honestly, brennan getting completely fooled by zac is so relatable to me because whenever I DM, all knowledge of dnd leaves my brain except for the basics. like I cannot for the life of me tell you what a spell does when I DM. my player's abilities are unknown to me. I am simply here to be fooled by my players

Penumbra Superlatives: Most Likely To Be A Dark Matters NPC

The people demanded it, and I am indeed a magnanimous conspiracy theory machine, so here is my incredibly ridiculous reasoning behind my “who is in the dark matters simulation and who is fake” ranking, found here. Thank you to my partner for listening to me yell about this for 24 hours straight now. Man, I am gonna look like an idiot if this isn’t a Dark Matters induced simulation or dream in the end with how all-in I’ve been going with this.

Also, if you guys ever want me to lay out every fucking tiny detail I’ve seen that I think points to it being a simulation, I’ll do that too. Please validate me.

This is insanely long, it’s like two to three paragraphs for every member of the space family. This is kind of shameful, I almost feel bad. I’ll be your best friend forever if you read it all. Also, I’m putting it below the cut for everyone’s sanity. Anyway, let’s go lesbians, let’s go!

First, in the “definitely an active participant” category: Rrrrrita!

I’ll admit, it’s genuinely really hard to tell what discrepancies in the story are suspicious simulation details and what is just Rita being a particularly unreliable narrator. However, my first general point towards Rita being an active participant/player/whatever you want to call it is the fact that we’re experiencing this through her perspective! I think it would be really cool to tell the story from the perspective of a caricature puppeted by Dark Matters, but I feel like it would be way more obvious in gaps in her thinking patterns if she was fake. Honestly, I personally think it would be impossible to run it from the perspective of one of these NPCs (as i’m calling them) anyway, because... you know, they probably don’t have much in the way of thoughts in the first place. 

Plus, out of everyone in the group, she is most likely to be plucked out of a group of criminals by Dark Matters to recruit. Sasha knows her (or at least knows of her) and how good she is at her job. I’m sure she’s got a target on her back as someone that’s too powerful (seriously, I pray for the universe the day Rita realizes just how quickly she could take over the world--see: my THEIA Rita AU that i came up with this morning which I might post about later), but I’m also pretty sure killing Rita would be seen as a wasted opportunity. This could just be another test, just like Day That Wouldn’t Die but in an even more controlled environment. The perfect trap, the perfect test--hopefully for perfect results. And with how she tends to get caught up in glamour and drama or get distracted so easily, she’s one of the easiest members of the group to trick into not questioning the little discrepancies that comes from living in a lie.

---

Next, Vespa. Love of my life and the only other member of the Carte Blanche crew that I’m almost totally sure is sharing space in this simulation.

She’s in a similar position that she’s a valuable asset for Dark Matters to try and take on--especially if they can use her past debts as blackmail or something along those lines. She’s a damn good assassin and they tend to specialize in making people disappear. Why wouldn’t they seize the opportunity to test her and see if she could truly work for them? Dark Matters also seems to lack an ethical core, to say the least, and if they consider her past trauma and her illness to be an issue, I’m sure they wouldn’t be against trying to “fix” her in their horribly scummy ways just so she could be a better killer for their organization. It could also be related to her skills as a doctor with the crew, to be fair--while Rita is off building robots and trying to break into a super secret base, Vespa is repairing the entire medical wing, an incredibly suspicious task when apparently enough of the ship survived that Rita’s computers are okay, the entire crew is unscathed, and the Ruby isn’t a warped hunk of metal.

Though she is also very likely to be nabbed by Dark Matters as an opportunity, the main condemning thing against Vespa being an NPC is the conversation we overhear with Buddy. No one else knows that Vespa considered or decided on leaving the crew. We can’t say that’s a part of Rita’s mind affecting the simulation around her because Rita doesn’t know, and it’s not information that could be hacked, either. It was just in her mind. Unless Dark Matters has their hands on new mind reading technology (oh god, not this shit again), there’s no way that the scene with Vespa and Buddy could exist unless Vespa is also inhabiting the simulation. Every scene they choose to include is deliberate. To rule Vespa out of the plan, all it would’ve taken was likely just Vespa being her normal defensive self. Why would they include a scene with a look into that vulnerability if it didn’t matter?

Speaking of the Vespa and Buddy scene--but why would Vespa snap at Rita that badly if she’s real, you might ask. You’re right, Vespa is aggressive but not that aggressive normally, and it stood out in the few interactions we saw. In Vespa’s defense, if she is participating in this simulation, she is understandably freaked the fuck out. Vespa spends every day of her life hyperaware of what might be real and what might be fake around her. She’s most likely to figure out that something is very wrong first simply because of that trait. How much of her mind is Dark Matters manipulating? Would DM have to simulate her hallucinations, or would that come naturally along with her mind being stuck in this simulation? I imagine that for every discrepancy we’ve picked up on, she’s picked up on six--but she no longer has the explanation of it being a hallucination. I imagine it’s frustrating and terrifying for her. I’d be on edge, too!

---

Moving into our next category: “probably in the simulation”, with our only candidate Buddy.

Buddy is my question mark character. We barely interacted with her this episode. From what I can tell, most of what we saw from her seems in character, and she had some wicked fucking lines. I’m sorry, I refuse to give Dark Matters credit for the line “If you imagine all that could go wrong, all you’ve done is drag yourself through a thousand disasters. And even in the worst-case scenario, you will only need to live through one.” Because it genuinely made me feel better in real life, goddammit.

Buddy is mostly in this category for lack of evidence, both with the lack of interaction and with how Rita kind of glazed over the family meeting with her distractions. So, it’s hard to say. I’d love to hear others’ theories on Buddy’s place in this.

---

Now, we cross the threshold into those that are probably not in the simulation, or are acting incredibly suspicious: the “on thin fucking ice” category. First, Peter. 

Can this bastard decide on his personality for two whole minutes so I can get a handle on the little intricacies of the new Ransom persona? No? Goddammit. It’s hard to tell how much of the way he acted was genuinely suspicious and how much of it is the mask he’s put on for Peter Ransom. While he’s adopted the old name, he hasn’t adopted his old personality, so it’s near impossible to get good points of comparison on this new view. We’ve seen inside his head with this persona, sure, but we can’t compare the way he spoke and acted in his head with how he holds himself in front of Rita--he’s always going to choose his level of vulnerability based off of the least trusted person in the room. He’s not to that place with Rita yet. He’s going to have walls and facades up that he won’t have in front of Juno, or in front of himself. He can’t make it easy on him.

But that does not mean I can’t be suspicious of him, because I am. Fuck you, Nureyev, I’m still coming for you. Mainly, I’m squinting at his reaction to Rita’s plans and his lack of reaction to her openly talking about the two of them in an established relationship. We know damn well that Peter and Juno are not at that place yet. Why, do you ask? Because I trust that Sophie and Kevin wouldn’t take that moment from us. We’ve had three and a half years of slowburn buildup on Jupeter! We would not skip from “tentatively talking and trying to learn communication through ‘’’’’’poetry’’’’’’ and shit” to “established lovey dovey relationship” without being let in on it. I doubt Peter would let comments like the ones Rita made really slide in front of Juno--after all, the last time he admitted he was in love, Juno fucking left, and I bet there’s a lot of reluctance or trauma surrounding that. Yet he let it slide anyway.

Still, because Peter is a wild card, there’s still a possibility that his non-reaction was a defense mechanism or part of the Ransom facade (after all, he had to pretend he was in better standing with Juno than he actually was at first to keep his place in the family). The most suspicious thing he did in that conversation, in my opinion, was agree not to let anyone else know about the plan. He knows damn well that he is on thin ice with everyone in the crew except for Juno and Rita. Trust is in short supply for him and keeping his position in the family is incredibly important to him, both so he can find a way to pay off his debts and so he can pursue this shaky relationship he’s started to piece back together with Juno. Yet he hops right in with barely any pushback when it comes to keeping this Incredibly Vital And Important Plan a complete secret. Plus, you know, he supposedly couldn’t even stand, yet walked all the way to the computer cave. Sure, maybe Juno carried him, but I’d fully expect something like Juno picking him up to be a joke written into the script. I feel like it was deliberately left out.

Still, the only real glimpse of Peter that Dark Matters has ever had was of Rex Glass, and Peter definitely isn’t acting like his Rex persona, so how would they really know to get his personality around the Aurinko family to where it is? I suppose that could be attributed to Rita, Vespa, and/or Buddy shaping the simulation around them.

Tl;dr on the Peter section: He’s almost definitely an NPC but nothing is certain with a man whose entire sense of self is based off of an elaborate web of lies and inconsistencies.

---

Also probably an NPC, but I’m not sure, thus on thin fucking ice: Jet.

You cannot tell me for one fucking second that Jet doesn’t know the Ruby 7 inside and out. That car is his baby. He’s torn the car apart and repaired it more than anyone else, and you’re telling me he doesn’t understand the core functions of the car--the engine, the fuel tank? No fucking way. I don’t have 3.5 paragraphs of speculation for Jet, I’m just so hung up on the fucking car thing. His personality fits well, which is the one string I’m holding onto that makes him maybe possibly an actual human being, but I feel like Dark Matters fucked up by trying to fill in the blanks on the Ruby 7. That’s where I think the issue comes from--the reason there’s a part in the Ruby that Jet doesn’t understand is because DM doesn’t know how the Ruby works, and they tried to put in what they imagined could power it or fuzz over the details. But I will cry if the Ruby was actually destroyed in the crash, there’s no recovering from that.

---

And finally, if you’ve made it this far and not left after whispering to yourself holy shit, she’s insane, she’s absolutely insane, how much does this woman talk, we have the final category: unfortunately an NPC. And holy shit, is Juno 100% not in this simulation or being almost entirely puppeted by Dark Matters.

I genuinely can’t get into all my reasoning behind Juno being a puppet here without going on forever and doubling the length of this post, and I’ve put you through so much already. But every inch of Juno is suspicious, down to his tone of voice. Look, I’m happy to see him happy. But it just seems like a jump--just like as I discussed in the Peter section with the Jupeter relationship. It feels like we skipped something, or missed something. This is my theory: Juno has been crafted based off of how Sasha Wire knew him when she saw him last. He doesn’t have reactions that are quite right to the computers, to Peter, to anyone, really. Everything felt just a little off--until he got frustrated. Then he became more realistically Juno. I think this might be because Sasha is basing a comfortable and happy Juno (the one she assumes he must be around the people on the ship, especially Peter if she knows they’re romantically involved) off of the Juno she interacted with when they were younger, which is just off in comparison to the Juno we know now. She can build a more three dimensional Juno in the situations she’s familiar with, like a bored Juno, a frustrated Juno, or an angry Juno. She’s got the one-liners down, I’ll give her that.

I’m also just in general not surprised if Sasha is just keeping him separate from the rest of them. Possibly to try and talk him out of the family, get him untangled from the Dark Matters mess? Plus, he’s incredibly perceptive, and might be considered a risk to the simulation if he was in it. 

Also, the out-of-universe evidence: I am 100% convinced that the reason the episode script came out late is because it had to be edited to remove some of the directions, possibly suspicious things like “too cheery”. Specifically, I think one of Juno’s significant directions is missing. It’s hard to put exactly what kind of direction is missing into words because I don’t know anything about script writing, but I just... I have a feeling. Trust me on this. I’ve seen other people on Twitter talk about it too, I’m not the only one. I stand by it.

---

Anyway, since I want to keep my Juno-specific speculation as short as possible, that’s all, folks. If you stayed this long, genuinely I love you so much and I would give my life for you, message me or mention it in the tags that you made it all the way and maybe we could be mutuals or friends!! I love to ramble about this kind of thing. Follow me for more aimless speculation, hopefully not 2.5k words next time. If you have any questions or other stuff to discuss also mention it and I might post about it later!

Update: If you’re interested in the simulation theory, here’s the link to a post I just made laying out all my conspiracy theory evidence for it.

the only exception: a pat murray x fem!reader one shot

gif credit: @hollyjollyriphunter

pairing: pat murray x reader

word count: about 2,3k

warnings: none! maybe a little angst if you may see it like that & a lot of fluff!

a/n: my first fanfiction on here and my first one after literal years, haha! (bare with me for that matter) also, keep in mind that english isn't my first language, so i'm really sorry for any mistakes!

this is mainly written for & because of one of my best friends leila - leave her some love on her insta @ angelmazzello! <3

summary: y/n is a worker at the d-back's agency, as the woman for basically everything – mostly bringing the boys snacks or drinks or just for their entertainment, considering that all of them are mad obsessed with her & never fail to show her that. but for her, there's only one: the world's most angry but soft boy, patrick murray.

enjoy this fan fiction for now & don’t forget to request me stuff in the comments or via dm!

It was a sunny and hot Saturday in August, when you, Y/N, got ready for work. The Californian sun shone into your bedroom as you were getting ready, excited for the game, and excited to see your favourite team in the world in action once again. They didn't always gain as much as they may have wanted to, but you knew that they gave their best every time and how much they lived for the game.

Leaving your appartment with fast steps, getting into your car and driving to the field, the only thing you could think about though was this one specific man, who you couldn't keep out of your mind since the minute you saw him for the first time. You never really knew if he was feeling equally, but the only thing you really always knew was that the things with him were different. For better understanding: The D-Backs team is a dysfuntional team of college allumni baseball players, who never manage to close their months and who can't go a day without insulting one another so much you might think they'd hold it against each other until the end of time. But when you see them on the next day, everything's back to normal and everyhing happens all over again. You love watching them being by themselves and also their dynamic on the field. They had some kind of magic within their group that amazed you every time. Well, maybe it was just the magic that your best friend, John „Mazz“ Mazzello always tried to point out, but you really didn't care. You loved these boys. And they loved you too.

About that: They didn't just love you, they were quite literally obsessed with you. There was never a time when they saw you where they didn't whistle after you, told you how good you looked with your tied up hair and in your jumpsuit and how well you smelled when you hugged every one of them. It didn't really bother you, you in fact found it extremely funny and always told them that – even when Vinnie sort of revealed to you that all of them had a list and a bet on the go who would get you in bed first – but you still didn't care, you also had a share on that one after all. But there was still just one of them who never really was into that whole thing – it could've been no other but Pat Murray. Mazz's childhood friend, the most enthusiastic screamer on the field, who deep down just was somebody who needed and wanted a lot of love. Which you never told him of course, because those were just thoughts in your head, and you would never dare letting those out. It was too risky for you. Because you definitely didn't want to lose him. Even though you weren't the closest friends, there was always something about your bond that was different to the ones you had with the other boys. But you never knew how you were supposed to tell him that. You just couldn't. Even though you felt his stares, his gazes, his secret attention he gave to you. The little smile he made when he heard you laugh. But he also couldn't admit to himself that there could be more between you guys. He just couldn't wrap his mind around the fact that someone so pure, beautiful, kindhearted, amazing, supportive and angelic like YOU would actually want him. HIM. The messiest person to exist. So you were stuck in your denial of wanting the other and living with it for as good as years now. And so far, this life has been really good. You were just too tired from it, which didn't make it any better. „But it is what it is! Y'know!“, something Zapata would say from time to time when they lost another game.

( OH RIGHT, Y/N is literally on her way to their next game! Back to that topic I guess. )

As you arrive on the parking lot next to the baseball field, you start your normal routine – getting out of your car and locking it, checking yourself in so you at least gain a little money from all of this, getting into the building of the D-Backs home place with their lockers and all, getting into its kitchen and getting everything they needed for the day. They had a home match, meaning they must all have been pretty nervous and maybe even scared to fail. Which is always a matter of the atmosphere within the team, which was different every time, which amazed you always. So you get their snacks and drinks, say Hi with a bright smile to everyone you cross paths with and head to your boys.

As they see you from afar, you can already just smell Palacco's grin towards you and Dells' whistles. „Well well well, look who it is! Our entertainment during our misery!“, the raven haired yelled at you. You scoff a little. „I'm also really happy to see you boys, Johnathan. And just for your reassurance: Go fuck yourself loser.“ All of them laugh at you, which just makes you roll your eyes. As you hand them their snacks, Mazz walks up to you last to get his own, giving you a kiss on your cheek. „Thanks for doing this every time Y/N, you know you're an angel“, he winks at you. You just nodd your head slightly, while looking over to the boys. After some time you just look confused at them, because one special one is missing. „Hey, has anyone seen Murray? He normally is the first one to get this snacks every time. Stress eating and all.“ Arthur just nodds at the field. „He's right there, just checking out the grass' new cut. Y'know, he likes to play specified.“ Another laugh leaves the boys' mouths. You just shake your head and walk up to him, his snacks in your one hand, the other one stuffed into the bag of your jumpsuit.

From afar you can already see his auburn hair glowing in the sun, how it matches with his red team uniform and how his light skin just looks purer than anything else you've seen in your life so far. This sight makes your heart jump into your stomach and you need some time to catch a breath, before you raise your voice a little. „Murray!“, you yell towards the man in front of you. He quickly turns around to see you and you could've sworn that there was a slight smile on his lips as he faced you. „Oh, Y/N, good afternoon. What's the matter?“ You just walk closer to him and hand him his food. „Here, you weren't with the others when I handed it out, so I just thought I'd bring it to you like this.“ He nodds his head and takes it on. „Yeah, I just wanted to check if all the lines are still on track after the grass was cut a couple of days ago. So we don't fail completely. But thanks.“ You scoff, following his eyes as they're sampling the ground. He then sighs, a sound he makes very frequently and which you were already used to hearing from him. „What's wrong Patty? You worried you guys are gonna lose today?“ He laughs a little at the nickname, but then faces you again. „Well, you know Y/N/N, I'm always worried we will. But with home matches-“ - „-it just hits different, I know“, you cut him off. „But y'know, I will be there cheering you guys on from the fence, right next to you. You guys will rock this“, you reassure him, patting his right arm a little bit with your left hand. You wouldn't be lying if you admitted that the both of you felt some type of electricity from that embrace.

He just nodds his head about what you said and actually smiles a little. „Yeah, I know that: It's always you cheering us up the most. And it's the sweetest thing ever.“ You smile hard at his words, probably harder than you should, and do you even blush a little from them or is that just the summer sun shining straight in your face? You don't really know, and maybe you don't even care. What you do care about though is when Mazz yells over to you guys so Pat comes back to the rest of the team to get ready for their game.

You know he does this every time you and Murray have a moment like this, because he doesn't want you to get hurt. Pat didn't have the best experiences when it comes to love so far in his life and because of his broken soul he sometimes makes decisions that don't only hurt him, but also his partner-at-the-time. His last relationship ended pretty bad, you were the one comforting him, already being head over heels crushing on him. But you didn't want to let your feelings in the way of him being hurt, because he was your friend and you wanted to be there for him. Now things are way different and he kind of got over the heartbreak he experienced, but you still couldn't find the guts to tell him. You just couldn't. And Mazz knew that. So every time you guys talked about it, he accepted your decision, even though he was basically the only one believing this thing between you and Murray could work. But he accepted your decision, and whatever decision Patrick would make, because you guys were his best friends and he didn't want anything bad happen to you, nor to lose either of you. So he was just there. Being the secret admirer of secret admirers.

-

As Murray and you get back to the rest of the team, you hug every single of them, wishing them the best of luck. Mazz comes last. You embrace each other the tightest, because you knew that'd give him strength. The only one you didn't hug was Pat, but you just never did that. It sort of never „fitted the vibe of your bond“, as David would say. So you just walk over behind the fence, watching the game elope.

-

From the beginning the match was an intense competition, not only between the two teams, but also between the teammembers within one. But with the D-Backs, that was normal. You were used to listen to them insulting one another in the worst ways possible, with words you didn't even think were a part of the English dictionary. But you just watched and enjoyed the whole thing.

-

After a lot of time has passed and a tie has been declared, somebody had to be chosen for the last pitch to win the whole thing – this time for the D-Backs. You nervously stand on your tip toes, waiting for a decision to be made. The referee had decided to select the performer at random. So they try to find someone, everybody in the crowd is extremely tense, just like you and the rest of your boys are, when they make a decision. „Patrick Murray, 7th, centerfield!“. You gasp loudly and a shiver runs down your spine. Oh god, this can't end well. But Pat walks up to his supposed spot with a kind of confidence you've never seen before on him, with his bat, his baby, his basical everything, standing there and waiting to hit it off. As he's waiting, he turns around a little to face the crowd, finding your face and looking you straight in the eye. You just nood at him, fingers intertwined next to your mouth, and somehow, this gives him all the strength he needs.

As the ball flies up to him, he stands on his position, waiting for the right moment.

Then he hits it.

And then he gets it.

-

The crowd and the rest of the team are cheering more than ever. They really did win! The disappointment on the faces of the opposite team were probably able to be seen in a country 10,000 miles away, but you didn't care. You just were so incredibly proud of your team and especially of your man, Murray, who practically wasn't your man yet officially, but that didn't stop him from owning your heart to the fullest. You push yourself through the cheery people, ignoring the rest of the D-Backs being all over each other, walking fastly towards Patrick. As he sees you, he drops his bat and also walks up to you, hugging you tighter then ever, which gives you more and more shivers and just lets all the adrenaline overflow you that you could ever be able to. Out of the sudden, he picks you up, making you squeak a little, spinning you around for a moment. He let's you down again, looking you straight in the eyes, you just smiling at him the brightest way possible. God, he freaking loved your smile. And from all the previous events, all the strength you had given him, he finally says the one thing you've desired to hear from him for such a long time now: „Go out with me Y/N. I mean it. As a Thank you for helping me today.“ You gasp a little, holding your breath, still having your arms around his waist. „Are you sure? You know that was only you being the talent you are just a few minutes ago.“ He scoffs. „Yeah, I know, but I'm also sure. And dead serious. Just go out with me, sweetie. You won't regret it.“

You just shake your head in agreement. You would most definitely finally go out with the man who owns your heart. And then you'll see what will happen from then on.

~5 months later~

Ok I lied. I’m not going to talk about my Japan trip in this post. Instead I’m going to provide an update on what’s been going on in my life for the past 5 months since my last post. Lol. 

Okaaaay. So we ended up having a second wave. Hahah..aha..hah. A very intense and overwhelming one, at that. There was a day I believe when the number of new covid cases reached almost 800? It happened around mid this year. I remember it being a really devastating and disappointing period of everyone’s lives. It would seem like the number of new cases would only get worse everyday. I would be so put off from watching the news or reading about anything related to covid ‘cause it would only make me depressed. 

Today is a notable day to write this post ‘cause today’s the first day, since this second wave started, that VIC reached 0 new cases and 0 new deaths. 4 stages of lockdown (plus an extension) later, we're finally here! Everyone up until this day had been feeling it - despair, restlessness, anger, hopelessness - at this lockdown that seemed would never end. But today we got the news that VIC will be re-opening again (1st stage) this Wednesday (it’s a Monday today), then even more on Nov 8. The glimmer of hope we’ve been waiting for, for literally months now. 

Now for the non-covid related updates. Lol. 

It’s tempting sometimes to overgeneralise 2020 as “the year wasted”. “Nothing happened this year” (besides covid of course). But there have been a few new things I’ve experienced this year which I think would be worth noting. And a few thoughts I’ve been having lately that I really need to deposit somewhere before I forget them. 

Ever since I became single early this year, I’ve received some interesting dm’s via Instagram. One of the first ones was from this guy from Canada, who sent me one of my posts via my DM then proceeded to comment “cute haha *monkey covering it’s mouth emoji*”. I got this message while I was showering, at like 3am, so it was pretty unexpected. This was the beginning of a very strange friendship (?) thing. Long story short, and around a month later, I found out him to be a very strange guy. He was cute, seemed like a catch at first. BUT he gave off major player vibes and also, he was basically 4-5 years younger than me, and didn’t live up to the maturity he claimed to have (emotional maturity mainly). He would make it seem like he was after a relationship with me sometime in the future but also kept implying that he wasn’t necessarily after a relationship right now, and just wanted to “go with the flow”. He was always complimenting me, always wanted to FaceTime everyday, and would sweet talk me with things that were nice to hear. But I couldn’t shake off the feeling that he was bad news and wasn’t really serious about any of this (I even kept telling him I was thinking this). I should mention he was asking for a selfie and wanted to FaceTime from the very first conversation we had (after only exchanging a few messages). We didn’t even know each other yet?? Lmao. After a few weeks of talking to him I eventually caught him in a lie, and yeah. That was one of the biggest red flags. I had a weird feeling about him from the get go, but I guess I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt (and also what threw me off a lot is that he told me that he told his Mum about me - but I’ll never know if that was just a lie too). He also told me that he was going to visit here from Canada in August (it’s October now) and kept going on about how he wanted to spend a whole week out of the two weeks he was going to be here, with me, and how I’m so chill and fun to talk to that we would have so much fun spending time together. Lmaooo. He told me he’s dated a lot of older girls (I’m not sure if this is a fetish of his), but every time I asked him how many exes he’s had, it would always be a different number (which is hella sus ‘cause it seemed like he was lying then). He tried to do some weird sexual stuff as well which I never entertained and pretty much shut him down straight away whenever he tried. Not sure if he was just joking, but it was disturbing nonetheless. I won’t go into detail ‘cause this isn’t the place for it. It eventually got to a point where I was decided on the fact that I couldn’t take this guy seriously and didn’t want to waste both our time so I started replying less/later to his messages, basically friend-zoned him by calling him “man” and “dude”, and teased him about other girls saying that he had potential with them. I think he eventually got the hint ‘cause one day he just stopped texting me “good morning” everyday. Lol. But anyway, yeah that was more or less the main stuff about guy #1. 

Guy #2 was from London and it started with one of my girl friends messaging me and asking me if I was talking to someone at the moment. I said I wasn’t and she proceeded to tell me that one of her boyfriend’s friends found me really pretty and wanted to follow me on Instagram. She then sent me a few photos of him (screenshots from his IG account), asking if I would be interested (I felt like I was on a dating site for a moment lmao). While flattering, I remember thinking this was so bizarre. To be honest with you though the guy wasn’t my type (looks-wise). My friend said he was “a real sweetheart”. Even though he wasn’t my type, I gave it a chance and told her that I don’t mind him following me. We both agreed that the guy and I had nothing to lose, and if anything we’d just become international friends. Lol. So soon enough the guy follows me on IG and then starts a convo via DM. He introduces himself, seemed like a nice/decent guy. Very articulate, and well versed. He would comment on my stories here and there and try to get a conversation going, try to get to know me better and try to share things about himself. I think I recall him saying he thought I lived in Japan ‘cause I had a lot of posts from Japan. Lmao. It would get to the point though where he would write massive paragraphs, but the energy wasn’t called for, and didn’t feel mutual. I think I found it a bit overwhelming and felt like he wanted to take every opportunity to write an essay about his views on everything. There was a particular time I did an IG story post where I was venting about something, and he replied to it with like two long paragraphs worth of his thoughts, and then said he would be there for me even though we didn’t really know each other that well yet etc. Which was really sweet - yes. But also felt too early, premature. It almost felt like he was trying to forge an emotional connection too early on in a relationship which wasn’t even at the friends stage yet. We’d only been talking for like 2 weeks or so. I couldn’t help it, but I think my neutral and short replies gave off a hint, and he commented less and less on my stories. Till eventually he stopped altogether. Lol. Also I think I may have accidentally called him “man”....on purpose. I feel like a horrible person. There was a point early on though that I looked through his IG profile and tried to find things about him that I liked (I basically tried to convince myself that maybe the guy wasn't so bad). But I think that wasn’t successful. And yeah, it was hard to hide that fact for long I think. 

Guy #3 is this random guy that just followed me out of no where and liked a bunch of my photos on IG all at once. He then started commenting on my stories quite a lot. He would leave brief comical comments, and tried to get me to play animal crossing with him. Lol. He tried to start a convo one time but I didn’t reply to it for a few hours, and then found that he deleted it. Lol?? He would then like a few more of my IG pics. He was a bit strange. I wasn’t quite sure if he was trying to show that he was interested, or if he was just bored and wanted more friends. But yeah he doesn’t comment on my stories much anymore.  Now that I’ve gotten those out of the way, just thought I’d go on about my recent thoughts. So lately I’ve been feeling really stuck. I have a quarter-life crisis pretty much every day. I feel like I’ve plateaued, and I’m not really growing much right now. I feel like I need new experiences, new company. Most of the ones I have at the moment aren’t serving me well or helping me become a better person, if I’m honest. And I’m not happy. The company I have right now aren’t encouraging me to level up, or helping me expand my thoughts and horizons. I’ve noticed that a lot of the friends I was close to pre-covid have changed a lot, and so have I, so we’re not really offering much to each other. I’ve become so low energy lately that I find myself trying to avoid or escape dealing with people or situations that I feel aren’t worth my energy. Which I want to start doing more of from now on. I want to be more selective of the people I chose to surround myself with. I also want to find my community or a new community which I can be part of and grow from. Not sure how or where I will find that, but it’s something I’m keen on delving into more as time goes by. I want to be more myself, I want to change up my look, my fashion. I want to expand my knowledge, expand my vocabulary, expand the diversity of ways I talk/present myself or respond/reply to situations. I want to feel like I have something to offer - not only to my future partner, but to the friends I make in this lifetime. I feel like I’m too basic and uninteresting. I feel like I’m also too careful, too slow, too afraid to make mistakes. Too afraid to take risks. I want to stop “complaining about things, but doing nothing about them”. I want to be confident in myself, no matter what I feel that I am. If that makes sense. I want to speak more clearly, slower. I want to be able to speak Filipino fluently. I want to find the career that I love and work in it. I want to work with people that I can genuinely be friends with, not just colleagues or “fake friends”. I want to not care about what people will think about me, and just do me (especially on IG). I want to be unapologetically myself. But before that, I want that self to be the kind of self I aspire to be. Can you want to be different, but also want to just be yourself at the same time? Can someone confirm this? 

How 2 RP - Part 1.5 (A little extra)

Hey everyone! Masao here~ Welcome to part 1.5, a little extra for you all, where i interview a experienced RPer, who shares their story, and give their own tips for RP. I thought it would be nice to hear from someone that has more experience then i do.

Today, we talk with:

@captainkurosolaire

​​A very good friend of mine who was actually one of my very first RP friends back in the days of Heavensward. Kuro was one of the first groups i joined, called Goldbrand. A pirate group that mostly focused on hunting Relics and the like. I learned a lot about RP from him, and made me really enjoy writing stories. He is also a very awesome dude and very humble. I hope our little interview helps you get motivated to RP, and to set that first step into the fantastic world of FFXIV!

My first question for Kuro was:

When you started RP, how did you start? Did you have a lot of help? Kuro: I started 6 years ago in XIV RP. I've been LARPing, I've built my own scuffed tabletop game with me and a bud, I've done WoW RP (Didn't click with me due to bad introduction to it.) As an only child, I've always had nothing but the highest of imagination's and I've always been tethered to create and build.I had tons of help. I wouldn't be here in the community without one of my ex's who drove me into it. I was a cuck. They shaped me and saw that, I was passionately nerdy about this stuff and always directed me towards this but, I was a shy bean and in a cocoon thought I’d fail or be a burden. After they parted with me for being naive and needing to harden me with heartbreak, I took a gamble for myself. Leaped in after a person named Sei took me in, I created Captain off just his glamour alone and then built off the tiny sketches with what I had in solo and overtime.Started from Gilgamesh, then went to Balmung. This was the era when Quicksands a majority of the time was filled with ERP and anything on the outskirts, were the more serious players and you had to go looking. I made a character fit and based around Quicksands and centered around the atmosphere. It felt fitting. So I went brash from being the most introvert by playing the most opposite to me. To not only challenge myself, but to force me to learn more. This overall was more productive of aiding in my conquest for building my Tabletop game, at first, it was mainly for that...Then eventually as my reputation was mainly ERP but somehow my F-list had some actual character-depth, I expanded and branched off. I was told by my Kahn'a my practical Yoshi P and lore guide. Some helpful hints and after that they practically set me up for transitioning out of just being a smut writer, even though I had a story behind each thing, I wanted to transition out. Then I met Verrine, Mishi, Thorcatte, Sun’ra, These people really put the ground-works into my story alongside Kahn'a, everywhere I turned, every person I met, they were inspirations, they were aiding me in RPing and feeling like this is my home, this is the land of the nerds and I owe them everything for letting me find this haven.Eventually another friend told me basically, why not just DM(Dungeon Master). Since I had contacts, I had the RP and creativity for it. They pointed me in that direction. Wasn't until I met my longest and really huge gratitude of an RPer in Ayla, who eventually inspired and led me into not only you. But bringing in many others who I eventually found as crew.I owe a tremendous amount to Ayla... Without a shadow of a doubt. Kahn'a too, but I could say literally, I owe everyone, four-hundred people in my head right now. From I've ever contacted or came into RP or even plotted none of their experiences have ever gone to waste. They each gave me a presence of passion. I transitioned off; led a huge DM group that was mainly done because you reached back out after I hit a downward spiral. After I left everything behind and ruined nearly all of it and lost my mojo.You rose me back like the phoenix, I eventually created a plot so massive that I could DM for like thirty individual people with the right support and people, did I fail in being a community leader or dealing with drama and involving everyone with my health and limited energy? You're damn straight. -- I failed utterly horrendously!  However -- It wasn't entirety wasn't in vain, people found their little groups and pockets in that, they met their meshes. Which objectively, that's all that matters as someone who organizes those to bring people together and in.After that... I transitioned into Tumblr more after being encouraged by people like Fair-Fae from afar, to Sei. Then worked on drumming to the beats given. To every person, even the ones that are angry emoji in the background-- I love em' their passion rubs into me and it breathes of air, gives me wings better than red-bull advertises! As someone who's dealing with an inoperable and bed-ridden rare disease, I've never been or felt more alive.I owe so much to people, and it's why I've stuck around for six years now and continue to batter up against the foul. This is why, I want to raise, boost, encourage, and rally others to be shared so they find in match-making their RP partners, and despite... I know my writing style hasn't ever been everyone's flavor, I never have ever thought of ever wanting someone not to find happiness. I couldn't give up RP at this stage. My next question would be, If you could give a tip to someone who just wanted to start to get into RP, what would you say to them? Kuro:  Know this. Getting into RP is a joke. It's really easy, you possess already every tool to be a tremendous RPer! Much better than I and I ever will be.

Short version: Just communicate. RP It's merely a Dance that can be positively enchanting, magical! -- I don't care what anyone says. ~ It's a partnership, you've got to find the people who keep up with pace and momentum, or blend with your style. You won't always find that and it's not a bad thing if that can't work. Some characters don't connect, some are opposite but they can still work. That's because it requires, one additional thing that requires: a pillar of effort. Don't let yourself be overwhelmed. Looking from the outside this game I've heard and seen, It's intimidatingly daunting. It's a lot to get into. Though this game? It's unoriginal. There isn't anything you can't create in this game, you have science, you've got alchemy, you've got magic. This game is literally called Fantasy in the title, this game has yanked and pulled off all the foundations of RL concepts, other fantasy tropes, religions, and renamed them and splashes over paint. You can do the same... Anything can be explained, I don't care what it is. People are fundamentally not grown as the exact same, I'm not personally here to be a clone trooper. Now If I want to play that, I can even do that respectively.* Look around the game visually, see if you think it can be done with the setting and place, build yourself something anything, you've got a whole box of legos don’t step on them. It’s proven constantly your creativity can be endless the more you play over time, or invest, put yourself out there. Go look into some guides, pull from a book, or google anything you’re thinking about. Again: People have styles they're different. You may appeal to being an NPC, you may like to be extended into Lore, you may not like all the fantasy, that's more than reasonable, it's all valid... There are people that feel you, they're waiting for YOU. Then you'll find people who are open-minded, you'll find people like me, I was in RP's with aliens, voidsents, normal people, WoL, like I've witnessed a lot. Listen to them, let them explain, and most often they fit. If you're too close-minded to accept then you don't need to worry you’ve already decided they’re not you, or your taste, leave them to their devices let them have their happiness, and go back to the scour. Don’t try harassing or bothering something that’s not there or ever will work. Wastes time and misery and drama isn’t worth unless it’s within stories, trust me. See for me... I’ve seen it all. People saying aetherfeeders and vampires didn't exist they cried on the forums and held a tantrum you had people say for years -- then boom RDM storyline and Stormblood came out debunked. Submarines weren’t things prior to SB despite we’ve got Garlean’s over here casually making Gundam’s. Their careers are over they played themselves -- this game is still continuing and always will if you're waiting for official confirmation from a -book- then you're going to be miserable, you're living off the backbone of a book meant to 'guide' and be resourceful in extension not to weaponize it and be a prick to people who don’t follow strictly the same ethic as you’ve so randomly chosen for yourself in standards, I hate to burst bubbles, but you’re never going to be 100% accurate, never ever. You didn’t create this game -- or it, therefore you can’t be anything but a replicator you’re just stuck either limiting your pieces or taking from an entire tub of building material. You aren't playing the book, you're playing the game. That's the real cannon, you literally visually see everything that's going to happen, you can bend it with predictions and logistical math. See XIV, they bend-over concepts of the real and made them fit or pried. I don't just bend lore… I bend it over. Why would there ever be anything that cannot be created? It's just how you interpret it, there are lazy ways to explain things, then there are thorough and detailed methods to get to the same realization of what you want to create that'll work and fit like puzzles to slots this story could’ve foretold. If done correctly more often then not XIV will follow suit in the same thing an expansion later if you stick to your wings, I’ve done it numerous times it feels like XIV has followed copied my test and then tried not to make it look obvious its because stories we’ve brazenly written together in deep-thinking. When my character is tagged IC that's it. Everything he witnesses or sees, I'm not refuting it. That's my chosen though, I see Quicksands and there's no way that place on my Balmung Shard and experiences is it clean, is it lead properly, or the official’s high representatives who totally are just fine with letting a Voidsent blow up the city-state. My character witnessed that, it’s set in stone. Though that's the option and you should always find what makes you comfortable, who makes you comfortable and consider that above all else. Often or not, everyone uses RP as an escape just as they play games. Don't sacrifice, don't lose yourself or not give self-love for what makes you passionate, don’t neglect yourself in taking control of being empowered and attaining friendships, fun, or treating yourself to something new to possibly take something lovely out of finding RP can be and make it all positive for yourself. Myself? I’m inspired by every person new and old who’s been in this game. I love it, do I bleed for it as my canvas? By the Twelve you know it! I’m only ever going to write stories and continue to build and grow, to learn. To do anything to give back. When a passion gives you life, you show that thankfulness by blazing that flame. My last question would be: Is there anything else you wanted to add or say to people? Kuro:  Nope. Rest boils to the decisions you pave yourself and if you want to take the plunge. Just know you're worthy, valid, and this place isn't and never will be one batch or selective, It’s not too late ever there’s no expiration to get into RP, there’s a reason RP last longer than the lifespan of the game’s even when they’ve hit the lowest of lows in dry content, there’s always been unity. If there's one thing this community does well it’s looking after one another.And If they fail to deliver. I know there are people like me who'd rather raise up then pound down.You got this, champs. And that was my interview with Kuro. Looking at his answers, there is a lot that i can agree with. The community of FFXIV is a very great one. If one person is down or needs help, the FFXIV community is the first one to jump up and help with what they can. Hence, its why i made this! To help you, reading this. Just remember, that there are always people out there that are willing to help you. And a person such as Kuro, and of course, myself, will do whatever we can to help those in need. Thank you all so much for the support, and i hope you all have a good day. Also! If you are a RPer, and you would like to be interviewed too, let me know! Send me a message over here on Tumblr, or add me on discord: Masao#2913. And feel free to ask anything related to RP, or even FFXIV. Hope you all are looking forward to the next one~

The Toxic people in the HH Fandom

Now this is something I wanted to talk about.

I have been in this community for some time now and it has been the most eventful, yet exciting time of my years. Seeing a large group of fans support a passion project / show made by talented and independent people is pretty damn great and I love it. But, there have been some situations that had reeked some havoc here and I think it’s time we talked about some of them. 

Unfortunately, I could not fit everything I wanted to talk about in this post since it’s a bit overdue , I will be discussing 5 types of toxic people and some situations that had happened in the HH community. 

Note: Most of the stories I’m going to talk about were either made public or had been told by my friends or people who have experienced these situations. 

I will not reveal the names of the toxic individuals or their social media names as I don’t want anyone to witch-hunting any of these people. As much as I hate these types of people, it would be inhumane to go and attack them. In this community, we are trying to bring positivity to the fandom and not attract any drama here. Despite this, I will offer the details of what these individuals have done that should have some light dazzled to help and inform of these disgusting  crimes in the community. Also if you go out of your way to harass any of these people I will beat you up and eat your fingers. You know better then to do that.

1. Harassment

Harassment is no uncommon thing. It can happen to everyone, but that doesn’t mean it’s ok. If you are being harassed or spammed by someone, BLOCK THEM. It is never ok for you to stay silent, especially when that harassment is continuous. If you disagree with someone about something, do not go spamming them in their dms or comments, cause’ that just make you look stupid and immature af. 

Allow me to explain. Role-Play / Role-Players are seemingly the most common in the HH Fandom and often answer questions from others to the the character they are rp-ing as or their ocs. But sometimes they are going to get weird fucking questions.

For example, my good friend @carol1826​ is a roleplayer. She roleplays Charlie and asks / answers ask from others (HH related or not). One day, she had a very annoying anon asking her the question “Are you single?” on her posts and ask box. Of course, she was uncomfortable about that question and deleted those until the anon finally said:

“Dumb bitch deleting questions I was only asking a question...”  

“I bet the real Charlie would answer my questions...”

Ok, first of all what the actual fuck and what type of human being would ask someone that question, especially to a Charlie rp blog. More specifically, why would anyone ask a roleplayer that question. It disgusts me that this anon would do this and I hope they get what’s coming to them.

----       ------      ---    --------         ----------  --   ----------------   -----                   ------- Another example of this comes from Tumblr and DeviantArt. You see, a strange user (we will refer to as “the User”) has been asking artists (minors and adults) a specific request in the HH fandom:

“Draw Angel Dust’s butt looking like his fluffy chest” Or sometimes even these asks: “Draw Angel Dust swallowing bullets” ”Draw angel dust smuggling drugs up his butt” “Draw Alastor killing Pentious with a penance stare” “Can I get a shot of Pentious' eye on his hat?” But it seems that the User would often ask artists to draw Angel Dust with his butt out or doing weird shit, but mostly Angel Dust’s butt.

Of course, they would be constantly asking and spamming artists to do this, even if the artist didn’t want to. They even went as far as asking a 13 yr old artist to draw his request. The User has also admitted that it was a fetish (butt fetish to be specific), which is ok but that doesn’t excuse their actions. Fetishes are normal and I have nothing against anyone who has one but it is not ok to try and demand and spam someone to draw it if they don’t want to. The User has been also stealing art, not crediting artists, participating in art trades but never doing their part, begging or persuading for artists to give free art to them (despite some artists who only do commissions), making fake accounts and harassing /  impersonating people, acting racist, etc. I recommend any HH artist to block this user immediately if you get an ask from them.

If the artist doesn't want to draw your request, then you should leave them alone.

It is not ok to spam an artist’s askbox or DMs the same request they rejected over and over again. It’s not going to do any good for you if you do this.

Not only that,

The User also does this to HH roleplayers, sending really weird rp asks to them, mainly those who roleplay Angel Dust. In fact, there was one instance where they sent an ask to a Angel Dust roleplayer in which they basically raped Angel or asked very perverted question about their “Fluffy Butt” (the worst one is when they asked Angel rp-ers to swallow a rat and see if it comes out through the butt), along with other weird asks and it’s fucking disgusting / disturbing as this makes the User look like an extreme creep. It is not uncommon for these types of people to ask others to satisfy their fetishes or sexual desires, and will do whatever it takes to get that fetish / desire expressed from anyone (minors or adults) they can contact, even if it is illegal.

Unfortunately, this User has also ask artists these requests on DA as well, but way worse than you could ever imagine. The worst instance was where they’d ask various artists to draw a frog with worms up its ass. Yeah, I’m calling the Art Police.  Recently, the User had posted on DA discussing this issue. Of course they were acting very perverse, deny that they spam artists (even though it’s the truth) and trying to pull a bullshit pity party / sob story by explaining how they used to be homeless for 2 years, abused and attacked, which (I clearly doubt is true). The fact they tried to defend themselves by talking about how shitty their life used to be fucking disgusts me and is so very pathetic, it makes me gag knowing that these people exist and we are forced to live among them. The User is obviously trying to pull people away from the situation by using the pity card, and it failed. Why the hell should anyone give you the benefit of the doubt that you have done these sick, twisted, and inhumane things to artists by spamming them gross requests and being a big baby when people call you out, as if you should even deserve pity to begin with?  Now of course, what the User is saying does sound very hard to deal with and very sad, but once it crosses the line (due to these actions the User has done and has been very immature and uncompromising about it) people won’t care about how you got there nor feel pity about it. Besides, I doubt anything that the User said is actually true, especially the “homeless for 2 years” part, since if that were the case, you’d be more focused on money and rent rather than asking artists to draw a character clapping their ass-cheeks. Currently on this user’s DA page, they’ve been doing these abominations of status posts for some time, posting pity-post stories in order to get sympathy and just bad. In one of their posts, they go completely ape-shit. Like, this is what happens when desperation and lies is your only option to escape your problems because you’re to perverse to try and fix those issues. I doubt anything this guy says is real anymore since, at this point, anything they say is just a way for them to get pity-points.  Here are the posts btw -----v

Overall, this user is a art thief, spammer, pedophile, manipulating, lying disgusting immature pig that should be eradicated from the internet and all communities for they have been nothing but harassed and cause problems in the fandoms they entered. 

In conclusion, If you are an HH rp / art blog and you are getting uncomfortable asks like these, do not respond and / or block the person asking, you have that right and these people can’t tell you otherwise. If you are harassing people like this, then shame on you for your actions and you seriously need to stop. Its not fucking ok and it will never be ok. NEVER FUCKIN’ EVER. 

2. Art Theft 

Now those of you who have been here for a long time in the Vivziepop Fandom, you will know that many people would sometimes repost Vivz’s artwork. Most of the time we usually don’t do this in the intent of stealing it but to share it or even criticize it. Seemingly Vivz doesn't have a problem with this, unless you are stealing it for you own personal gain and lie that it’s their art. That’s right, these bastards steal her art and claim its theirs. If you been frequently going to Vivz’s Twitter back in 2017, you might remember her calling out a blog that was stealing her art and saying it was theirs.

If you thought that was bad, not only does this happen to Vivz, it happens to other artists in the the HH fandom, the two I’m going to talk about come from @rabbit1225​ and @ztoonsz.

Rabbit1225 makes beautifully drawn artwork of characters, and they are especially well known for their fanart on HH characters in the fandom (Lucifer from HH to be specific). But, unfortunately as Rabbit continues with the fanart, others take it without permission. In fact, there was one instant where someone had ask Rabbit if they could use their picture of Lucifer in the Hazbin Hotel Wiki for Lucifer’s bio in a conversation on DeviantArt. Rabbit said no, but they didn’t care. They not only posted it on the wiki, they spelled Rabbit’s DeviantArt name wrong. Fortunately, Rabbit told the person to remove the pic immediately and told them off for not listening, and so far the pic was removed from the wiki.

This would soon lead to Rabbit putting big watermarks over most their artwork so art thieves couldn’t steal them. I mean, the watermarks are so big they take up the whole pic, which is smart. But still it is a very sad thing to see this happen to artist like Rabbit just because they make some good art of their favorite characters. Sure, asking artists for permission to use their artwork is ok, but taking their art (even if the artist said no) without permission is extremely wrong and disgraceful.  -------    ----              ------------                 --------------------------    -----    ----------

Ztoonz is also an artist who draws HH characters, including their HH oc. Suddenly, an Instagram user was not only stealing their HH art, but stealing various ones from another artist. Ztoonz confronted this thief, and it went pretty bad to say the least. The thief kept saying it was “Their art” and kept calling them insults like “Bitch” or “British Cunt”. What really put the nail in the coffin was when the thief  threaten to repost Ztoonz’s art and claim that Ztoonz was the one stealing it. Now that’s just cold. Of course, Ztoonz made a post regarding this and everyone started to report this thief. Thankfully, the thief deleted all of the art because they knew they fucked up and they deserved it. 

If an you are reposting another person’s art, you must ask for permission first. If don’t and just straight up do it anyway, be sure to credit them at least.

If the artist asks you to remove the reposted art, Do IT, as the art is theirs and not yours and you could get sued or even arrested by the artist for stealing their art.

 Respect an artist’s request to leave their art alone or credit them and move on with your life.

It’s not that difficult. You’ll look bad.

This also goes for Ocs as well, of course.

It is despicable and stealing another person’s character and / or art , it makes you look like you are devoid of creativity to make your own and it’s scummy.

 3. The Attack Of HH Shippings 

This is a tweet Vivzie made on her Twitter. I hope you read or at least acknowledged this tweet, because I’m going to talk about a certain issue regarding this. You see, the reason why Vivz made this tweet was because of the fact that there was an increase of actual people bullying other for certain  ships, canon or not, which I must say is just sad. Like, guys they’re just cartoon characters, calm the fuck down. If you’re seriously going to debate others about a certain ship and whether or not it’s canon for 2 hours, then you are the real fool here.  I don’t know what’s worse: -People shipping real-life people that don’t know each other / have no love or sexual relations with.  OR -People getting into heated arguments about certain fictional character ships from cartoons or shows. What more do we need to tell you? How many fucking times do we all need to say it to you people? Doing this is just going to make you look like a shit person, and an immature one at that. There is no reason for you to do this.There is no reason to attack someone for having some ship of an HH character because you disagree with it. I’ve said it, everyone has said it, even Vivzie herself has said it.  I know this is common in almost all fandoms and communities, but come on, ya’ll should be mature enough to know that being a bitch about stupid shit is just stupid. You guys are old enough to learn how to respect an opinion / interest, yet you people are crying like babies about how some people are shipping Vaggie and Angel Dust cause’ he is gay and not straight. THEY’RE JUST SHIPS! Not only that, even if Angel Dust and Vaggie used to be a couple in the older version of HH and it’s not canon anymore, you can still ship them regardless.

Sure, we all love our demons guys n’ gals but we need to remember they’re just characters and we can do whatever ships we want. Of course, there are going to be the weird looking ships, but we need to respect those ships. You have no authority to tell a person to kill themselves all because they shipped Charlie with Alastor. You are not the God of Ships, nor are you entitled to say you are. 

Speaking of the Vaggie x Angel Dust ship, my friend @scarecrowinc93 told me about someone supporting that ship here on Tumblr. They loved it so much, they made a kickstarter to make the ship canon. Fucking Madlad. But when people tried to tell them that it might not come true, they went ape-shit. They responded to all of this in a post and were extremely rude and bitter about it, though they tried to cover their tracks by deleting it as soon as they realize they fucked up. Now as much as we love fan ships and wish they could be canon, it might not happen and you need to except that fact. 

Just because you’re in a fandom that have excepting ships does not mean you can harass people for disagreeing with your ship or anyone else. I get it people should have free opinions here and there, but you don’t have the right to speak in a rude manner because someone didn’t like your ship. That’s not right and you know that.

4.”Is Hazbin Hotel a Scam?” Bullshit and Clickbait Slander

What happens when someone is desperate for views on YouTube? Slander and attempting to start drama of course! There had been two videos that have caused a bit of a steer. 

The first one was at the day of Christmas Eve, a video called “Is Hazbin Hotel a Scam?” was uploaded by some random person, and I gotta say I was pissed off and disgusted. This might as well be the most infamous video slandering Hazbin Hotel to exist. Words cannot describe this video, and the only way I can describe it is with this image:

I’m pretty sure everyone knows that Hazbin Hotel isn’t a scam. For one, Vivzie and the HH crew do not want to let the fans down, especially at this point in time as Hazbin Hotel is popular with a majority of fans, who are excited for the upcoming show. Do you really think Vivziepop would want to let her own fans down and lie about the upcoming show just to gain money? Yeah uh, how about no motherfucker. They’ve been working so hard to even stop the project at this point. Multiple clips from the pilot have been released to the public, and you can clearly see that the HH crew are working hard to make this show real. Animation that could make Disney cry, colors that pop and vibrate with beauty, and characters with designs that defy our ability to comprehend. For example, Ashely Nichols is one of the HH animators / artists working on the project. She is well known for the many streams she broadcasts. Most of them are usually of her animating various scenes, but with a bit of a twist. You see, to make these streams more entertaining, she brings in one of the several voice actors of Hazbin Hotel to the stream and have the viewers give voice requests said voice actor. In fact, she is currently in a relationship with Micheal Kovach, the voice of Angel Dust. Sometimes even Vivzie makes streams. During those streams some viewers would ask her various questions about Hazbin Hotel, and you know what she does? She answers their questions. Vivzie likes to talk about the Hazbin Hotel’s universe, especially her characters and want to share them with her fans.  So how is that a scam? If Hazbin Hotel was a scam, then why is the HH crew so dedicated to make this project successful? Explain that, cause’ it seems that the person who made this video might have something to say about this. I question whether or not this person is a troll or not, but I’m on the notion they did this for views since in their channel they have never talked about animation or anything related to that and probably doesn’t even know anything about it. Literally, when I first went on this person’s channel, there was barely anything in there that related to animation, art, or anything of that sort but (what I can assume to be) video blogs with barely any views. When I saw this, I could just feel the desperateness for views radiating from their channel. It’s like the equivalent of someone cashing in on a famous person’s death because they’re so desperate for views and attention. When first watching this “exposed video”, I honestly couldn’t even watch it at it’s fully entirety because it was that bad. The points this person made were too idiotic to take seriously and I feel bad for those who believed these disgusting lies. Here are just some of the “points” this person made about the so called “Hazbin Hotel scam”: - Having merch before the show has been released - Having no official release date - The crew only caring about money, not the fans - Having two Patreon pages (One is Vivziepop, the other’s Hazbin Hotel) These are just some of the “points” the person made in the video, and oh believe me it gets worse. While some seem understandable, most of them sound too abysmal to be true. Like seriously, “Having no official release date...”? How petty do you have to be to make up this shit? I get it, the internet can be a sketchy place and you can’t always trust the things you believe, but that statement does not make sense. Let me explain, most animation projects take time to make, like it can 5-7 hours to make a 10 second clip. Now imagine 30 minutes (which is how long the Hazbin Hotel pilot will be), imagine how long it would take to animate. Drawing every single frame neatly and correctly, making sure every scene is right, taking time and making it perfect. The amount of time and effort animators take on animating is astounding. Animation is hard and whether you animate or not, you know that it takes a great deal of toil and energy to do something like this, especially when it comes to 2D animation (which is the main animation style for Hazbin Hotel), where you have to draw each and every frame by hand. Animators need time to do this stuff and sometimes don’t when they’ll be done. Hell, animation companies like Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, etc. need time for this shit and it could take them months or even years to even start the animation process. Even if these companies have a larger budget then Vivzie, that doesn’t mean she can’t full-fill her animation dream. Like I said before, Vivziepop has already released multiple clips from the pilot, talked about the universe of Hazbin Hotel and it’s characters, and overall make the wait for the pilot something everyone can enjoy. If it were a scam, the animation wouldn’t look completed / smooth, Vivzie would not be talking about the HH universe as much, there wouldn’t be as many animation streams being made, etc.

Apparently, the video was so bad, misleading, and plain retarded, Jakeneutron (who is an animator well known for doing stuff related for Steven Universe), told the person off in the comment section along with other people who actually have a brain. This person, this fucking person, was just spouting bullshit claims like how: 

“They only care about money than the project”

and

“It takes 6 animators to make the merch line and several days to release the merch line”

This person obviously doesn’t know how to tell a good lie because his claims are total bullshit and easily debunkable. The video might have been deleted since it hasn’t been seen near the top when you search “Hazbin Hotel” on Youtube but I don’t want to say it too soon, but if the video is still up then I recommend to not watch it as, like I said, just an attempt to start drama and get views from a pathetic troll / leech.  Seriously, these lies are so bad I feel like my brain cells are slowly dying just reading them.

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Next one, a video was uploaded seemingly in December  of another random person’s “reaction” to the Hazbin Hotel trailer and was pretty bad. One of the most idiotic claims this person kept dragging was that this was for children and it is very inappropriate. How? HOW?!

How is a show about demons, murderers, villains in Hell (with mild cursing and sex jokes) for children? This person literally thinks that anything animated is for children. I swear people with that mentality about animation always being “Family Friendly” are just plain idiots. Like look at Family Guy / American Dad / Bojack Horseman / Mr.Pickles / The NutShack, they all have mature and inappropriate themes in them, and they’re animated.

Generally speaking here, yes I do think young children shouldn’t watch HH for obvious reasons. Yes, even though the characters are really funny and enjoyable and the animation beautiful, it’s not mean’t for a very young audience. You could tell Hazbin Hotel isn’t family friendly the moment they talk about drugs, Hell, murder, genocide, etc. but this person acts like it’s going to corrupt our kids the nano-second they watch it. Not only that, they were involving religion into the video. Unfortunately, due my poor memory, I couldn’t remember what they said, but what I do remember was the title saying “I’m never leaving my church ever again...” and the thumbnail being the person seemingly holding a mini bible. Unsurprisingly, they got a lot of hate from that video, but for some reason the person was liking every comment (including the ones that were going against him), which begs the question, What the fuck? The video was deleted, of course.

Now, oddly enough this person is special in a way. They may just seem like your average slanderer towards HH, but they’re a weird one. You see for some reason this person kept making “review videos” on the HH clips or videos apparently supporting HH. Yeah, excuse me but what the fuck? Are they trying to cover their tracks? 

It’s hard to tell if they’re a troll or not because at this point I don’t know. First they slander HH, now they supporting it? What is this person doing and why?

One of my most biggest problems with their HH ‘review’ videos is how the jokes they make are bland, unfunny, and just confusing (to me at least). When they make an attempt at a joke, it’s hard to even call it a joke because it makes you debate whether to laugh or not. 

For example, in their “review” to “A Cautionary Tale”, Angel Dust says he’s “Not too big on politics”, and then the person takes out a MAGA hat, wears it, and says “Well, then you and I are gonna get along great!” I think it’s suppose to be a political joke since in the corner it said *Republican joke*, but at the same time it comes across as not really funny.

My second biggest issue I have about them is how they literally have no fucking clue on what they’re saying. Like they have no idea who the characters are, the universe of the show, etc. and honestly comparing them to an average HH fan, they have the IQ of a penny when talking about HH. In their “A Cautionary Tale” review video, they literally claimed there was no such thing as an “overnight” in Hell and that they’ve been hearing people say that everyone in the main cast of HH died in the 1940s (even though most of the characters have different personalities based on when they died, which is not just the 1940s). Yeah, this ain’t it chief. 

One of the most stupidest things this guy said was that Alastor was Adolf Hitler himself...  Yeah no. Like I’m not sure if this is suppose to be some sort of joke, but judging from this guy’s low knowledge on HH and them being obsessed the 1900s, it seems likely. 

Firstly, Alastor died in 1933, New Orleans (which was told by Vivz in one of Ashely’s streams) during the great depression before WW2, while Hitler died in 1945, Berlin during WW2. Literally, you could just google “Adolf Hitler” and it would show you his date of death on the right side of the screen when you google him, and for Alastor you would go to the Hazbin Hotel Wiki. It’s not that hard.

Secondly, if Alastor was Hitler, then he would have spoken in german or german accent, hate Jews / African Americans / Gays / Hipsanics / etc., have a swastika on this arm, and have the signature mustache or at least something like Hitler. Alastor speaks in a 1930′s voice and speaks english, literally (seemingly) doesn’t care about what race or sexual orientation you are, has no mustache.  

If you went and researched about these characters more on the Hazbin Hotel Wiki, then you wouldn’t look so stupid especially if you want to be invested in the show’s characters or the show in general.

If you haven’t noticed yet, this person is into some war history judging by his interest of World War stuff. I can understand that they may not know, but (like I said) you could literally go to the Hazbin Hotel Wiki to learn more about the story, rather than make dumb assumptions on things you don’t know. You have the internet, use it.

If you think that making video’s slandering a show or person gonna get you good-ass views, then fuck you. Doing this will do nothing but bring angry fans and confused people believing the things you say. If you find satisfaction from that, you are fucking disgusting and a trashy human being. 

5. Roleplay Bullying

Much like HH ship-bullying, roleplayers are being bullied by their way of roleplaying. One that has come to attention is one coming from the Twitter RP-Verse. They roleplay as Alastor and has been acting like a tyrant. You see, they are also an artist who do HH fanart and are well-known for it actually (but I won’t tell who). They would insult roleplayers for their ability or way of roleplaying behind their backs and it’s quite childish for someone to be mad at something so small and idiotic. The roleplayer would use their fans to try and force other rp-ers from the roleplay, as if they control it, which is false and you can’t really control a roleplay, unless someone’s being annoying af and I doubt that this Alastor roleplayer is doing what their doing for that reason. I can understand that territories like this can get pretty hostile, but regards to this specific situation there isn’t really an excuse. I’m not going to go too deep into this topic since (let’s be honest) is another version of HH ship-bullying but except it’s roleplay. Maybe next time I’ll go deeper into this.

So what did we learn today?

Today we learn how truly pathetic us humans can be. How people would go out of their way to conduct such petty crimes to satisfy themselves because they have nothing else better to do in their sad little lives. 

I might make a part 2 of this post, since I couldn’t talk about everything I wanted to say in this post since that would take forever to make. 

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Thank you all for read my post!   

I wish everyone in this community the greatest and to be safe on the internet. Toxic people are crawling left and right and it is important that we don’t let these people get to us, we are better than these people.

If any of you guys want to make a similar post like this, then go ahead! It would be much appreciated to help spread this awareness and make our or other communities less toxic. 

1, 5, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 32, 33

Thanks Celia, I’ll also put this under the cut since this got longer than intended..........

1. A favorite character you have played.

I haven’t played too many characters (Or at least for long campaigns) but the one i’m playing now in my main game is probably my favourite or more developed anyway. His name is Heldain Veslar (don’t really like his last name but couldn’t think of anything else that fit/that i hadn’t already used) and as of now is a paladin oath of devotion/ fighter eldritch knight (6/3). He is a protector aasimar and solider background. 

Backstory wise (Short version) is that he was inducted into an order known as the Dawn Seekers after his home was invaded and after some trials and rising through the ranks his order was invaded from the inside and most of them either died or became corrupted and changed sides/lost their minds. Leaders of this force were a multicoloured scaled humanoid and a dark humanoid specter. In short Heldain was captured and was tortured for 4 years at the hand of one of hs turncoats which he knew, in which a curse was placed on him with black veins appearing over his chest and shoulder. He managed to escape, went back to his order’s HQ which was destroyed and managed to find some things from his mentor like a codex which had unusual text. He then left and lived in the wilds for 6 or 8 years. Then got a vision from Tyr, Who he serves, to restore his holy sites (Cause in this world he has grown weak/ not many worshipers/ forgotten) So he reentered the world and helped out how he could. 

But yeah things haven’t exactly gone well for him as there was an incident when he got disintegrated by an undead beholder which then the rest of the party made a deal with a locked up fey creature in the prison to bring him back by releasing her into the world. Also more ptsd when one of his party members gave him his own ashes to keep. But yeah it’s more so playing the wounded/broken knight and working his way back into something else, self sacrifice is on the table for his personality or at least doing what needs to be done at the right time.

5. Favorite NPC.

Hmm none really jump out as being favourites, mainly cause most of the ones i have written in my notebook we haven’t encountered in a while. But there’s a character named Elisabeth Moonspell who’s a paladin in the Silver city who worships Mishakal, my character has been becoming close friends with her, with some side benefits. There was also a red dragonborn named Addos who had a planar travelling ship who was married to a githyanki named Urah who is very protective of her husband.

There was also an encounter with some orcs which somehow we convinced them to become a bodyguard service for travelling to and from the silver city. Which were then named the Happy orcs, which they were then employed by someone who was extorting them but they didn’t know cause they weren’t exactly bright.   

9. Your favorite thing about D&D.

Probably just the creativity behind it and creative freedoms to make different types of characters and worlds. 

11. How often do you play and how often would you ideally like to play?

I play once a week depending on availability of course. I would like to play more but you know schedules and other things to work out/things coming up that i’ve had to focus on more. But yeah at the moment we’re doing the same thing that tends to happen with starting other games rather than finishing our main ones, which is a bit annoying but at the moment the dm is experiencing a little burnout or rather wanting to be a player but yeah, still working on my world as well just have had other things to work on/figure out. 

13. Introduce your current party.

I’ll go into details on my main game and will just mention the other couple games. 

In our main game I play Heldain as mentioned above, but my other compainions are a Eladrin elf warlock named Auri who is 11 (or what she appears to be)who has a lot of mystery around her and her changing forms, there’s an air genasi monk, named Nim (Nimbus Stormbringer), who had lost his memory and has managed to get some of it back now, he’s a bit brash and somewhat immature character but is what he is and proves to be difficult at times, we have an elf rouge assassin, named Leia, who is also pretty guarded and has some sort of damaged tissue from vampires which has only recently come up as a plot point to explore. We also have a half elf fighter arcane archer, named Elban, who had some arcane experiments done on him and his troop but don’t really know too much about him cause the player is hardly involved asides from making dumb jokes which just gets annoying at this point which reminds me of a previous player we had.

One of the other games that has started to give the current dm a little break is in a world previously played by a couple of the players in my group but has some rules in terms of classes and such. But in that one I’m playing as a Minotaur fighter/wizard, others are a fallen aasimar fighter/warlock, another warlock, a monk/fighter Tiefling and a sorcerer/bard Dwarf i believe. 

Also as of last week we did a little prep work for a level 18-20 one shot or two shot but in that I’m playing as another paladin fighter (Character name is Anora Vilarim, old character i never did anything with), there is also a forge cleric Goliath, a glamour bard half elf, a deep gnome druid and one yet to be decided.  

15. Do you have snacks during game times?

Yeah one of the players in my group goes out and gets some stuff from the supermarket but I try to not to eat anything due to trying to lose some weight. 

17. What are some house rules that your group has?

We have some similar ones to the first campaign of critical role (i.e bonus action spell level 2 or lower and drink a potion on a bonus action). Other than that not really asides from allowing homebrew stuff or allowing some items.

32. What role do you like to play the most? (Tank/healer/etc?)

I suppose tank or damage dealer. Sometimes healer if that role is put on me due to party make up but yeah. 

33. How do you write your backstory, or do you even write a backstory?

I pick race, class and background first and then work with what I have. Mostly it’s just focusing on one idea and adding more to it. Or looking into other media and trying to bounce ideas from that and change them up a bit. But yeah it varies on length and detail. Sometimes I add stuff later but yeah, also just drawing the character helps me out a bit too.

Think that’s it, took way longer than I thought it would.

Another rant because abuse is no joke and I’m done of people using it/making a competition out of it for the sake of their own sick argument

So I read @dancemomsshenanigans super personal post about the recent drama (Maddie calling DM “the worst” and her abuse on the show) earlier today and first of all, thank you for being brave and putting this out there, it really touched me because I experienced really similar things and I was super hurt reading some of the comments yesterday who said Maddie didn’t have it bad, others had it worst etc. and I actually had to stay away from tumblr for a bit because it brought back so many bad memories of my childhood. But I decided to be brave too and just tell you guys a bit about emotional abuse and what it did for me. I don’t really care if anyone reads this, this is for some of you, yes, to see what it can be like, but it’s mainly for me because I just need to get it off my chest because I felt hurt yesterday and still do. Warning this will be messy, bad writing and briefly talk about suicidal thoughts, sorry about that but I’m not feeling like proof reading or polishing it right now.  To give some background information: My parents got divorced when I was 7, I grew up with my dad because my mum didn’t want me, I have been having really bad seperation anxiety till then. My dad is a really strict person and he struggled a lot raising a daughter by himself with no help of my mother or any other family members. When I was 10 he taught me the rules for chess and then put me into a chess club (wanted to help me with my concentration because i was super hyperactive). It turned out I was really talented at it. In a matter of only a few months I made it on all the teams and became team captain of the under 12 team super fast and was even put on the team of the 20-year olds. Most kids who do chess seriously start at age 4, they grow up with it and all the competitions etc, I was just thrown in and it was a mess. I was really good, I immediately made it in all the competitive teams my club had and qualified for the German national championships (and you had to go through a lot of comps to qualify) in my first year competing and from there the nightmare started. I got into the national squad (not sure if you call it that in English??) for the most gifted which were super strict, you had to attend competitions every month and had to win a certain amount to stay on the team, you had to take exams and attend very hard training camps on a regular basis and I trained every single day for at least 6 hours (after like 6-8 hours of school). I also had games every weekend with the teams from the club I trained at which I had to attend on top of that, I missed sooo many weeks of school during a year, it was crazy. As you can imagine, this was a very competitive world. Trust me, the “chess world” is just as crazy as the dance world, only that you’re surrounded by far more men (a nightmare). And then the trouble started: All my teachers told my dad I was the most talented student they ever had and how I could win world-championships etc. He then got all crazy and put immense pressure on me. I already told you I suffer from seperation anxiety, I had already lost my mum, I was not gonna lose my dad too. So I trained and trained although I didn’t even like it that much at that point. I liked winning against grown men and seeing their ego suffer when beaten by a little girl, I liked the feeling of winning, I liked all the travelling at first, but I did not love it and for being a competitive chess player on this level, you had to love it or you’ll break eventually. My dad used to scream at me for losing, he was disappointed and it broke my heart, so I tried to please him and do as good as I could. But it wasn’t only my dad, I had lots of teachers and I’m telling you, they were the worst. I had some calling you names when you lost, they’d call you stupid, talentless, they said I had “no brain”, that girls couldn’t play chess and I just proved that, that I was worthless and all that jazz. But I could actually handle that, as sick as that sounds. It helped me be better because those teachers, they didn’t expect anything from me, they had called me worthless so I thought there was no way I could disappoint them more than that and that actually took the pressure off of me. I felt this way because of the way others  had treated me. Because my other teachers and my dad, they would be disappointed, they would tell me how talented I was and how I was letting them down, myself down, everyone down, how I could do so much better, how I wasn’t trying hard enough, not training enough. How I wouldn’t appreciate all they did for me (my dad travelling with me, paying the bills I never asked for that i didn’t even want it!). They would make me feel soooo bad, I could never live up to their expectations. Damn, they saw me as the next world champion, so whatever I did before I was one, it would never please them. And until you become world champion, there are years of work ahead of you and I started with only 10, not 4! I was behind, even if here in Germany I was winning almost everything, I was damn behind. So I knew whatever I did, no matter how much I won, no matter how well I did, it would never be enough. And this was only chess, my dad was just as strict for school. “School comes first”, that’s what he used to say, so when I got an A-, he would flip and demand to know why I didn’t get an A, when I got an A, why not an A+. This was my reality. I missed so much school, I had no time for homework or studying, but was still expected to bring home only A’s. One of my school teachers who helped me miss so much school by pursuading our headmaster to let me go then got invested as well. I got permission to go to a national competition for a week and then I was back he asked me my placement and I told him I got 9th (out of like 200) and the way he looked at me, so disappointed, almost accusing, it was awful. It was like, “I let you miss school for a week and you only got 9th place??” and I was already upset about that placement, I had messed up big time and I was upset and then I did now also have to deal with a teacher at school being upset, not only my dad and countless teachers. It never stopped. The expectations to always be the best, to always win, even if I was the youngest, they were too much. I once attended a comp in a town one of the teachers of the national team lived at, so I slept at his home and he took me to the comp and the first day I lost my match (which I expected, I had to play against the strongest participant in that comp and it was internation and really big) and when we got back home and his wife asked how it went he just said I blew it and messed up big time and all this in a very accusing tone, I was devastated. There was no way I was winning against that Russian who was a professional chessplayer (meaning he earned his money attending comps and winning them!) and I personally thought I had done a great job because our match lasted almost 6 hours and I really made him work for the win! But no, here I was, getting accused of not having tried at all. Later in the same comp I won in a really great match and the teacher was so proud of me and kept praising me and I felt good again and tried to please him and started to think that maybe, I really didn’t try hard enough before. Perhaps they were all right and I was not doing enough, needed to train even more. That’s then I started staying up till like 2am every day to fit in more training time. I was exhausted in school, I was tired, I was upset, I was done. I started to mess up my games. I would start strong, I would have a winning match on the board, but then I would freak out by thinking about how bad everyone would react if I lost it now and that would then make me lose my games. In a chess comp everyone can go watch your games, they can walk past your table and watch your game while you play it. My dad never did because it made me nervous and he actually accepted that, but my teachers sure did. So this one teacher would walk past, stand there, stare at the board and see that I was winning. Then he would walk away and I knew he knew I was winning and I would freak out. I started to actually mess up some games because of that. After a game I had to always analyse it with my teacher (during the game you write down all the moves), so we would sit down somewhere and play the game I just played on the board and he would comment on everything I did wrong. Now imagine having lost a winning game, it was horrible. So I had to deal with him again and his anger and him being upset and him telling me how I could do so much better. Also I didn’t even talk about the other kids who competed and had the same teachers, they knew I was the “talented one”, the one the teachers loved. Haha, yes, they sure did love me. I might have gotten most of the attention, but I absolutely hated it. It turned my friends against me (who i needed more than ever), it made me feel uncomfortable, it put me on a pedestal and set me up to fail. When they lost, it was nothing special, when I lost, it was the end of the world. Our teachers would make comments in front of everyone, everyone would look at me to see if I snapped, if I cried, if I broke, they were just waiting for it (and i can’t blame them). It was hell and I will never foget this one day, it was during winter and I just had lost a game. I was devastated, I didn’t dare to go into our hotel room and tell my dad, so I went outside. I considered ending my life there and then. I had been suicidal, but this day, that was the worst. I will never forget it. I didn’t do it, I couldn’t really think, I didn’t really have any strength, so I just walked and lay down in the snow somewhere and didn’t get up for several hours till I couldn’t feel my body anymore due to the cold. Now my boy felt like my insides, cold and numb. I don’t really remember what happened after that, but I did face my dad and his disappointment. I was 13 then, I continued to play chess competitively till I was 17.

4 more years. 4 more ears of this shit, but I grew stronger and somehow managed it all. I lost my “love” for the game (i don’t even know if i ever loved it, or just liked it), I could never find out how much I liked it on my own because from the day I walked into this club, my life had changed and everyone around me thought they could dictate it for me, had it all planned out for me. Knew what my future was going to be (travelling the world, winning comps and earning my money like that). No one asked what I wanted, no one cared. I wish I had had a mother with me, just someone at home protecting me. I don’t like Christi, I really don’t, but I always wished I had a mum who would scream at my teachers like that, who would go crazy seeing how I was treated. It can make such a huge difference. You can be treated like shit, but if you know you have someone sticking up for you, you know you have a home to go to where you will be save and loved, it makes such a differnce. That’s when I was most angry with Melissa. She used to just sit there when Kenz or Maddie were treated like shit, she didn’t do a thing. Maybe sometimes that was for the best because Abby would take out her anger with a parent on the kid, but I still wish she would have done something. I remember when Abby was crying when the moms refused to let the kids in the studio and then later Maddie was with her and Abby cried and told her how she let her down etc, it broke my heart because this reminded me so much of some situation I had to go through. The teacher putting all their own problems on the student, the parents doing nothing. Maddie didn’t have Melissa to stick up for her, she was pretty much alone. Having someone who sticks up for you is so important. You can somehow deal with the screaming, with the craziness because you know someone will have your back, will fight for you, will tell your teacher how messed up they are. I wish I had had someone like this fight for me, but I did not. I was alone, I kept all my anger and anxiety and hurt inside, didn’t tell anyone and it ate me. It destroyed me, it drove me into depression. I am 23 now and I’m still messed up. I want to please everyone, I have to be the best at everything I do, I’m scared of letting my prof down in case my exam isn’t a perfect 100% because I know he thinks highly of me and now I can’t let him down. I actually hate it when people tell me they think highly of me because this means I will disappoint them at some point, I will let them down. I prefer people not noticing me or thinking I’m not that good so I can prove them wrong. It’s easier that way for me. But at the same time I want them to notice me, I want them to see I can do it and that I’m good at what I do. It’s a vicious cicle and I can’t get out. I’m caught in it, I know what’s wrong, I know what was done to me was wrong, I know that, but it doesn’t help much. I learned to deal with it somehow. I have developed techniques to deal with my anxiety, things I always tell myself whenever it starts again. But it will be here with me forever. I don’t think I’ll ever really get over it. It’s the result of years and years of emotional abuse. I wasn’t aware that what was happening to me was wrong. I was just a kid who wanted to make everyone happy, live up to their expectations. When someone screamed at me and called me names, I knew that was wrong, I had been told that. You don’t call people names. So I was hurt, but I knew I was in the right. That’s how I managed it. But the emotional abuse, you don’t see it, you don’t know it’s happening, you start thinking you are the problem, you start hating yourself and it messes you up. Just because you don’t “see” emotional abuse as clearly as verbal abuse doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt just as much, that it can’t mess you up, because it does. It broke me. More than any words ever could. Now I’m not saying it’s worse than verbal abuse, it was for me, personally, worse. Everyone is different, everyone struggles with different problems. I suffered from seperation anxiety due to my paren’t divorce, I was already prone to wanting to please people and emotional abuse plays with that, it plays with your feelings, it makes you feel like you are the problem. So for me personally it was horrible. For another person the verbal abuse can break them. But that’s not the question, it doesn’t matter which kind of abuse you go through, what matters is that you were hurt, someone hurt you and it’s not your fault and no one, no one is allowed to tell you how to feel about it, how to deal with it. No one should say “so and so is dealing better with it”, you don’t know shit. You don’t know what’s going on in someone’s life, you don’t know what demons might hunt them, you know nothing. It’s not your right to judge other people’s feelings, to make a competition out of fucking child abuse! You don’t like Maddie, you don’t like Chloe, I don’t fucking care, but don’t you dare make a competition out of something which was abuse and which hurt them. It only shows you don’t really care about any of them because using a dark chapter of someone’s life for your own sick argument is the worst! You also only saw one side to it on reality TV, you don’t know what happened behind closed doors, you don’t know anything. Also yes, they will probably not see what you wrote, but others do. Othes who have experienced something similar and I can tell you for sure that I was hurt. Because a lot of stuff which happened to Maddie, happened to me and I personally did not deal well, I suffered and reading how she had it good because she was praised and put on a pedestal, it fucking hurts and I’m telling you right now, I did not want any of that, I hated it and it was just a little part in a much bigger game, the problem was far more complex, it always is and what you see is such a little bit of the real issue going on. Even in this way too long and very messy post (sorry about that!), I only told you one small part of what happend to me, a small glimpse, I left out the worst, I left out so much, I just took some things to paint a picture. You never know what’s going on in someone’s life, even if you think you might because a huge part of it was shown on TV and it’s wrong to judge them and their feelings. Maddie was only 8 when the show started, she didn’t have a mum fighting for her, defending her, she was on TV, cameras following, increasing the pressure already on her. I am honestly so impressed how she dealt with it and I am so happy that Sia is in her life and such a good influence. Telling her to only do what makes her happy and all that, I would have needed such a woman in my life, it makes such a difference. I feel for Maddie, I can imagine what she went through and it’s not as glorious as many of you believe. All the girls suffered, each differently because they are different persons and were treated differently and had to deal with different problems. It’s not anyone’s right to judge that, to compare it, to make a sick competition out of it. It just shows your disregard for any of their feelings and it’s sick and I’m sick of it and I won’t discuss this with you either, it’s just wrong. Neither of us know what goes on, really goes on in their lifes and how they feel. I don’t know what Maddie felt, I can only imagine it because similar things happened to me, but I don’t know. And that’s all, have a good day. 

So uhh You guys remeber that Picture I uploaded a while back called Izzie the Illithid? well I just wanted to write a bit about how she became an illithid so... yeah! Enjoy friends

(edit: I noticed that that the frist little bit had some tense and pacing issues so I went through and edited a bit. should flow a little nicer now :))

Isabel rolled her head from side to side, a few small cracks were her reward as she loosed the tension in her spine. The fact that she had been sitting in a cheap convention center chair for a couple of hours was probably the reason for all that nonsense. She took a glance around her table, four other people sat next to her making this game of dnd a slightly smaller one thn usual. hertable mates were in the middle of rolling for initiative and Isabel took advantage of that fact to take in the sight of a medium sized conference room that had been filled by people sitting at rows of tables and all chatting amiably . She was in one of the D&d free play rooms of PAX West, She was a veteran of this con and had been coming  for a very long time. This was mainly mainly because she had an inside connection.

Her Father was one of the main organizers behind the Pc Freeplay room that was across the way in the secondary conference center.He usually had a few extra staff or exhibitor badges lying around and used them to get her and her siblings in. Her family had treated it like an annual summer vacation when they were little. Of course after she had gotten old enough had started puling her weight around the con. her dad had helped her find a volunteer's position so that she could attend and Be helpful. Usually most of her imediate family came to PAX  this year however only part of her family had been able to come.

  Her youngest brother and sister had sporting events that they had to attend and so it was only her, her (other) little brother, and her father at the event. Oh! and her uncle, she remebered suddenly, him and his small family had also come. she rembered seeing them downin the LAN area. It was always the highlight of her summer being able to see all the amazing exhibits and just bask in the sheer variety of nerdity that the con offered. If it could feasibly be called gaming or gaming related you could find it here at PAX.

As evidenced by this D&d free play room! It was a relatively new addition to the con but one she was enjoying immensely! A rotating shift of Dm’s ran 2-3 hour games to hopefully entice some new players away from the flashy worlds of console and PC gaming. It was a good quick little intro to all things D&D, or if you were more experienced ( like Isabel was.) it was just a fun way to get to meet more people in the hobby!

The staff had some premade character sheets available for the newbie players that were just trying things out but most of the more advanced players brought their own from home.

Isabel was in this latter category however she was not playing her regular character today. No today she was playing testing an unusual character to see if it was feasible in her home game. ever a sucker for the more monstrous of d&d races she had made an Illithid Bard. a weird combo to be fair but Isabel was of the firm opinion that Bards were always the best class. That and it gave her so many interesting roleplay opportunities! she was still fine tuning the backstory of course seeing as it would be hard to justify a mind flayer running around on the surface or playing music ( illithids being a race very much not noted for their musical skill) but that could come later, right now she just wanted to see if the mechanics worked, This weekend was about having fun and playtesting her new character to make sure it wasn't broken or overpowered.

Playing with newbies did, however, bring about its own little challenges. The guy next to her seemed to be taking an eternity to decide on the action for his tiefling fighter, mentally Isabel was praying for him just to pick a weapon and hit the dang goblin. Idly rolling the dice in her hand Isabel tuned back into the game. The same  newbie was questioning the dm “ so I roll the d20 to see if hit right?” The ( rather weary looking) DM simply nodded.he had probably been asked this question a billion times this weekend “ alright cool. Then what do I do next?” The dm tiredly but politely said “Next you roll whatever dice is listed next to your weapon plus any bonuses to see how hard you hit” “Ah neat.” Isabel mentally groaned. The other newbie across the table had their phone out. Isabel gave a small frown, What horrible D&D etiquette. Finally, the dude next to her stopped waffling and attacked hitting the Goblin with his axe.Isabel sighed in relief finally it was her turn! She pulled out her character sheet and grinned turning to the Dm she started to say “ alrighty I'm gonna try and hit the bugbear chief with a mind bla-

And then it happened.

At first, she thought that there had been a bombing. A feeling like a pressure wave rushed through the room followed fast by sparkling lights and a bright orange-red wave.it knocked people and players forward, toppling Isabel out of her chair. Everything else seemed unaffected though.

For a second there was complete and utter stillness ……….and then the screaming began.

Isabel watched as the player next to her clutched his head and began writhing in pain. His skin was distorting as two large bumps seemed to be trying to burst through his forehead like an alien chest burster. Isabel could hear the crunchy sound of bone scraping on bone as two demon-like horns erupted from his crainium.

Isabel tried to yell and jump back from the horrid sight, but crumpled in pain as her back began to make sickly cracking sounds of its own. All around her people were screaming.

She clutched her head in fear as her face seemed to break apart and remold itself like wet clay. She could feel her clothes starting to tear as her body changed, gaining height and weight. Around her mouth, strange fleshy protuberances began to make themselves known pushing through her skin.

Blotchy purple spots covered her skin and she almost choked as her teeth suddenly became inexplicably lose. They fell from her mouth even as she continued screaming.

The room around her was in chaos. Chairs and tables had been flipped as those not writhing on the floor bolted for the door. The screams echoing from outside the room hinted that not only their small room was being affected by this magical craziness.

Through the pain, Isabel forced herself into a semi-sitting position. She almost got a shin to the face for her trouble.

A burst of pain made its way up Isabel's spine and into her face as she felt the strange protuberances grow longer. She let out a scream that sounded strange and distorted.

On her arms and knees, Isabel clambered over towards the overturned main staff table. It had been knocked over in the panic and right now seemed the safest place.

She curled up behind the table,  as wave after wave of a pain shot through her body. Vaguely she wondered if she was dying. In a burst of panic, she shoved her hand into her pocket and dug for her phone. She had to call her dad. She had to make sure he knew she loved him. If she was going to die here she wanted her family to know.

there was-something was wrong with her hands! they were shaking violently and they were the wrong shape. With immense difficulty, she pushed the buttons to unlock the screen.Her hand shook even more as she painstakingly plucked her dad's phone number out of her contacts. Isabel brought the phone up to her ear. She writhed in pain as she waited through the first ring, and then the second, and then finally on the eight ring a voice as ragged and scarred as she feels came through the line

“ISABEL! ISABEL! OH God Isabel everything's Going Crazy! WHERE ARE YOU!!??”

Isabel tried to answer, but something was wrong with her voice! nothing but screeching watery gurgles spilled from her as she desparately tried to contact her father! Again she tries but it seems that her mouth just isn't  the right shape.

“ ISABEL? ISABEL BABY, Whats  Going on! Please Speak to me!! Where Are you? ARE you SAFE!?”

Isabel shuddered as the pain pulsed through her again, her face feels odd and heavy. She couldn't understand why her mouth had suddenly given up on her. With trembling hands, she switched over to text. “Imscared. Lobe you. hurts. “ then in a moment of clarity “ dnd rm”

She shuts the phone off as a particularly vicious wave of pain washes over her. Inside her strange mouth, she can feel new teeth push their way through her gums. She blinks her eyes and suddenly everything seems much too bright she hisses as she curls farther into a ball.

Eventually, the waves of pain lessen, they slowly go from feeling like someone switched her blood with hydrofluoric acid to all over period cramp levels of pain. Isabel uncurls slightly. Everything feels weird.

The room around her is oddly quiet the forms of many strange beings passed out on the floor. Isabel can't believe her eyes, there are tieflings and minotaurs and satyrs lying all around. Sounds of chaos still flood in from outside but this room is strangely quiet save for the groaning and occasional whimpers of pain.

Isabel takes stock of herself. Pulling her legs up into a sitting position she slumps wearily against the wall. In front of her, she can now see her legs and feet, her jeans which used to rest at about ankle length now stop mid calf. Lavender colored legs jut out from her pants significantly longer than she remembers them being. her shoes look like they are straining to hold in feet that have grown several sizes, Isabel reaches down to take them off when the sight of her hand stops her. Slightly longer than normal hands greet her vision.They are the same purple color as her legs and in between each finger is a small amount of translucent fishy webbing, a  small but sharp claw juts out of each finger.

She only has eight fingers. Four on each hand.

Her breathing starts to come in sharp and short. This is wrong. All of this is WRONG. She can feel her heart pick up speed as she starts to panic.

Slowly, Isabel forced herself to take a breath in. silently she tells herself to just focus on the task at hand. A small slightly hysterical part of her laughs at that. Haha at hand.

Using her warped fingers it takes far longer than it should to untie the laces. She watched as the final string comes undone and her feet practically jump out of the too small shoes.

Her new feet have only two toes on each.

She gave them a wiggle. The two toes respond like any normal toes should and Isabel almost  loses it. Something is very very wrong with her.

Grabbing her phone off the floor she switched it on and used the front facing camera as a mirror. Where her mouth should be there were four long tentacles protruding from her face. her eyes have become a milky white and the entirety of her skin is light purple. She looks like a cthulhian nightmare. after a moment a word flashes through her mind.

Illithid.

She was a fucking illithid.  Her heart began pounding in her now completely flat chest. inky black tears flowing freely down her cheeks and onto said tentacles. Her hands reached desperately up feeling their way around the new facial features. She touched the new additions and shivered in horror at the sensations coming from them. They twitched automatically at her light touch and Isabel nearly screamed when she realized she could control them.

Oh good this was wrong! This was so wrong! Her breathing came in fast and ragged as the world seemed to enter tunnel vision all around her.she was going to die! she was going to get strapped to a government vivisection table somewhere in area 51 and die! she was going to -

“Its okay, its okay…. Shussh shussh, Help is on the way shussssh.” She could tell there was someone next to her but in her panicked state, it wasn't really something she could focus on. She felt someone's hand on her shoulder and a calming voice said “ I need you to take deep breaths for me, can you do that? I swear it's okay nothing is going to hurt you.. Susssh. Deep breaths there we go”

Shudderingly Isabel drew in a deep breath. Then slowly another.

“ that's it! Good job it's gonna be okay, I need you to do that a little more”

Shakily and after a few more moments of deep breathing exercises Isabel had calmed down enough to stop crying. she looked at her rescuer, in a moment of extreme surreality she found herself looking at a woman with robotic angel wings and a mechanical style halo floating above her head. It was Mercy. Mercy from Overwatch.Sensing her confusion the Mercy gave her a strained smile and said “ pretty strange huh? Don't worry it's okay, you're not imagining thing! Something weird happened here at the convention center. Nobody's hurt but people have been… changed.”

Mercy shifted her position so that they could see each other better.

“I was cosplaying as Mercy when this all hit and now,” she gestured to her body” I seem to have become her. Something similar has happened to you I bet. My name is Brian, And I was actually a registered nurse before all this”

He smiled a little sheepishly “ that's why my friends convinced me to come as Mercy for this con They told me I “ fit the part”. But enough about me what's your name? Can you tell me if anything hurts?”

Isabel opened her mouth to answer but once again the words she was trying to say came out as a harsh gurgling screech.  For a moment she started to panic again. Brian gave her a reassuring squeeze on the shoulder and said “It's okay,..take your time.”

she tried once again and after a couple of false starts -which Brian waited through extremely patiently- she managed to get out a single word. “̱́.̳̝̯̪͈͢.͈͓I̲̟͕̹Z̡͇̦͎̼̘s̹͎̖̪̀i̺̫͎̩̹͖͟e.̨̟.̱̼͠”̛̮̟͈̠̻ͅ

Brian gave her a patient smile, making the best out of the strange situation “ well Izzie, does anything hurt?  You can just Just shake your head yes or no.”

Tiredly Izzie slowly shook her head no, except for the lingering soreness around her shins and shoulders her body actually seemed to be in working order.Brian smiled again his wings actually slightly brightening at the lift in his mood.

“ That's good! I'm glad you weren't trampled over or something with all this craziness. Now to business, Did you come here with anybody? Is there somebody who you need to find?” Isabel pointed to the ground where her phone lay and  with great difficulty said

“"̐ͧ̾̿ͫ͂̑҉̛P̶ͩ̅ͧ̑̍ͫͤ̎h̡ͮ̏͘ȯ̎͗͌̔͘͘ñ̵̷͠ĕ.̢ͦ̀͊̆ͩ͌͐͌̀́.͂̈҉̡̧.̵ͫ͛̊ͯͨ͏.̐͆̽̆҉ ͑ͭ̒̓͘͟Dͩ͛ͬͥ̍̓̿̚ä̶̧́͋̊̀̉̈́̒d̋ͣ͊̓͊ͦ̾͏"̛̇͂́

Catching her meaning Brian turned around and picked up the smartphone.pulling off the short black gloves that he was wearing he turned it on. Next, he looked up at Izzie and asked “This isn't locked is it?”

Izzie shook her head no “Good I'll give your dad a call.”

As Brian set about dialing the number Izzie took a good long look at the room she was in. it was a mess. Tables were upturned everywhere and dice and papers were strewn about in the rush to escape. Izzie and Brian seemed to be the only ones left in the room though so Izzie wondered if she had lost some time to the panic attack. one of the walls had a large hole through it as though something fairly large had crashed through it in its desire to escape.

Beside her, Brian was on the phone to her dad “ hello? Is this Izzy's dad? Yeah she’s right here with me, she’s gotten caught up in all this craziness and she can't exactly speak right now, my name is Brian sir, I'm trying to help. We are up in the d&d room on the second floor where are you? Okay, so the building across the street? You just stay right there.we will come to you.” A small pause, then Brian handed the phone to Izzie, “ he says he wants to speak to you,” Taking the phone in her oversized webbed hand Isabel held it up to where she guessed her ear would be. Her dad's voice came over the line slightly tinny “ Isabel Thank god you're alright! your brother and I are in the Pc Freeplay room. It's gonna be okay you hear me, I love you and I will always love you no matter what.let's just focus on getting together and staying safe okay?” Izzie gave a mumbly watery sound of assent. “ Good, stay safe.. See you soon”

Izzie hung up the phone,

As Izzie put the phone back into the pocket on her ruined jeans Brian looked up at her and said “ I think we can get over to your dad if we go through the sky bridge. The street outside is absolute chaos. I think the police are setting up a blockade down there so we should probably avoid that.” Rising to his feet Brian dusted off his white dress and  held out a hand

“ Let's go find your dad okay?”

Despite not having lips anymore Izzie attempted to give Brian a tired smile. taking the proffered hand Izzie pulled herself up into a standing position. A sudden wave dizziness accompanied her ascent as Izzie realized that she was a LOT taller than normal. As a human, she had been no slouch in the height department coming in at an average 5 foot 6 but now she seemed to tower somewhere around the 7-foot mark. She stumbled a little but luckily Brian was there to put a steadying arm on her. “ Easy there. I know it's kinda disorienting at first, the height thing that is, I was 6.4 before all this” He put Izzie’s arm over his shoulders right in between the mechanical angel wings that jutted out from his back. “ let's just focus on the task at hand. Getting out of here.”

Izzie gave a weak nod of consent and slowly the two made their way out of the room. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The expo hall was nothing short of ruined. The large developers' booths had been toppled over or otherwise ransacked by the ensuing mayhem. merchandise was thrown about wildly. Some of the larger exhibits had been utterly destroyed. Despite this, a fairly large group of people still were milling about the hall in small groups. Some of them looked to be Con Staff but others were definitely in the same boat Izzie was in with strange and new features adorning them, as they made their way into the hall they passed Totoro, Master chief, and a large Gyarados lying on the floor.  As they looked around the hall a young woman wearing a Staff badge strode over to them and rather brusquely asked. “ Anybody hurt?” They shared a glance and then Brian spoke “ no ma’am just passing through,” Brian pointed to Izzie with her staff “ Her family is on the other side of the sky bridge and the road outside is blocked.”

The staff-woman looked at the strange sight of a 7-foot tall cthulian monstrosity leaning on a small angelic woman and decided that her daily amount of fucks given had run out about five minutes ago. In a matter of fact tone of voice, she said “ Be careful going over, somebody turned into the incredible hulk on the bridge and made a new skylight. If you see anyone under  the debris come get us.” She pointed towards a corner of the room that had been a food court when everything was still up and running. “  we have a first aid station made up over there so if you see anyone else spread the word” And with that, she turned and went on her way. Izzie and Brian gave each other a look, then after a moment, they began moving forward. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Together Izzie and Brian picked their way through the destroyed booths, walking over and under and around the wreckage. One of the booths looked like it had been trampled by a dinosaur with large reptilian footprints all over it. Another booth full of t-shirts looked like it had exploded. toys, art, game consoles, and more littered the floor, all around obviously having been knocked over or discarded in the panic. Isabell thought to herself that the place would be prime for looting if she wasn't so against it. That and she had far more pressing things to worry about at the moment.

With tremulous footsteps, Izzie and Brian made their way onto the sky bridge. There was indeed a large hole in the glass ceiling, sharp shiny shards littered the entire walkway and Izzie began to worry about her bare feet.  She stopped right before the sky bridge began and the sudden halt caused Brian to almost walk into her. Recovering from the near collision rather quickly brian looked up at her and said “ whats wrong?  Why’d you stop?”

Izzie pointed towards her feet and then to the glass that covered the surrounding area. It took Brian a minute but then it clicked “ Oh! I see! Yeah, it's probably a bad idea for you to be walking over there in your bare feet. Umm let's see if we can find something to cover them”

Together the two searched through the surrounding rubble for something to cover Izzie's feet. After about 10 minutes they came across a booth that had been selling nerdy clothing items and while it was mostly tee’s they also happened to sell a pair of novelty slippers that looked like the Killer rabbit from. Izzie slipped them on over her misshapen feet and mentally smiled a little at the incongruous footwear. Brian let out a little laugh “ well, that's something I never thought I'd see, a mind flayer in bunny slippers!” Izzie nodded her head and winced a little when her tentacles unconsciously curled in a little on themselves in the illithid version of a smile. Brian laughed a bit harder and offered a hand to her “ come on Izzie! Let's make it over the sky bridge in your dashing new booties!”

Izzie took the hand and carefully the began making their way forward. They tried to avoid most of the glass seeing as while the slippers did have a rubber bottom it wasn't the thickest of soles and they didn't want to worry about it being pierced. At one point as they moved to avoid a particularly large patch of glass they walk close to the sides of the bridge. Through the transparent wall, Izzie could see the street down below. A huge crowd of people stood on the streets many yelling and pushing against a police line that had sprung up at the end of the street. About two-thirds of the crowd seemed like ordinary humans, the other third was like Izzie and varied wildly. Izzie  could see a full size dragon stuck in the crowd. With all the movement below her, the crown looked not unlike the ocean, or maybe an ants nest when you threw a rock at it. Brian stared down through the window as well and let out a low whistle. “ damn, it looks like chaos down there…. I'm kinda glad we’re up here now.”

Izzie was about to nod her head in agreement when all of a sudden a splitting pain burst through her head. She hissed and stumbled back knocking into the side of a booth. Brian rushed forward surprise in his eyes. “ Izzie! What's wrong?!” he placed a steadying hand on Her shoulder “ are you alright?” Izzie clutched her head The hissing growing louder. She Wasn't! She Couldn't! IT WAS SO LOUD! She could hear voices screaming in panic! AND her heart was gripped with the overwhelming sense of fear! Why were people screaming!? Who was Screaming?

Brian was scared, something new was happening and he didn't know what. Holding on to Izzie's shaking shoulders he gave her a small shake and yelled “ IZZIE! STAY WITH ME! WHATS WRONG? WHERE DOES IT HURT? POINT TO WHERE IT HURTS!”

Izzie Screamed <IT'S TOO LOUD!!!>

Beside her, Brian flinched. It felt like something cold and slimy had just brushed against his brain like a very very loud intrusive thought. Then suddenly it happened again.

< IT'S TOO LOUD! THEY/IM SO SCARED! OH GOD! Help me!  I CANT Hear Myself- where ANd  They/ I? Who is speaking!?>

Brian stood there stunned for half a second. Izzie was talking, Izzie was talking telepathically. Apparently, her transformation wasn't as done as they'd thought and her mental powers had just clicked on full force. Brian looked down below them and realized.oh. Oh no. Izzie’s mental powers had just clicked on over a huge group of very very scared people.  She was being flooded with all of their panics right now. Brian’s nurse training kicked in and he began to move.

Brian grabbed Izzie’s arm and threw it over his shoulder. He started dragging the confused mind flayer across the sky bridge, hoping against hope that getting her away from the crowd would help. As he pulled he began talking trying to get Izzie to focus on him rather than the pain. “ Izzie ssshhh it's gonna be okay, Izzie it's me, Brian, you are gonna be okay, Izzie focus on me. I know it's loud. Sssh sssh. Just focus on me, it's gonna be okay. I'm taking you somewhere safe. Ssshhh.”

<Brian? I can't, I ?? what?>

“ that's it, just focus on me.you're gonna be safe it's okay, just lean on me. I need you to walk with me, its kinda hard to pull you when you're so much heavier than I am.” Izzie stumbled along still leaning heavily on Brian's shoulder. As they got farther and farther along Izzie seemed to get better and better, With much stumbling and shambling the two managed to make their way to the other end of the sky bridge. Once they had made it to the other side they both sunk to the ground backs resting against a blizzard booth. For a moment they both just sat there breathing heavily. Brian looked over at Izzie who still held a rather shell-shocked expression on her face. Very quietly He asked “ Izzie? ...You okay?”

Izzie slowly began to nod and then said < I… I.. uh, Yes??>  a small shudder worked its way up her shoulders <that was…. Intense. I could feel what everyone was thinking… oh god that was weird.> Izzie adjusted her seating so that she was a bit more comfortable < I can still kinda feel them… but they're quieter now I just sorta know their over there> Izzie shuddered < this… This is so creepy. I am literally talking about my brain right now…. It is like? Yelling? In your head? Oh god this is scary!> Next to her Brian just shrugged. In the most nonchalant voice he could muster he said, “ It definitely seemed scary, I mean you went down and I had absolutely no idea what was going on.” He then gave her comforting smile, and put a put a hand on her shoulder  “ but hey! at least we can now talk to each other rather than have to play 20 questions.”

Izzie gave the mental impression of a weak smile ( which Brian found very odd)

< yes I suppose this is much easier.. >

Izzie still felt really odd, she could hear Brian's thoughts including the stuff about how odd a mental smile felt. Other people's thoughts felt somewhere between unstoppable intrusive thought and dreamlike voice in her head.  She could also feel the relief coming off of him, it was almost like a wave of color brushing up against her. It was like Brian's mind was a bubble of light and shades and if she wanted to she could push deeper into it. She was scared however and backed away. She didn't want something like what happened on the bridge to happen again. She turned her thought elsewhere. < now that I can speak I  want to say thank you, you've helped me a lot in the last little bit.>

Brian grinned “ don't mention it. I did what anybody else who had the capabilities would do.”

< well nobody else even tried. You did. So thanks.>

Brian pushed himself up off the floor and extended a hand to Izzie.

“Helping each other is what makes us human I suppose... even if some of us happen to be not technically humans at the moment. Now come on. Let's get you to the PC room. I'm sure your family is really anxious.”

Izzie accepted the hand up. Together they picked their way through the last of the expo hall and down the escalator to the PC room. The surrounding area showed signs of the panicked stampede but far less than earlier. Izzie rationalized that this was probably because this was the secondary building and had a few fewer attractions in it. Brian stopped to point out a very large hole in one of the immense windows that made up the walls on this level, idly wondering if that was where the dragon they'd spotted in the crowd earlier had made its escape. As they reached the entrance to the Pc room Izzie suddenly stopped.  Seeing this Brian asked, “ what's up Izzie?” < I can feel, uh I mean, There's a whole lot of people up ahead. I should probably brace myself.> Brian took Izzy's hand. “ Hey it's okay, I don't know if it'll help or not but If you want to can try focusing on my mind? It might help?” he looked up at her with compassion in his eye“ don't worry though you got this, and if not I'll go in and bring you family out to you.”

Izzie shuffled nervously her eyes on her feet like she was afraid she’d fall over then quietly even for a mental voice she said <thanks>

After a little while, Izzie looked up at Brian determination in her eyes <  I think I can do this now, let's go in and find my dad.> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Pc free play room was indeed crowded. It was always a very popular attraction at the venue with a Byoc Lan party on one side of the room and a Free Play area on the other side where you could sit down and play. A huge number of transformed people were milling about in here. It seems that the Lan party organizers had done a fairly good job at keeping everybody calm in the wake of all the craziness though as most were just milling around, some had even gone back to playing video games!. Tons of different video game characters now walked around in real life, quite a few soldiers were among the group (meaning there had probably been a Modern Warfare tournament going on when the Event happened) as well as quite a few Overwatch characters, there were even a couple of duplicate Mercy’s. Trying to concentrate solely on Brian’s mind Izzie began walking towards the organizer's area.

The organizer's area was a little cube of desks where the servers sat. and quite a few people were running around it still wearing staff shirts. Of course a few of those staff shirts now found themselves being stretched over inhuman frames but generally, a large amount seemed to be human. From what Izzie could see they were doing what they did best, organizing. The Lan Party staff were making calls and placating the people around them, trying their best to help everyone remain calm during this trying time.

Spotting a familiar face sitting at the table Izzie made her way over to the table where her uncle Greg sat manning the server. She called out mentally

<Uncle Greg! It's me, Isabel! Do you know where my Dad is?>

Quite a few of the staff members and some of the surrounding bystanders jumped and Izzie realized that she had accidentally just done the mental equivalent of shouting her question at top volume. Her uncle, in particular, looked shocked and stunned for a minute or two before he pushed his glasses up and nervously said “Jesus !.. Izzie, is that.. You?”

Izzie shuffled nervously on the spot feeling all the surrounding eyes watching her. She slumped her shoulders and tried to look as non-threatening as possible. <ummmmm.. Yeah. It's me, I was caught up in the whole whatever this thing was…… Do you know where my dad is? I'm kinda.. Really scared and looking for him.>

Her uncle to his credit stopped looking so scared after he heard her talking at a more “normal” mental volume. He then put his hand to his temple in a thinking motion and said “ Last I saw of him he was over thataway” He pointed in the direction of the corner that the bathrooms were in “ your brother uh also changed and he’s having some issues with it. Apparently, He’s having kind of a freak out because of his Asperger's.”

Izzie nodded< I can imagine. His sensitivity issues must be driving him crazy. Usually, he can't even stand having his hair cut with a buzzer because the sensation bugs him. The pain of the transformation must have felt far worse for him than me… and I know it already was plenty bad for me.>

Izzie eyed her uncle curiously. < just wondering though… what did he turn into?> Her uncle grinned. “ Link from twilight princess. He was playing in the console room down below us when it happened” Izzie grinned in return < that's one of his favorite characters! Hopefully, once he calms down a bit he can appreciate that a little more.>

Her uncle gave a shrug and then turned back the business he had been working on. Izzie and Brian began making their way over to the corner he had pointed out. Izzie could feel the tired and controlled panicking of the people around her pressing in, it was sort of like being caught in a riptide. Izzie focused in on Brian. Feeling his familiar presence near her side was comforting. As they neared the bathrooms Izzie spotted her dad’s familiar bald spot a mile away, Her father was turned away from her helping a Link that looked very shaken. Izzie could see that a couple items of clothing had been removed from the “ Link” obviously stuff that had set off his sensory issues. Mainly it was the boots some of the gauntlets and the chainmail undershirt.

Izzie paused a moment. She knew that her family loved her, but still it was kinda scary… She looked at herself. Her new skin was purple and slightly mucousy like a frog's skins,  she had four clawed and webbed fingers. Her head was a monstrosity. She wasn't human anymore… The thought of going over to her father was suddenly a lot more intimidating. Brian noticed her hesitation and quietly said

“ hey….. what's wrong?”  

< sorry… I.. I know it's stupid to think this and that its probably never gonna happen but I… I'm scared. I'm scared that my dad's gonna see me and scream. I'm scared that he’s not going to want me anymore… like I said silly I know but…>

“ hey, it's okay to be nervous. I may not know your dad but right now he is over there helping your brother who has also been transformed. If he’s over there helping one of his kids out with this then he probably won't mind helping out his other kid as well.”

< I know but….. I'm so much…. worse.>

Brian stared at her. Then he grabbed her hand and held on to it.

“ its okay you're not alone.we can go and do this together if you like.”

<.......Thanks.>

They neared turned figure, tentatively Izzie called out with her mind

<umm.. Hey dad.>

A graying man in his late 40’s/early fifties turned around. With a stunned look on his face, he adjusted his glasses and said “ Isabel? Is that .. you?” Isabel squirmed. Her tentacles wound around themselves clutching each other nervously

<heh. Yeah, dad. It's me… I uh..>

The inky tears were flowing again, oh god she was too sensitive! Her father ran to her and put his arms around the softly crying cephalopod. they stood there together. Shortly the whole family was there all crying and holding each other. Izzie never felt more loved, from her father and brothers minds she could feel the overwhelming relief and joy. They were all here. They were all together. They were all okay.

Brian watched the scene with slightly teary eyes himself, he enjoyed this part of being a nurse, being able to see a family happy. He started to turn away thinking it best to let them have this moment privately.

A purple hand shot out of the knot of hugging bodies, grabbing Brian by his wing.

< nope. Get in here. You saved me, you are required to join in the happy reunion hugging.>

Brian smiled as he was included in the large hug.