumbled like a ball of dry sand.
From there it only got worse and worse for you. DIapers, latex dresses, all kinds of gags and restraints. I could just picture you panicking and rushing to beat your family to snatch away a package and sequester it away in your room before anyone else could notice the many packages you were receiving.
Last week though, I got drunk and decided to message you something I would have never sent sober.
"Blackmailing you under social pressure is getting kind of old. Wouldn't legal pressure be so much more fun? Why don't you go do a crime for me. That way I know you'll always be mine."
"WHAT?! I CAN'T DO THAT!" you responded immediately.
"You have 48 hours to get me ten grand from your work or I'll send all your videos to your parents, your friends, and everyone else you've ever met."
the three dots showed you typing something, but I just turned off my computer and went to bed. To be honest I completely forgot about it. I was so drunk that my memories of the night were pretty hazy. The app we used didn't allow screenshots, and the texts were automatically deleted within an hour, so how was I supposed to remember? The only evidence of any of our interactions was the large folder of videos and pictures you'd sent me.
My memory only came back when you texted me again "I have the money. Management is pissed AF but they have no idea who did it. Please don't make me do that again!"
I immediately remembered everything and why I wanted you to get that money. I was just shocked that you'd actually gotten it!
"That's great baby! Now send me a video admitting to the theft. Tell the camera how you stole it because you were thinking of all the pretty diapers and dildos that much money could buy. Be cute! Girly! Bubbly!"
You left the message on read for a while. I could picture you anxiously pacing your room, freaking out at how far this had all gone.
"You have two minutes for a convincing confession...or your family and friends are going to learn a lot about you very quickly."
The video came soon after. As I'd trained you, you burbled and smiled like a ditzy baby-bimbo, describing the sizes and pretty colors of diapers you could get, and how you could now get all the dildos you could ever want. More crucially, you admitted to the theft, and even showed the money you'd taken.
All of that had led up to now. I smiled as I watched your latest video with the volume muted. your face was childishly wrinkled as you filled your diaper with the massive enema.
I almost didn't send the next message. It was almost too mean, but I couldn't resist. I had to see how far this could go.
"Good girl! Now, dressed just as you are, I want you to walk into whatever room your family is in right now."
"BUT I'VE DONE EVERYTHING YOU ASKED!!" you screamed via text.
"I'm not sending them anything!" I stated.
"WHY! PLEASE! I'LL DO ANYTHING!"
"You sure will! 😂 you're going to walk in there and admit to being a pathetic little baby, and you're going to beg on your hands and knees that they convert your bedroom into a nursery."
"I CAN'T DO THAT!"
"Sure you can. Beg, cry, and scream like a toddler if you have to...I have a feeling you'll be crying anyway, so you might as well use it to get your nursery."
You started to type something multiple times, but there was nothing to say, so I sent another message.
"You're going to show them that money. You're going to tell them you saved up all of it just for this nursery. Show them pictures of other adult baby nurseries. Babble excitedly about cribs, changing tables, high chairs, dresses, dollies, stuffies...THE WORKS! You're to insist on 24/7 diapers and chastity because you just can't resist blowing your little loads into your pampers. Maybe later when you're desperate you can beg your sister-in-law to hook you up with a bull and let a real man fuck you."
"PLEASE NO! PLEASE I'M BEGGING YOU!"
"You're going to do it all, or everyone gets everything. In addition to being outed as a Huggies-humping little pervert, you'll be a felon. There's really no choice at all for you, is there?"
"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?!"
"I believe everyone should live their honest true lives. You're a pathetic baby-dicked little pervert, and now you get to live like it!"
"I CAN'T!"
"Start a video recording on your phone, then put it in your pocket. Walk into the living room and tell them everything about the life you need. after you send that video tonight, I'll break contact with you for a while.
"You'll be done with me? Really?
"For a bit. Just to give you and your family some time. In a month I'll give you a call. If your phone is disconnected, I'll call your mom and pretend to be an old school friend."
"Why?!"
"To make sure you did your job. If you're not living full-time in a nursery as I've already described, I'll release everything, and you can be a baby in prison instead of a baby with your family."
There was no way out. You knew it. I knew it. There was nothing you could do or say. Even if you only asked for some of the babyish things, I'd eventually be told the truth. Your life was starting over right now, and you had to come to terms with it.
"They'll kick me out of the house! They won't do any of that stuff you want!" You whined.
"You'd be surprised. I bet at least one family member will take great interest in aiding with your transformation."
"My step-sister, maybe, but she hates me! She'll make my life an utter nightmare! Please! What if I do something else even MORE Embarrassing?!?" You begged.
"Good luck. Make sure you ask for hormones too. Time for you to upgrade from those cheap breast forms." I responded curtly, and then turned off my laptop.
I knew what you were doing. You were toddling back and forth in your soiled diaper, cursing me, cursing yourself, wondering how you could have been so stupid, trying to find the nonexistent way out of your literal and figurative mess.
I watched the movie playing on the living room TV and waited.
You walked into the room. Immediately, Mom and my Step-dad looked at you and burst into laughter. I joined them. You didn't notice that my laugh was borne from victory as much as amusement. My mom and your dad both thought this was some prank or joke...some dare that you'd lost. My mom laughed until she was crying while you just stood there, fidgeting and looking at the floor.
You squished forward wincing as the dress squeaked and rustled with your every move.
"Hey step-bro, you've never looked better! It fits you!" I laughed.
You shot me a dirty hate-filled look, then turned to the parents. Your face was bright cherry-red; far redder than I'd ever seen before.
"D-dad....Mom....There's, um, well. Something I need to tell you."
You looked at me with a dagger-laden glance before adding "In private!"
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demiromanticmickey · 4 months
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On today's "I am SO not normal about Dead Friend Forever": Discussing Catholicism and Colonization in this gay Thai slasher series
Some background on me: I am from a Latine Catholic family. Raised as a non-practicing Catholic (we didn't go to church or pray). Then my parents enrolled me in a Catholic school that I attended from 5th grade to the end of 7th grade. Today, I am not Catholic and have never really considered myself as such.
Ok, so in the flashback episodes of DFF, I have been noticing a lot of things. My findings under the cut.
Let's start with this crucifix and photo of the Virgin Mary and a baby Jesus.
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Screenshot from ep. 5.
The camera lingers here a bit so we're obviously meant to pay attention to the phrase. I put the screenshot through Google translate's image translator and the translation it gave me was, "Think good, do good, be a good person." I didn't think much of it when I first watched the episode other than it was supposed to establish that the boys attend a Christian or Catholic school.
But then there was this image posted on Be On Cloud's Instagram (also from ep. 5): X
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Zooming in, we can see there's another picture of Mary in the background. Watching the classroom scenes, it's easy to miss because the series itself is more washed out than the official photos posted. But this emphasis on Mary led me to believe the school is a Catholic one. So out of curiosity, I looked up the schools the writers and directors attended because I felt I was onto something here. And boy, was I!
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Source: MDL
Ma-Deaw, if you didn't know, is one of the directors of Dead Friend Forever (he also directed Manner of Death and Inhuman Kiss , and lots of other things).
One Google search later (X) and I learned "Montfort College" is a Catholic school. It started out as a primary school that later added a secondary school as well.
Now let's take a closer look at some of the details of this school:
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First, the school's motto "Labor Conquers All Things". This reminded me of the phone conversation Tee had with his uncle:
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On my first watch, this sounded familiar to me but I couldn't really place why. It wasn't until I saw this other Tumblr post (X) that pointed out it's similar to a bible quote from the New Testament. The quote varies a bit depending on which version of the bible you're using but it's along the lines of, "He who does not work, neither shall he eat".
This is meant to discourage "laziness". Nevermind the fact that people deserve to eat simply because we get hungry and need food to survive. The idea that we only "deserve" things based on productivity is an extremely colonial one. — Reminder also that Tee is being forced into this "work" in the first place. He's just a high school kid. I don't need to like his character to understand how fucked up his situation is.
Then there's the patron of the school. St. Louis de Montfort was a French Catholic priest most known for his study in Mariology. What is Mariology (X)? The study of Mary, the mother of Jesus. I didn't know that was a thing but it's unsurprising considering how prominent images of Mary were in my own religious upbringing. And she's what started me down this rabbit hole in the first place. Mary is a big deal to the Catholics. I'm going to be paying even more attention now if more Mary imagery pops up.
The Garden of Eden and Original Sin
Now I want to draw attention to these images:
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Screenshots from ep. 7
Here we have Non and Phee biting into an apple as they leisure around this lush green field. We know they've visited this location more than once because they're wearing different outfits in the screenshots. And I think it's important to note that it's Phee holding the apple and offering it to Non.
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The use of the word "bait" in the bts of ep. 7 is quite interesting too. (X)
The Garden of Eden was the paradise in which Adam and Eve resided. In this garden, there were many trees to eat from. The one tree Adam and Eve were forbidden by God to eat from was the Tree of Knowledge. A serpent (Satan), first tempted Eve into taking from the tree to eat it's fruit. And then Eve gave the fruit to Adam. That is Original Sin. And because Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge, all humans thereafter are born sinful and bad, and can only find salvation through God.
Of course in the scene between Phee and Non, the sin the apple represents is being gay. And it's after this, and after the bracelet scene, that Non becomes involved with Por's film and his tragedy begins.
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Zoomed in screenshot from ep. 5
And I wonder if the bracelet scene is the last time Phee and Non visit this forest location. It would parallel how Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden once they sinned.
Final Thoughts
You give me a story that criticizes Western religion and how it's used as a tool for oppression and colonization, and I'm gonna eat that shit up. I am gonna eat it up. Every. Single. Time.
I really wasn't expecting anything like this from Dead Friend Forever. This level in attention to detail is unmatched. I don't think I've watched a more well planned out show. And no matter where DFF goes from here, these seven episodes will always hold a special place in my heart. 💗
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AITA for snapping and scaring a kid?
Okay first, some background, I (F20) am a sorta bnf in a fandom I write and draw for and I am a group of roughly 10 other kinda bnfs who do the same and are all 20+.
We all reblog from each other and support each other, and one unique thing we also do is block minors who are open about being minors that we see anywhere and/or that interact with us.
We DM each other their usernames to weed them out of circle even though all of accounts are PG and do not have and dnis or warnings that minors will be blocked. We don't let anyone know we do this, make no posts about it, no warnings, they just get blocked without any exchange.
There's a few reasons why we do this:
to encourage kids to not let their age be publicly know.
to make sure kids are not getting normalized to interacting with strange adults online
kids, to put it kindly, are fucking lame once you become a certain age through no fault of their own. There's nothing in common after a while. They don't understand adult life and can't relate in the same way another adult can, and this is just no good reason for an unrelated strange adult online to let a kid interact with them that's sketchy and weird as shit
I grew up lurking and with strict internet safety lessons. Nowadays, kids seem to not know how to lurk and basic internet safety anymore. I've tried to make post upon post warning them of the dangers of putting personal information, especially their age, online, but it's done nothing to make the minors interacting to act more safely.
But me and my friend group have found that the only way to get kids to lurk and not put their age online like they should is if they get loose access the things they want because of their age is public.
So many of the kids who follow me have been blocked and they realized why they're getting blocked and came back on a much safer lurker account. I know I'm not the asshole for doing this and encouraging others to do this because ultimately it keeps the kid safer.
What I do think I may be the asshole is when one kid in particular, I'll call him X, spent months testing me to figure out and confirm that I was blocking minors who are open about their age and then spent weeks after that threatening to call me out and accused me of being agist, a pedophile because why am I so scared to interact with kids, and lying about being cis-queer because queers wouldn't discriminate like this.
At first he was was just the usual kiddo with his age in his bio, so I blocked him, and while I didn't notice it at first, he kept making more accounts with his age in the bio and following me. I caught on when I was curious about why do many 14 years olds were following me in a row because normally is varied from around 10 to 17, and I noticed similarities across the account and realized it was one kid desperately trying to following me.
I figured I just keep blocking until he figured out how to keep his age offline, and it seemed to work when I got followed by an identical account with the age missing from any posts and the bio. I let him keep following, not interacting because he's 14 and that'd be fucking weird, but then a week into following me on this new ageless account I got a DM.
It was full of screenshots of me blocking him on he openly a minor accounts and then him just accusing of what I said above. I blocked, not caring to respond to a 14 year old, but he keep making burners to DM more and more accusation.
I just kept blocking without responding, not wanting to waste my time, but then he treatened to call me out for being all those things. I've seen first hand how life ruining those accusation and false callouts can be, how people see those accusations and do no research and let their instinctual disgust and fear of those people drive the accused to going offline or even committing suicide.
I did not want this, and the fact that this may become a possibility due to a kid who just couldn't accept not everyone wants known minors following them, made me super pissed off.
And so to "scare him straight" and to prevent him from making this callout post, I photoshopped screenshots of both a police and cyperbulling report being submitted and police thanking me for reporting this and how they'll check it out.
At the time, still being super angry, it was very satisfying to see him come apologizing, saying he'll stop stalking me, and asking for me to tell the police and cyberbulling that it was a fake report and that it's been handled.
I didn't bother responding and just blocked him, and this time, he didn't make another burner. In fact, he deleted all his accounts.
A few months have past, and now that my anger has melted into annoyance, and that annoyance into realization I may have went too far.
X, while annoying, and could have really hurt me with a fake callout, is at the end of the day, 14, still a little kid.
X probably just didn't know better and I could have just tried to talk to him and reason rather then scaring him. I feel especially bad because if he was a POC and/or an abuse victim still living with his abusers he may have and possibility still be fearing for his life. Also it made me look like a bootlicker and I would kill myself before I ever support a cop
So I'm wondering now if I may have been the asshole here for snapping and scaring a kid
What are these acronyms?
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stinalotte · 13 days
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So. Basingstoke Comic Con.
This is going to be a rant. I'm German, so I have a PhD in a) complaining and b) being blunt. Perfect combination for this post. It's going to be long, so buckle up.
I give explicit permission to repost, reblog, screenshot and post to other websites, comment, tag, and add to this in any way you see fit. Feel free to write your own experiences and criticism.
It's a modified version of the feedback email I sent them. Since then, they have put out a statement which directly contradicts some of the stuff other people have told us (and have evidence for) and which blames everyone from attendees to guests to staff to the weather.
First of all, despite all the mess with the actual con, I had a ton of fun. I hadn't seen some of these people in 20 years. I hadn't met some of y'all before, and I talked to so many people this weekend. I don't regret a single meeting, hug, smile, or laugh. I do wish however for the organizers to step on legos for the rest of their lives.
Frankly, they had a huge business opportunity and they blew it. They could have established themselves as THE Stargate convention in Europe. People were taking 15-hour flights to be there. We were willing to spend hundreds, in some cases thousands of pounds. With that lineup, they blew every other current convention out of the water. If they had done this right, this would have been a huge success and an absolute no-brainer for years to come. They could have been one of those cons that sell out in minutes. 
Instead, they let greed and poor organization guide them. They severely underestimated the size of the Stargate fandom. They didn't bother to learn about what the fans wanted and who the guests actually were.
A few things stood out for me:
Health and safety at the venue. No a/c, running heaters (!!) in some rooms, not enough opportunities to get water, way too many people for this size hotel. We are lucky there wasn't a panic or more severe injuries. Crowd control was non existent.
An impossible, ever-changing schedule. You can't put talks back to back, or meet&greets, or photo ops. Everybody knows you will run overtime and then the whole thing collapses. Changes were not communicated. Nobody knew what was going on.
Poorly trained staff. No staff meetings beforehand. Staff had no way to communicate with each other. Seriously, give them radios! Some of them didn't now the names of the guests or in which autograph group they were.
People could not get the things they paid for. Out of all the autographs included in my pass, I only got one, and only because a friend got it for me. [Marion, you're a fucking rockstar] I don't even want to know how many people will be attempting chargebacks on their credit cards in the coming days.
And the most important thing, the one that makes everyone I talked to the angriest: The way they treated the guests was appalling. They are such generous, hard-working people, and BCC shamelessly took advantage of that. Richard Dean Anderson was signing until after 1 am. A 74-year-old man who just wants to make his fans happy.
[BCC are now saying they were told he was a „slow signer“, aka someone who actually takes their time by talking to fans when signing autographs. Oh really? Then why did you continue to sell autographs well into Sunday when it was clear that there was no way he could get through them all in a reasonable time??]
David Blue was setting up his own autograph table. Several Atlantis actors went and got more of their headshots (by taking pictures in the photo room and printing them) because they ran out. Joe Flanigan tried to bring some order to the chaos more than once. He went full John Sheppard in the photo op room and took charge. We are lucky they're such sweet souls and didn't raise hell then and there. Nobody would have blamed them.
Staff were amazing and tried to make the best with what little support they were given. Kathleen, Finn and Nick (with the Stick!) especially, and so many others whose names I sadly didn't get. They worked so hard, never lost their humor, and tried to help as much as they could.
This disaster is entirely on management. It's a failure of leadership and an example of what not to do when you're running an event.
If you want to put on a convention, you need to go to people who have experience and listen to them. You need to attend several cons before even thinking about doing one yourself. And before, during and after, you need to take care of your people. You need to take care of your staff, of your guests, of the fans. You need to adjust the size of the event to the size of the venue, or vice versa. You need to actually be interested in this event beyond the money it will earn you. You need to know when you bit off more than you can chew.
I'm not hoping for a better one next year, because all of us said we won't be back. What I do hope is that hey sincerely apologize to the guests and at least double what money was raised for charity.
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omegalomania · 2 years
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Wait why does everyone hate brendon urie again?
i was tempted to just say "google it" but honestly panic's pr team is working doubletime to sanitize this bastard so here's a quick primer for those who are out of the loop.
this got long so i’m putting it under a cut. as a warning, this is going to have discussions and screenshots of people saying and doing extremely morally reprehensible shit, including racist, homophobic, and transphobic language, sexual harassment of minors, and more. tread with caution.
i'm also going to top this off with the caveat that brendon has a history of saying generally stupid and casually shitty things that a lot of people have noticed and called attention to, but these were largely unremarkable in the sense that they were the sort of things that i was not surprised to hear a privileged cis dude say. so while that's definitely a factor - the guy has said very shitty, openly racist, gross things, etc., numerous times and on numerous platforms and i do not want to overlook that - i also don't want to pretend like that’s the only thing going on here because there is a lot of other heinous shit at work.
i’m also not going to go into the intricacies of song meanings or lyrics and the like aside from a couple touchstone examples. it’s pretty public knowledge by now that i don’t know how but they found me (henceforth referred to as idkhow, fronted by dallon weekes, who worked/toured with panic for a good eight years as its bassist) has quite a few numbers that take implicit and explicit aim at panic, most prominently the video for their single “do it all the time,” which featured dallon setting fire to all the suits he used to wear on tour with the band. it’s an open secret that dallon was not treated very well during his time with panic, but we’ll get to that. the point here is that i don’t want to focus on conjecture of speculation when we have a wealth of very hard evidence at our disposal.
so let’s get into it.
the real Poop started up late 2019 iirc, when numerous panic fans started passing around stories about zack hall, panic's bodyguard and security guy who had been with the band since the fever era. as the only person who had actually been with the band as long as brendon himself, zack had a fair amount of sway with the fans and was notably very very close with brendon. as more and more people spoke up, it became apparent that zack had done a whole lot of things that i would term as "incredibly fucked up" over the years with people being generally afraid to say anything. it’s been pointed out to me that these accusations only picked up traction around that time; fans have been raising flags about zack’s behavior for years without any reaction from panic’s management.
around this time, discussion began circulating that brendon himself had sexually harassed/assaulted multiple fans (many of them minors at the time). some of these accusations, such as his attempt to solicit nudes from fans, have proven to be way muddier to and harder to confirm, seeing as brendon was allegedly not in charge of his socials for some of this time and one of the people using his handles to solicit fans for nudes was reportedly a former stalker of his, chelsey lynn.
i think it is worth noting that brendon has brought up his history with “stage gay” with founding member, guitarist, composer, and lyricist ryan ross and mentioned that brendon’s attempts to get handsy on stage were not always taken kindly (emphasis mine):
For our first headline tour I would go up to Ryan our guitar player, and like kiss him on the neck or kiss him on the mouth and he would be so mad. I was like, I just want to kiss you bro.
(that’s also the interview where brendon tried to both-sides the issue of roseanne being a hideous fucking racist. so, fun stuff.)
in any case, it took brendon four months to respond to any of the accusations leveled at him and zack. he ended up doing so by filming a two-minute apology on his twitch account (which was locked to subscribers only, meaning it was essentially monetized) [twitter thread summary for those who can't stomach it], only to say that he was just too anxious to say anything and that while zack had been removed from his position, he and brendon would remain close friends. he did not respond to any of the allegations against himself, and proceeded to basically go completely radio silent on all social media until reemerging in 2022 to promote viva las vengeance.
(contrast to this to how speedily he fired touring guitarist kenny harris in 2018 when multiple allegations arose that he was soliciting underage girls. he was removed from the tour in less than twenty-four hours. while the expediency of this was praised at the time, it retroactively raises a lot of questions as to how much brendon and/or zack knew about this behavior beforehand and were simply waiting for a good PR call to do something about it.)
brendon seeing no issues with zack’s behavior and only doing something about it when backed into a corner is very much not a good look, and is suggestive of the possibility that he’s complicit in or at the very least tolerant of this kind of fuckery.
but wait. theres more.
beyond the genuine fucked up behavior, brendon also has a history of severely mistreating his bandmates. we could get into the politics of the infamous schism that split founding member ryan ross (along with bassist jon walker) from brendon and the band’s drummer, spencer smith, but that is its own bag of worms and this post is long enough already. that drama is very well-covered. however, i think it’s worth noting that out of every single member of the band that has come through it, both creative contributor and touring member, the only former member to depart the band amiably was spencer, who took his leave because of struggles with alcoholism. he’s the only one who remains on good terms with brendon to this day, but he’s also technically brendon’s boss at this point since he helps manage the label dcd2, of which panic at the disco is a part.
most apparent and well-documented of brendon’s spotty history with his own bandmates is his treatment of dallon weekes and his wife, breezy weekes, while the former was writing and touring with the band. in that little zack hall clusterfuck above you can see places where breezy talked about being repeatedly harassed but electing to keep quiet so that dallon wouldn't risk losing his job. reportedly they both went to panic's management to put a stop to it, but the bad behavior continued, with both zack hall and brendon’s wife, sarah urie, as propagators. there was public outcry as people insisted that dallon and breezy were making this up for attention. however, eventually former touring guitarist (from 2009-2012) ian crawford (along with his sister), both spoke up to corroborate that zack's behavior (and brendon's enabling of it) were very much recurring issues and were part of the reason that ian left panic in the first place. ian's twitter is no longer active, so all i have are screenshots on tumblr for this one.
dallon has not spoken of his time spent with panic with much fondness. he replaced bassist jon walker in 2009 and contributed creatively on both vices and virtues (2011) and too weird to live, too rare to die (2013). for the former, he was responsible for the concept and album art. for the latter, he got writing credit for all but two of the tracks (casual affair and end of all things), and you can even find an early version of "far too young to die" that was originally penned for one of dallon's earlier projects, the brobecks. the controversial track "girls/girls/boys" (as well as “all the boys”) from too weird was written for dallon's wife, breezy, as a celebration for her pansexuality. the finished product would end up being about an alleged threesome brendon had.
in 2015 dallon stated that he would no longer be involved in panic’s writing process but would continue to serve as touring bassist before departing officially in 2017 and focusing all his efforts on the aforementioned idkhow along with former falling in reverse drummer (and former fellow brobecks bandmate) ryan seaman. while dallon has remained relatively cagey about his time with panic (as is entirely within his rights), he has on occasion commented that he often felt bullied and belittled in the workplace, and once referred to zack hall as "the actual worst person [he had] ever met."
breezy has been more frank about what dallon had to deal with during his time with the band and over time, dallon has been more up front about this as well. turns out dallon was underpaid to the point where he had to take up a second job cleaning carpets while touring with panic, and working side jobs and donating plasma for gas money between tours. this continued well into 2010 and possibly for longer. the ratio was reportedly something like $400 a night compared to brendon's $15k paycheck, so take that as you will.
that's most of what i can remember. i tried to sauce everything i could but please let me know if i missed anything. i also tried to embed the images but doing so kept breaking the damn post cause this is a webbed site so you only get links SORRY
tldr brendon urie is self-absorbed prick who hoards credit, mistreats his musicians, shelters predators, and may very well be a predator himself. fuck him.
also, while i definitely don't want to downplay the severity of just how horrendous a lot of this shit is, in the interests of not wrapping this on a totally down note i do want to mention that people were writing brendon and panic out of the "emo trinity" legacy as early as mid-2019 because everyone hated pray for the wicked that fucking much. after having to endure the musical travesty that is high hopes innumerable times during every single 20-minute grocery store run i was ready to chalk up my dislike of him to sheer annoyance so you can imagine my surprise when i learned that not only was this annoyance justified i wasn't actually hating him nearly enough.
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bogunicorn · 11 months
Text
Inquisition companion coffee orders and how they'd be at a coffee shop, based on the less than a year I spent working at fake starbucks many years ago. In a different order than my last post, just for the hell of it. Some of these are based on real customers that I still remember. I wrote this at 5am when I was high and unable to sleep so keep that in mind if you think I'm wrong. I'm not wrong but you should keep it in mind. H'kay let's go
Josephine: large americano, extra shots, cream and sugar and sometimes a shot of a seasonal flavor if it's a special day. She comes in twice a day, she tips, and the baristas are all trying to figure out how she hasn't had a heart attack yet from having that much caffeine every day. Staff knows her name and likes her.
Dorian: Iced white chocolate mocha. It's the only thing he gets. He will not drink it hot. He will not try a different flavor. He shows up in the morning and orders two, one with ice and one without, and be puts the one without ice in the fridge to drink later. Staff knows him on sight, but they make him state his order every day as if they don't because he doesn't tip.
Varric: regular brewed coffee, but he likes to hang out at the cafe, work on his books, meet with people, etc. He's really nice, he over tips, and sometimes the staff "forgets" to charge him for a refill. He also orders whatever food they're running out of because he figures that means it's popular and therefore good.
Solas: Decaf brewed coffee, and then he puts a disgusting amount of sugar and cream into it. He actually hates coffee and refuses to drink caffeine, but he doesn't come for the drinks, he comes to people watch and do life drawings. He needs the coffee so he has a purchase that can reasonably last him hours before he's expected to spend more money, and hot coffee won't leave condensation on the table and get his paper wet. Staff knows him and their advice to each other is not to ask him questions because he will answer you, at length, in great detail, if it's something he knows about. But he occasionally just puts a couple 20s in the tip jar, so they've decided he's cool but kind of a weird nerd.
Blackwall: Seems like he'd be a "just a NORMAL COFFEE" kind of guy, but he's actually one of the staff's favorite customers. He's some kind of blue collar worker who comes in on the way to work and on the way home, and he gets the same thing every day: regular hot latte in the morning, decaf hot latte at night. He's always there at rush times, but he's polite and he tips even when service is crowded and messy. The baristas start making his coffee when we walks in the door if they notice him, so he rarely has to wait, but he seems flattered and grateful every time.
Sera: Her order is different every time she comes in and it's always something all fucked up and weird. Half the time she just shows them a screenshot on her phone of some complicated meme recipe from TikTok, or she wants whatever technicolor monstrosity frappuccino that's on special. The staff dreads her order, but she also has a habit of getting belligerent with customers who give the staff a hard time, so they're pretty sure Sera is like a part time security guard who demands meme drinks in payment. They're allowed to complain about her if they want, but they'll malicious compliance the fuck out or anyone else who does.
Iron Bull: He doesn't have a single go-to order, but he's nice and likes to ask the staff for recommendations if it's not too busy and lets them test new recipes on him. He always tries the seasonal flavors at least once. Sometimes he comes in with a group of friends who look like trouble on first glance, but Bull pays for them all at once, doesn't let them order blended drinks, and always makes sure they clean up after themselves, so it's okay.
Cullen: Just a NORMAL COFFEE. He's totally overwhelmed by the amount of choices, but this is the closest place to his office and getting out to buy coffee is his excuse to take a break and stretch his legs. The staff knows him and actually responds to "just a normal coffew" because it's too much trouble to interrogate him about which roast or what size cup, because last time he said, "I don't know, something dark? Whatever has the most caffeine in just a regular size to go cup." He's been drinking a medium blonde roast for years and still doesn't know what blonde roast is, save that he thinks he doesn't like it.
Leliana: Two shots of espresso over ice. Leliana had shit to do and she needs that caffeine in her body as fast as possible. The ice is there to keep her from burning her mouth off. She drinks it like it's whiskey and throws out her cup without even breaking stride.
Cole: Year round pumpkin spiced latte. If they're out of the syrup, he gets the cheapest thing on the menu, no add ins, and then doesn't drink it. He rarely comes in on his own; Cole is usually there with a friend and is aware that it's rude to be there without buying, but the pumpkin spice is the only thing he actually likes. He's polite but he creeps out the other customers with his thousand yard stare.
Cassandra: London Fog, but she never remembers what it's called. She drinks it because she wasn't sure and someone recommended it, but the name just will not stick in her head. She orders it as "hot Earl Grey tea with milk", she listens every time they say "okay, so a London Fog", but by the next time she's in she's forgotten. It's not really a big deal, though, she seems pretty overworked. At this point the staff would be sad if she did remember, honestly.
Vivienne: "The Usual". Literally only one barista knows her order, because it's some customized thing that that specific barista made for her once ages ago. Viv knows what's it in but she will not tell you because she doesn't trust anyone but that one barista to make it. If her regular person isn't around, she just gets a hot latte with sugar free vanilla. That one barista also won't tell you what's in it, but that's because Vivienne tips them directly instead of in the jar and they don't want to ruin a good thing.
**also if you like this and think "i'm gonna give this fine person a follow because they're so funny about dragon age", i made a new DA sideblog at @skyholdstarbucks where i'd post anything similar to this in the future
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imsoquarky · 6 months
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Hi, Hello, I need to talk about Bruce
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This beautiful man right here <3
IDK how much of this to consider spoilers for Trolls Band Together, so I'm doing all of it!
♠️ - ♣️ - ♥️ - ♦️ SPOILERS FOR BAND TOGETHER ♠️ - ♣️ - ♥️ - ♦️
Y'know, Branch's purple haired brother who's my favorite of his brothers for a few different reasons that I'm about to spew onto Tumblr at an unreasonable hour?
Okay so, Bruce is my favorite, and I think it's bullshit that the wiki calls him Spruce despite that not being his name anymore.
Trans headcanon? Maybe. Anyways!
I love how Bruce is written for many different reasons, I also love how he's handled when it comes to his body type.
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1 minute before going on stage, JD says he expects 100 more crunches before show-time, which is insane considering Bruce (I know that's not his name at this point, but that is what we're calling him) has already done over 500, and 100 crunches in 60 seconds? I don't think that's even possible.
Ofc this is who JD is as a character, BUT THIS POST ISN'T ABOUT HIM, he's just a walking ick.
I can't imagine this kind of treatment, which is implied to have gone on for quite some time...
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...would give anybody a positive view of their body. I'm not going to add things on to make JD a worse person, even if I don't like him, but from what bits and pieces we do see, he puts more emphasis on Bruce's physical body than any of his other brothers.
For his other brothers, it's more about their clothing and personality presentation. Bruce? The emphasis was his body, abs specifically.
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It's not like he wasn't proud of them, but I feel as if they were another thing that still connected him to JD. All the brothers changed things about themselves that JD put emphasis on (Except Floyd, ig?).
But I'm straying away from the point I was trying to get to.
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By the time we see Bruce again, he's lost the abs and put on some weight. However, this is not treated as a bad thing. Which I absolutely adore.
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He's still perceived as attractive!! No jokes about "letting himself go" or even any jokes about putting on weight because he got married or whatever.
He's not muscular anymore, he's more laid-back and lives on VACATION ISLAND FOR FUCKS SAKE! He doesn't appear to have such a rigorous work-out routine anymore... Except his kids. I'd say having children 3 times your size would be intense.
Speaking of his children...
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THIS MAN HAD THIRTEEN CHILDREN??? My man, why
But I digress.
Also, not only is him being plus-size not treated as a joke or a negative thing, but
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HE STAYS THAT WAY!
Genuinely he makes me so happy, you guys have no idea. I love him.
Anyways, some smaller tid bits that I love about Bruce~
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THIS MAN'S HAIR <3 <3 <3 <3 I will explode. ALSO THOSE BANGS AAAA
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Him and his wife ughhhh <3 They're so goddamn cute.
Also we have a similar taste in women, which is "tall".
There are too many screenshots of his kids I could share, but I love dad Bruce.
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This fucking quote.
It lives rent free in my brain and I laugh like a child every time I hear it.
Probably my #1 favorite quote from the entire movie I laughed so hard
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Look at how cute he is here
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Him looking so proud of his baby brother
Anyways it's 1 am and my alarm is set for 7 so ima go to bed. I have negative points about Bruce too that I do wanna touch on at some point, but I just needed to dump all my love for him.
This is my coping mechanism for finals week.
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pippin-katz · 8 months
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I think Nick definitely has just a coldness about him. It’s not particularly dudeish, just not very sexual. I got really uncomfortable on his behalf with Taylor “farting” on his neck like that. Intimate scenes are not the places to joke around that’s why there are intimacy coordinators x
Hmm, yes, you're right, there is nothing sexual about this man:
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It's not like it's Henry that pushes Alex around, grabs his hair, is the one to suggest they have penetrative sex for the first time, and pretty much leads all of their hook ups, or anything
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And tell me you haven't read any of their interviews without telling me you haven't read any of their interviews. You could not be more wrong.
I reblogged a post literally this morning, where a person who used to work in the industry sent in an anonymous ask to a mutual of mine. I'll put what they said here: "I retired from acting in 2019 for obvious reasons and when it comes to intimate scenes you GOTTA do stupid shit like that or else it becomes unbearably uncomfortable. When you’re *that deep* into working an intimate situation your brain doesn’t really know what’s real and what isn’t, and fucking around like Nicholas and Taylor were for half of the shoot prevents you from panicking and thinking “oh fuck I’m being assaulted” and creates a bond between cast members. If you can’t joke around while on set like that you will absolutely and 100% become traumatized"
So not only is it common practice for actors to joke around during intimacy scenes, but Nicholas and Taylor have both EXPLICITLY STATED in interviews that they joked and teased each other during intimate scenes to keep themselves from getting "too in their own heads".
I don't know how many more times I have to say this. I'm going to end up creating a post of screenshots of all the interviews where they talked about this at some point so I can just link it whenever someone says something this stupid to me.
I'm not going to act like you're obligated to read and watch every piece of side content for this movie, but maybe know what the fuck you're talking about if you're going to make a stupid accusation like that.
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genericpuff · 3 months
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I dont think snailords is literally going to end the series in 20 episodes. I think he is plotting the rest of the season and has the option to extend it 10 or 20 episodes.
That's not what he implies in his post, though, at all. The wording is very clear:
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He's not saying "I have the ending for Death : Rescheduled planned out but I have this one mini arc I want to do before it", he's literally saying "the comic is ending whether you like it or not, but if you give me $1k I'll make sure it's 20 weeks from now instead of 10." He doesn't say he's plotting out the end which is however far from now, he just goes straight into "I'm gonna end the comic in either 10 episodes or 20". And then of course even goes to say "decide whether you want 20 more weeks with Kissae and Kreyul, or 10 more weeks to say goodbye". If he didn't want to give his readers the impression that that meant it was ending within that time range... then why phrase it like that? It doesn't help either that his phrasing is supported by his updates, where he says shit like:
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(Also I couldn't find them but there are other screenshots out there of him saying shit like "thanks for showing you love the series" in a way that's frankly rude af because it's basically like he's asking for money for his readers to 'prove' they love him and his work, and that wouldn't be the first time he's done that either.)
If he is saying what you're suggesting, then he's not being clear about it at all because the language is very seriously implying that it's going to be ending when it returns. Which I'd hope it isn't considering what other readers are pointing out that the story has basically just gotten going and I'd hate for this to turn into another Freaking Romance situation, but I don't know how else we're supposed to read "
And, as I mentioned in my post about it, why on earth even contemplate putting in this mini arc that he's asking for $1k as a deciding factor over if he doesn't even have it written? He says he's way more confident just writing the finale arc as is, so why drag it out with an arc he's not completely confident in?
And of course, there's the urgency. If Death : Rescheduled isn't entering its ending arc after it returns from midseason hiatus - if it still has potentially years of storytelling left - then why now? Why suddenly ask your readers to buy $1k worth of merch in 24 hours or less to help you make a decision... if the actual consequences of that decision won't be made apparent for ages?
And at the end of the day, even if it's a possibility he meant what you're suggesting, that doesn't make it any less scammy to hold the comic's potential ending for ransom? Speaking as a comic writer myself of the last 10+ years, getting money from the audience in this kind of way has never ever been a deciding factor in how I write my work. Sure, things like stretch goals and Patreon milestone rewards are a thing, offering bonus chapters or NSFW art or just additional goodies if you hit a financial goal or if people sign into a certain tier, all that makes sense, but if what you're offering is worded specifically to make your audience panic - not saying "hey , you guys get an extra bonus 10 episodes if I hit this goal by this date" but rather "hey, you guys won't get AS MANY episodes if you don't pay me $1k in 24 hours or less" - and ultimately gets your readers an extra 10-15 episodes of an arc you're not even confident in writing ... the fuck is that, even? Just write the story you want to write, why do you gotta make your audience freak over not getting as much comic as they might want only to twist it into "surprise, it was for charity!" in the end?
The whole thing is silly and yeah, I'm calling it for what it is - a scam - because it's not the first time Snailords has taken advantage of his audience and played on their emotions and need for short-term gratification all for his own financial benefit. It's not even the first time he's tanked his own comic from rushing the ending simply because he was done playing with it. So at this point I wouldn't be surprised if the comic does come back and proceeds to spend 10-15 episodes waffling on a directionless mini arc before rushing into a 10 episode finale.
That said, that's all my two cents on it, you don't have to agree with me. I really don't feel like I'm misinterpreting his words but maybe someone else could enlighten me if there's something I'm missing here; that said, considering even his own readers were calling him out on this and that he never actually made efforts to clarify what could be poor language, I don't think I'm an outlier and I don't think there's even any misinterpretation happening. Maybe he'll prove me wrong, but I've yet to see this guy do anything to prove that he's capable of doing the right thing. And frankly, even if what you suggested turns out to be true and the comic goes on for a long while before actually hitting that $1k-funded mini arc (and again, I kinda hope it does just so we don't end up with a repeat of what happened with Freaking Romance) it doesn't make any of this feel less gross IMO.
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catsharky · 5 months
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I've just discovered your Rolan x Tav comic.
It's SO neat and accurate, in matter of deign and details!
In case you don't mind, of course, I have some questions you maybe have answered before:
What software do you work with? What kind of pencils do you use? How do you manage to set so neat and clean results? Do you need many references for that or is just a gift you have? How many years have you been drawing to achieve those results?
I don't mind at all! And I don't believe I've answered any of these questions before, at least not since I started doing my comics.
For software I mainly use Clip Studio, though I do also use PaintTool Sai (v2) for certain things that I feel it does better. All of my Mass Effect comics are lined in Sai, for example because things like armour have a lot more inorganic shapes and require long, sweeping, unbroken lines, and I like the pen stabilization in Sai far better than CSP's for that sort of thing.
For how long I've been doing art, I've been at it basically nonstop since I was 9 (so 20 years now, jeez). I was in an art program throughout highschool, went to college for art/animation for 4 years, and I'll have been working professionally as an animator for 8 years in May! So there's a lot of practice there for sure.
And yeah, I use a ton of references. Usually a good chunk of the time I'll spend on something is just collecting or making the reference material I need for it.
I'm putting the rest under a read more because it's pretty long:
(Tumblr keeps eating my formatting so sorry if this is a little scuffed)
Because I'm normally working full time and doing this stuff in my free time after hours and on weekends, if I know I'm going to be drawing something a *lot*, I'll usually put together some kind of reference for myself in 3D so I can take some of the brainwork out of it and get more out of my evenings even when I'm feeling fried. It also means I put as little extra strain on my wrist as possible because I injured it a number of years back and it gets angry at me if I go for too many hours in a day.
But to give you an example, for Ember I have a Sculpt of her head that I can use to reference any angle I want, or to draw directly over top of for tricky angles. How I draw her isn't quite 1:1 to the model, but it gives me a base structure and landmarks I can build on top of.
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My basic workflow is to take the angle I want, draw over it using the model as a guide (while picking and choosing where to stay true to it and where to say fuck it and do what I want), then I get rid of the 3D and do another pass, tweaking and redrawing anything I'm not totally happy until I'm satisfied with how it looks. I draw Ember with a slightly softer, more rounded face than the model has, for instance. Just because something looks right in 3D doesn't always mean it looks right once translated to 2D and I don't care if something is technically "correct" if it doesn't feel right or isn't conveying what I want it to properly.
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I'm also always checking reference screenshots to make sure I'm in the right ballpark of how something should look. I actually have a wall of photos next to my desk and while I didn't put them up for that purpose, it has come in surprisingly handy for quickly checking face or hair details when needed. I also just have a big folder of screenshots and other saved reference material.
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I don't have a problem noooo~ 😅
Additionally, if my art has a background these days, there is a 100% chance that's a 3D set I built in Blender because I hate drawing backgrounds, but I do like building them in 3D.
Here's two examples: the area around Astarion's bed, which I built out of some of the in-game assets like a lego set (this was a pain in the ass, it probably would have been faster to just build it from scratch based on screenshots 😩) and a closet I modelled for something that's still a WIP.
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I'll get the angle I want, have Blender generate some linework from it and then grab a basic render of it to slap into CSP so I can draw the characters over top of it.
And as for brushes: the main brush I use in CSP is just the default 'Real G-Pen', with opacity effects turned off and these pressure settings: (I like to keep it simple, and I have a bit of a heavy hand so the altered pen pressure just helps me get a smoother taper). I change up the stabilizer settings depending on what I'm doing. Lower for things that need short, quick lines like hair and higher for most other things.
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For Sai, I use a 9B pencil I found a number of years ago on Deviantart (I think?) and I wish I could link you to the original post I got the settings from, but Deviantart's search is... bad and I'm unable to find it again.
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I hope that answered all your questions! If not, feel free to ask more!
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Am I the AH for refusing to be friends with someone who flat out hated me?
From ages 22-26 I was friends with R 29-33. R had only worked once in her life which was mcdonalds for 3 months to buy anime merchandise her grandma didn't want to buy her. R's grandma is in her late 80's now just for reference. R's granny had married a rich military dude who was on his 3rd marriage or so then died, so she got all his assets which included like 5 houses, 3 were being rented out which is how she'd get her income. So R never worked and just sat at home getting into internet fights. My friend had invited her into our discord and I'd be civil with her despite knowing how shes been with others. I was working full time for shit pay and going to school full time too. R was very, idk how else to say it, but she always demanded our attention. The other people in the server were 5 from ages from 16-22, we never used how much older she was against her, but she really didn't acknowledge or respect alot of us were in school. Many times we'd had to tell her to step back and set boundaries with us. It did result in people leaving the server. So, in summer of 2019 R decided to go to college. She got alot of financial aid and said her goal was to become a therapist cause she was everyone's "mom". That stuff wasn't even remotely true, she was always a total bitch to everyone. R unfortunately didn't understand that going to school means having to put the work in. She was more interested in spending the financial aid on gacha, anime merch, and other stuff. She lost her financial aid after the spring semester of 2020, and refused to talk to her school about the pandemic stress and other shit. During this time, she tried making me do her assignments and I kept saying no or only helped a little. I had my own assignments, school, and I was stressed. Well, when she lost her financial aid due to academic probation, she blamed me. When the pandemic hit my school did this thing where you'd get partially refunded your semester depending on how you did. I was so thankful for that since I barely scraped by to pay for school. R was so fucking nasty about it. I didn't tell my friends that to gloat, I actually said that before she lost her financial aid. She said I didn't deserve it, cause people like her struggled more. Which is fucking weird since I'm a first gen POC and made a few bucks above minimum wage where I live. I didn't even enjoy my time at school cause of the stress and never having money. So she kept harassing me for getting government aid. I wasn't eligible for financial aid! My parents weren't even eligible for food stamps and we always fucking struggled. But I didn't deserve help, who cares if R is a cis white woman in her 30's that only worked once for a few months, she has it harder. Then R left our server when the pandemic started getting nastier, alot of us struggled but we stayed close in the discord. Then one day I reached out to R in late 2021 to say happy birthday and she said "whose this? New phone." I was hurt she didn't keep my number, but whatever. In 2022 she reached out to me for gossip cause I broke up with someone. Then now in 2023 she reached out cause she wants resources to be a vtuber. I'm sorry, she was shitty to me, I've been struggling, and she reaches out for that? Idk even know how I'd be able to help her with that. I told a friend from our old server and she told me how she had been doing R's assignments for school, but stopped cause she was getting stressed cause she had her capstone class that semester. So wow. R basically didn't do shit for school and gets pissy i get some financial relief. I then had another mutual friend tell me how R had told them she sent me a gift and I didn't send her one, one year. Uh? I tried. I ordered something online for her, and the company sold out, but kept my shit on back order. So R got it like a month late, it was a Christmas gift and I explained it to her, sent her screenshot of when i placed the order and sent her an Amazon gift card as an apology. So she bad mouths me for something out of my control?
I've been getting "hey" messages from R lately, and idk. I'm so done with her.
What are these acronyms?
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ceasarslegion · 1 month
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wait, now im really interested in the silica gel drama. how did hlrp sex ed lead to eating a gel packet?
This is going to require a novel's length of context.
To begin, I want to underline that this is not meant to be a callout post, and I will not be providing any identifying traits that could be used to single this person out. The most you will get out of that are she/her pronouns, and her age at the time this happened, which was years ago, and I will not specify what year. I genuinely do hope she got the help she needed after this, because LORD knows she needs it and didn't find it at home. This is also not meant to be a character assassination, nor should anybody who reads this post consider it to be a takedown of any sort, and if you try to find this person through me or any of our mutual friends, you will not be met with kind words. The only thing this is meant to be is a wild-ass story of some of the most off the wall experiences I personally had with this person from my specific side of the story, with a few no-username screenshots attached to prove I am not bullshitting you.
With that in mind, let's get started. This is going to be very long, so I'm throwing in a read more
Back when I was in uni, I joined a growing group of Half Life roleplay blogs. The whole idea of our group was that we each chose a character, canon or OC, and we would blog as if the pre-Black Mesa incident moment in the timeline was a workplace comedy a la The Office or Superstore. I played Barney, because I was already working night shift security at this point and thought it would be funny. Plus, it gave me something to do that wasn't staring at CCTV feeds all night tossing a ball against the wall. We played off of each other very well, yes-anding our way through funny little situations and plotlines we put together. At one point we had roleplayed enough that one of the scientist rpers created a discord server for us to talk as the actual people we are instead of through characters.
Great idea at the time. None of us saw the "Pandora's box" label on the tin before we opened it. Would I still join it if I knew what was about to transpire? Yes, because I met my boyfriend and many genuinely lovely friends through it. Would I hesitate for a second first, though, as the events that are about to transpire flashed before my eyes? Oh, abso-fucking-lutely.
We started off as many fandom servers do: chill for the most part, very loud minority of a few assholes who ruined it for the rest of us, but unlike most fandom servers, we actually won and it ended in them getting banned and the server itself surviving to this day. But the other two lunatics are not who you came here for. You want the christian lunatic.
Let's give her a nickname to make this easier. I have the Sylveon build a bear on my PC desk. Let's call her Syl.
Syl was not there for Half Life, she was there for Portal. She LOVED Portal, Half Life was just part of the same universe for her. Portal wasn't just a game for her, it was her entire personality. Which I didn't see much of an issue with at the time, because she said she was 15. Whatever, I thought; she'll learn to control her emotional attachment to things as she gets older. Syl also said that she was christian. I am a flaming atheist who doesn't even believe in the concept of a soul in comparison and I am NOT the biggest fan of christianity as an institution to put it mildly, but I'm not gonna like, be a dick to you for your personal religion if you are not a dick about my beliefs, so I didn't think much of it at the time.
It quickly became apparent that Syl looked up to me more than any of the other adults in the group the more I would talk about my life growing up as a third culture kid and moving out on my own at 19, working 2 jobs and going to a good university. She would ask me a lot about growing up and uni and moving out and yes, sex ed, and it became even more apparent that she didn't get any actual guidance from her parents or pastors or ANYBODY beyond bible studies and homeschooling, so I kinda stumbled into a mentorship role in her life. I wasn't cold, but I was aware of the age and maturity difference between us and established the appropriate boundaries with her and made it very clear that I am an internet friend, not an irl friend or an educator, but if no one else was going to give her information that wasn't actively harmful then fuck, I guess SOMEONE had to do it. I could not in good conscience watch some kid go through life with harmful inaccuracies about the world and basic human biology when I could have done something about it, y'know?
And the more things I taught her about the real world and how things actually work rather than how her republican bible-thumping rural town said they did, the more I realized she was born into a full-blown cult under the guise of a christian congregation. Oh goody, I had my work cut out for me. I will not get into the details of how messed up this group was because it will be a dead giveaway of where she lives and potentially who she is, but let's just say that one time I said that I appreciated the gesture of praying for me during a stressful week I was having but it didn't really do anything for my mental health because I was an atheist, and she sent me a bunch of bible verses begging me to start believing and said "I just don't want you to go to hell because you're so nice :((" EXCUSE ME??? Another time she said that death was only sad for non-christians because their loved ones were in hell and that proper christians deaths were a good thing because they were in heaven now. Hi, that's the most insensitive death cult shit I've ever heard in my goddamn life.
Okay, set up is done. All of these details will tie in like the world's worst reboot of Pulp Fiction, I prommy.
After a good long while learning about the world from me (which like... a uni kid working night shift security is not exactly an academic source but we take what we can get) and exposure to viewpoints outside of her in-group, Syl began that very painful journey of realizing that what the cult taught you was a lie. Except that she just wasn't grasping that unlearning things was an active process. She started to flip to the opposite side very quickly, but kept all the fundamental brainwashing of the cult that raised her. The concepts were all the same, just slapped a different label on them. This created a noticeable pull between two sides of the same personality: the cult personality, and the person beyond the cult who wanted to break free. Mix that with how fucking 15 years old every 15 year old is, and you have a LETHAL concoction just waiting to blow up at the first sign of a spark.
Remember how I said that Portal was her whole personality? Syl decided that she wanted to be a scientist, and go into an ivy league program like I was in (I was in a SOCIAL science, but sure). Problem was, she didn't have the grades or the ambition, really. I had told her that I still got into an ivy league when I failed math in high school, and she seemed to completely miss the part where I said that I also joined every extra-curricular, then worked for 2 gap years for recognized institutions, and wrote an essay about why my math grade is not relevant to my program. I did it with one bad grade, so she was justified in basically just slacking off and then excusing it with "but its haaarrrdd" when we'd tell her she needs to put the fucking work in NOW if that's what she wants to do.
It quickly derailed from here. Not only was she going to be a scientist, she was going to be like Cave Johnson. And she was going to... replace her body with robot parts so she could be like glados. I don't... think she actually knew what science is, because she would just publically fantasize about running unethical experiments on people in the name of "science," and talk about how one day she wants to basically establish aperture labs for real. All of us who were there kind of agree that we don't think she was joking based on what we knew about her and the cadence of her tone. Here's something she said at the time to give you an idea of what direction she was nosediving in:
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This was after a session with her therapist where said therapist said that she definitely has some kind of personality disorder, after which she was weirdly proud of having one and treated it like a badge of honour.
Syl then made a separate group chat for all the best friends she made on the server. There was her, me, @false-pyre, and @imtheaura. She titled it "My Family," despite the fact that we were all adults and she was 15 and she only knew us over a discord half life server where one person in it stepped up to somewhat equip her for real life outside of a cult. Regardless though that GC was more the vibe of a group of friends sharing memes and chatting about the day than the wider server was at the time. The others began to also take on a sort of mentorship role towards her as well, because that's kind of inevitable when you get someone talking about teenager problems in a room full of adults who all made the same mistakes before in their own lives. Well, minus the cult.
And remember how I said that she didn't unlearn any of the cult shit? Well, there was a lot of proselytizing. She decided she wasn't christian for a spell, but still wanted us and everyone to know that jesus was the lord and savior and we had to accept him or we'd burn in hell. Usually said after we'd make some joke about satan being daddy or declaring ourselves god instead, because that is just the type of humor the others and i have with each other. She took it so personally whenever one of us would go "oh my god" "you called?" it was fucking annoying. I lost count of the amount of lectures she gave us, all of which I'd shut down and tell her to get a grip about because I have a big stupid mouth.
The others and I also like to talk about evolution, and speculate about where we're going from here. My fucking god, did she not like that. She bit our heads off about how evolution isn't real and god made everyone as we are and there's no scientific evidence or whatever the hell. Like yeah good luck getting into STEM with that mindset. Whenever we pointed out that she was objectively wrong about that, she'd have a big stupid meltdown about how much we're slandering god and how jesus died for us and we're spitting in his face or whatever. He should spit in MY face inste-*GUNSHOT*
Eventually, we were making some actual progress with her. She was still one fry short of a happy meal and going off about how much she wanted to put living subjects in test tubes in between knocking on our doors and reciting Hello from the Book of Mormon musical, but we were getting somewhere. And then she went back to in person school, and her favourite teacher got fired.
The schoolboard did not say why she got fired, but we all had our suspicions that it was because she openly supported queer rights in a cult town. She was coincidentally retired shortly after making a declaration that queer people are still welcome in god's kingdom. This teacher was the first in person adult Syl had for guidance, so that incident shook her to her core, and she fell right back into the extremism. Hook, line, and sinker, even more extreme than before.
She was WEIRD that week, man. Suddenly everything was about how great god was, how amazing jesus was. Suddenly she understood why her cult member parents "just wanted to protect her" from gay characters on disney+ originals. Suddenly no one could say "jesus christ lol" around her or she'd have a fit. I said "I hate cycle counts lmao i wanna kms" because my then-job (I had graduated at this point) made me do inventory management spontaneously and wouldn't let me go home until I had counted every product in the store, and she bit my head off accusing me of turning suicide into a joke.
It was that incident that made us tell her to knock it off already, that we understood it was a hard week for her and she was in a period of grief, but that is no excuse for how she had been acting towards everyone around her that wasnt christian, and that she was actively relapsing. I'll let the exchange speak for itself:
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So uh. After years of helping Syl through this she goes and pulls this bullshit. And then has the fucking AUDACITY to act like nothing ever happened in the wider server. I am genuinely gobsmacked by the balls on her to act like it was all sunshine and rainbows in the wider server after sending this and immediately leaving the same GC SHE made and titled "My Family" just because we told her to stop acting like a goddamn Jonestown citizen after all the work we'd put in to get her out of that mentality at this point.
So I dragged her up in front of everyone and essentially said "no, nuh uh, you don't get to say that shit to the people who have lost sleep and asked for nothing in return trying to help you escape a cult over the last 2 years and then act like we're all buddy buddy to everybody else. You don't get to be that arrogant and self-righteous without any consequences. I don't give a fuck how young you are, you DON'T treat the people who have helped you this much like that, you selfish little shit. How dare you treat us like this after all we've done for you over the years."
Unfortunately, no one involved had surviving screenshots of this, but they can back me up on it if they so choose. And oh boy, DID she face the consequences of her own actions. The whole server basically turned their heads and went "what the FUCK is wrong with you, Syl??" and asked her to at least like, apologize. She proceeded to double down with the added audacity of "you guys taught me how to establish healthy boundaries, that's all I'm doing right now :(( oh woe is me :(((" like WOW, okay. Someone's really going for the persecution complex.
Here's her last goodbye to us all before the mass block fest occured:
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Oh, boohoo. You're so hard done by. You spat in the faces of everyone who stayed up all night multiple times helping you through crises and spent the last 2 years teaching you about how the world really worked and then they asked you to apologize after you tried to escape accountability. You truly are god's strongest soldier, the most persecuted minority in the world. Let me play you an ode to how righteous and holy you are and how this was the most important hill to sacrifice all your outsider friendships on on the world's smallest violin.
Syl then went on to post on her roleplay blog that she "was banned because I spoke up for what was right, and they didn't like that" before deleting it. Truly no one has suffered as much as you.
Anyway, the day after that went down, I called in from work, bought this book, and read the whole thing purely out of spite:
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It was greatly therapeutic. After that incident, I vowed to never sanitize my own atheistic beliefs for the benefit of others again. If they don't like them, they don't have to talk to me. But I am not changing them for other people or keeping them quiet just to spare your feelings anymore, I have as much a right to my beliefs as anyone else does, including the world's most persecuted minority here.
And well, the silica gel incident?
There was one incident, during the height of Syl's "I am the irl cave johnson and only want to get into STEM to conduct unethical experiments on people. follow jesus" era, the rest of us were joking about how silica gel packets are the ultimate forbidden snack, and said "haha would eating it make you see shrimp colours" knowing full well it can kill you.
Syl proceeded to actually eat a silica gel packet and then send in "it has a sandy texture and tastes bad" prompting the rest of us to go "WE WERE FUCKING JOKING FIND YOUR POISON CONTROL HOTLINE RIGHT NOW"
And because i didnt get this done until now, I'll tag everyone who said they wanted to read this or expressed interest: @captainjonnitkessler @formydarlingtoread @cra-zwizard @chasingnightrainbows
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