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monkey-network · 4 months

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Good Stuff: Orion and the Dark

You know? I remember playing Pajama Sam 1 many moons ago and to this day I find it lovely to play. Great characters, incredible artwork, the differing routes each playthrough which I didn't even realize until then, and the ending which really stuck with me. That what was kept me anticipating Orion and the Dark, as I felt it was that spiritual successor I never knew I wanted. It sucks that Dreamworks dropped this onto streaming like it was nothing, not even on the site they own no less, but I genuinely looked forward to this and that's what matters. Now that it's out, let it be known I can't believe this will be the first Charlie Kaufman film for me. Just saying, any interest in his previous movies is gonna feel like whiplash.

Just imagining some kid loving Orion & is eventually in awe for a movie called I'm Thinking of Ending Things

To truly start this review, this might be the best kino non-Pixar Pixar movie Dreamsworks ever made. I didn't think of it having the whole "what if X had feelings" factor until now but I actually like that they take it not only in a reasonable direction, but twists the dynamic in a way Pixar honestly hasn't done since... Toy Story 4 I guess? No spoilers, but I enjoyed that Darkness and his entity friends have their insecurities, this is before they all met Orion, and they take that in a very great if offputting direction. Plus I love that they were able to personify these elements I didn't actually think about when it came to night time. They also present the biggest problem with the movie and that's the lack of real camaraderie with the entities and Orion. You enjoy the friendship between the boy and Darkness, but they streamline the bond Orion has with the others and that really makes the story hit or miss depending on if you grow to care about them. I brought up Pixar and yeah, while they have their great individual moments they don't have the same effectiveness dynamic wise as the emotions from Inside Out. Also small nitpick, but I didn't like that Dark's name is "Dark" and not "Darkness"; doesn't roll of the tongue, you know?

Plus we didn't get Orion and Dark playing Cheese & Crackers like missed opportunity of the year

Now again, this is my first Charlie Kaufman film, but I was familiar with his writing style and I gotta say I loved what he does with the structure of the story. It's a story within a story where as soon as the curtain is pulled, I was fully hooked. I love how Orion essentially helps himself overcome some of his fears both thanks to unexpected but welcomed help and developing his own confidence. It was clever how when you put a face on a fear, that fear slowly fades but the film shows that it's not something capable of a cure. Orion's neuroses dilate thanks to this adventure, he probably wouldn't have lived to tell it if otherwise, but it presents that growing up doesn't mean everything will work out perfectly or immediately. Does it do a lot to get to that point? Yes, but I felt the risks paid off in a way I don't think I've seen before in a story like this. I know as a kid I didn't have constant paralyzing premonitions regarding the worse outcomes imaginable like Orion, but on some level I remember what it's like and how it'll still fester your mind as you get older. This film, pun unintended, gets dark on a personal level and will probably stick with me long after watching it.

Can't say this scene broke me, but damn did it get close

Orion and the Dark impressed me as something thought-provoking, that does a lot more than being another adapted storybook. Is it an insanely masterful modern Dreamworks movie like Puss in Boots 2? No, even with its great subversions the movie doesn't juggle everything as well as I hoped. Then again, I highly appreciate that this was a risky movie Dreamworks was willing to release, that got both Kaufman and Werner Herzog of all people on board, as opposed to shelving it like some companies I know. A movie that doesn't spell everything out, that gets to be a family movie not constantly upbeat but colorful and optimistic in all the right ways. Orion deserves a chance where I think everyone will have interesting takeaways even if it won't be their favorite Dreamworks film in recent years. I'm overall glad I saw it and kinda want to see it again soon for missed details.

4 Out Of 5; The night truly shined with this one.

#orion and the dark #animation #movies #dreamworks animation #dreamworks #Netflix #cartoons #reviews #Good Stuff

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a-teacup-of-golden-cracks · 8 months

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tw this is a trauma post but it's also a narrative I'm proud of. Suicide and self harm (mental and physical) will be mentioned.

To help those who aren't me understand, I think in part in references since it is both easier and more fun than creating original thoughts.

(1): reference to the videogame Omori

(2): reference to the movie The Dark Knight (take a guess as to why I like and relate to the joker)

(3): reference to a song I like (in order, HOPE by NF, Somewhere I Belong by Linkin Park, Love the Subhuman Self by AISHA, Arc System Works, and Jamison Boaz)

(4): a random saying I heard and enjoyed

“No one knows what it's like to be the bad man, to be the sad man behind blue eyes. No one knows what it's like to be hated, to be fated to telling only lies”

“Behind blue eyes” by The Who

Welcome to the nonsensical abyss of my mind, you've been here as long as you can remember (1). By reading this you're getting to see my thoughts without translation. Nothing here makes sense to anyone except me, I make references others rarely understand. But allow me to tell the story of how what you see now came to be. You wanna know how I got these scars (2)? “I spent years of my life holdin’ on to things I never should've kept, full of hatred, years of my life wishin I was someone different looking for some validation.” (3)

Middle school was a special sort of subtle hell for me, it stole things without me noticing. First it was my feeling of impervious safety when a kid laughed at a genuine heartfelt remark I made. Then it was my trust that friends would never betray me and always respect me when they wouldn't stop making jokes at my expense. Slowly, steadily I descended into paranoia and loneliness, and thus my contentedness with life was stolen. The ax forgets yet the tree never does(4).

A secret hidden issue that I only found out this year was that the ADHD meds I needed to take to function may have been causing the paranoia to start with. I still don't know how to feel about that, that all my issues and trauma might stem from something that's not even real.

Once I started high school it became more and more apparent that nobody liked me. At least not for very long. I never learned to function in middle school so I was still struggling with what everyone else already knew and mastered. Giving a compliment and sexual harassment, would you like to know the difference? I would've but nobody told me until after I'd been punished.

Intent vs impact, I never intended to hurt anyone yet my impact was that I did more often than not. So I cut off the things that hurt people, removed them from my mind. Who needs humor? Not me if I can't use it right. Who needs to give compliments? Not me if I can't say it right. Who needs to hug people to show affection because it's your primary love language and you want to show everyone how much you like and appreciate them? …… not me…. if I must…. to not hurt them…

You see where my inner pain starts now? Where the scars in my mind begin? There were two things I could never bear to cut and slice away, my name and my kindness. Most trans people change their names to align more with their gender but I decided no. I am done changing things for other people to accept me more, they never do. My name is Daniel and it's the sum of my entire being. If I am non-binary, or a woman, or some eldritch horror that everyone fears and that has lost every shred of humanity because of the things I've endured, then my name represents all of that. It's not my issue if people make a poor assumption about my name because of what they think it should be.

Maybe I don't even want to be human anymore if all that humans have shown me is hate. All throughout high school it was nothing but hate or dislike shown to me, barely any kindness outside of my family. So I isolated myself from everyone, to avoid those who hated and to not burden my family with my issues. I'd handle it by myself like I always had in the past and I'd be ok.

I was not ok.

I was rageful. I was tearing myself apart more and more and more internally, only my desire to never hurt anyone kept me from tearing the school down brick by brick with all the students inside it. But maybe… could it be I was the exception and the problem? Could it be I'm the one who deserves to hurt for the pain I've caused? Should I hurt myself? And so I tried once, a good solid punch to the forehead that didn't make me feel any better and never tried again.

The pain I deserved wasn't physical, it was mental and so I gave myself infinite mental pain. What an idiot I was for giving that compliment when clearly in retrospect it was sexual harassment, what a dumbass I was for saying that joke, looking back I deserve to lose my entire friend group over it. Maybe I'd be better off if I didn't exist anymore if I caused more harm than good and could never seem to learn or improve. The thoughts I had then… and sometimes still now… it's so hard to remember that looking into the past makes everything obvious in the worst ways possible…

But there was a light eventually, someone who told me all that was wrong. Someone I met online and will never see in person, someone I messed up horribly with and yet she still forgave me. Thank you infinitely June. You showed me that monsters can be good.

So I steeled my resolve and used my rage at myself to look inward and outward and found that I was being mistreated and misunderstood. I shouldn't kill myself to not exist or hurt people because I would improve and I could make others improve. So I stood at the very last meeting in front of the whole school and spoke the truth of my mind with as much respect and rage as I could muster. So much pain and anger and hate and sadness I'd endured and I showed all of it to the entire high school of 300 people.

I've never felt more satisfied in my life than when the headmaster of the school himself asked if there was anything he could do for me and I said no. I've never felt more proud when I met with him two days later and asked for a neurodivergent support group to be created for the middle and high school, and he said yes. Half a year later my brother told me that the headmaster stuck to his word and did more than I asked. I never felt more vindicated than when I was told by my only friend that he'd heard people making school shooter jokes after I stood up and told my story.

And so I started to heal. My humor, I did need that. How could I be happy if I could never make myself laugh? My desire to give joy and be kind, I needed that. How could I not fulfill the purpose in life I'd made for myself? My ability to hug and love and be happy with others, I needed that. Desperately. “I want to heal, I want to feel what I thought was never real, like there was somewhere I belong.”(3) I just needed to find better people who understood. I reconnected with my family and told my pain and tried in every possible way to show how sorry and sad I was for cutting them off. I couldn't stitch the old bits back onto me but maybe I could grow something new. Something I wanted and I loved, for me.

I can never fully heal, that's why you see the holes in my form, but I've incorporated them now, so that they help me as much as they hurt. I carry on and love my subhuman self, accept me for me and go back to being with humans (3). I give them the kindnesses I can but only after I do that for myself. This is the kindness and respect I give to me, the biggest change I made, because I deserve it as much as everyone else. Now close your eyes and you'll leave this dream (1).

“But my dreams, they aren't as empty as my conscience seems to be.”

Behind Blue Eyes by the Who

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longeyelashedtragedy · 6 days

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get to know me tag from @heffer-wen this is a good one!

tagging: @perfectpiety @echthr0s @colorsofmyseason @kvaradonaa @protect-daniel-james @thundercrack @arsenalgbt @steeple-sinderby-wanderers @lamperry4ever (this is all optional of course!!!)

1. Do you make your bed?

I only properly make my bed when I change my sheets, but I can't stand to have the bed looking janky when i come home, so I wrestle with my thicc blanket until it's decently even and neat on the bed, and if the pillows have gone wild I'll straighten them out a little. if any of my over 9000 stuffed animals are on the floor I'll pick them up of course.

2. Favourite number?

24! my birthday, and a nice solid good number, can fit lots of other numbers into it. 17 has been an Important number for my bff and me, and I have a religion based fondness for 18...but 24 it is.

3. What's your job?

my job is very cool and specific and I love it, but it's not one I would ever want to mix with my online persona for various reasons. in fact I've always worked in an "industry" that I think should never mix with my nsfw ways on here. always happy to talk about it in private!

4. If you could go back to school would you?

oh hale to the FUCK no. I hate school. I haven't liked school since I graduated high school. my brain can't be made to think like that and do so much work to other people's specifications--and then there's sitting in class and having to listen to other people talk, I couldn't give less of a shit if I tried! I'm a voracious self directed learner--I want to learn something new like, every second--but this doesn't translate well into a school setting.

unfortunately--a job I think would be really cool to have, I'd have to get a master's and certification, and while I think I'd be great at the job, I'd be right shit at the kind of work the degree requires you to do to pass. (I could easily do the job with good mentoring and maybe like...one course, but that's how so many things are.) Maybe if I marry rich I'd go back! Frank lampard step the fuck up!

5. Can you parallel park?

I could do it just to pass my driver's test and have done it like. twice since. I'm terrible 😭 I have visual-spatial-perceptual whatever deficits and just can't do it. I also have a spot missing from my peripheral vision on my left side so parking on that side is even more confusing. my sister however is great at those things and yet she also can barely parallel park, you should see the two of us try to do it together, it's a full on yakety sax comedy. the WORST is here in the city, people stop on the street and give you unsolicited advice while you park and this gives me so much anxiety that I can't even remember what to do.

6. Do you think aliens are real?

not really? I suppose there's sentient life somewhere but is it likely to be humanoid? I'm terrified of space (I'm one of those would rather go to the bottom of the ocean than outer space freaks) so I try not to think about it

7. Can you drive a manual car?

what to heck,,,,,,,,,,,,of course I can't 🇺🇸 shamed by having to pay more to rent an automatic when I've driven in Europe

8. Guilty pleasure?

disregarding my dietary restrictions? I also have the bad habit of reading what scents my hot favs wear and then buying cheap samples. today one arrived that I forgot I'd ordered so now my wrists smell like chanel allure. I'm indifferent? it smells like Ladies' Perfume

what else...idk, I'm not too guilty about my pleasures really

9. Tattoos?

none--I have a couple of ideas, but have never been tempted to actually do it?

10. Favourite colour?

black and pink!

11. Favourite type of music?

I like things that are loud and repetitive and insistent. sometimes screechy. I like listening to other languages. my favorite instrument is the bagpipes (how do I say that in a grammatically correct way ffs) if that helps! will always go for: good rap/hip hop, 80s thrash metal, eastern european/balkan folk music, techno (the darker and more berghainy the better), other weird electronica, the beatles, most things that came out of the 80s

12. Do you like puzzles?

the kind with pieces? those are fun, I just don't have any room to spread one out. other kinds, like logic and shit, absolutely not, my brain doesn't work like that at all

13. Any phobias?

insects, and the main one: food contamination, but not the kind you're thinking--I definitely am more anxious than the average person about the food I eat being contaminated, but what the phobia actually is is more like...places where food shouldn't be being contaminated by bits of food...It's very specific and I've always had it but it's getting worse as I get older. like, imagine if you go into a restaurant and there's a couple of crumbs on the chair, or like, a bit of dirt on the underside of the waiter's tray. you'll just brush them off, right? or like, just not care about the bottom of a tray? I feel sick to my stomach and my heart is racing a bit just imagining this. what a privilege!

I'm also fucking terrified of being alone in elevators, but I'm not sure if that counts as a phobia? (I'm afraid of getting stuck in one by myself--as long as there's another person in there I don't care lol)

14. Favourite childhood sport?

swimming was my only one--I begged for lessons, started young, and was pretty good, did a swim team and everything. otherwise I am horrible at sports--I can't run (never could), and have no hand-eye coordination (did some occupational therapy at age 18 but it was Too Late), and again, those visual perceptual spatial issues! I wasn't terrible at floor hockey and volleyball in gym class I guess. footy was my worst 😭 in 8 years of gym I scored one goal--an own goal

15. Do you talk to yourself?

Not really.

16. What movies do you adore?

hmmm...I am not a huge movies person, but here's a list:

mulholland drive

mary poppins

the producers (mostel/wilder, 1967)

willy wonka & the chocolate factory (gene wilder version ONLY)

little miss sunshine

moulin rouge

cabaret

my cousin vinny

run lola run

y tu mamá también

the sound of music

chicago

kill bill vol. 1

cidade de deus

diarios de motocicleta

buena vista social club (not without its problematic side, but the musicians/music is so joyous)

the wedding singer

anklaget/the accused (weird danish movie that I don't think anyone i know has heard of?)

le dîner de cons

kamchatka

imagine me and you

ghostbusters 2016 (i will DIE on this hill)

brokeback mountain

team america: world police

rear window

amadeus

the crow

the incredibles

spaceballs

a shot in the dark

airplane!

romeo + juliet

school of rock

american psycho

uncut gems

rebecca

dial m for murder

17. Tea or coffee?

coffee! please. tea makes me feel a bit sick

18. First thing you wanted to be growing up?

I wanted to be an opera singer and a "lady mover" (we moved twice in the span of like, 2 and a half years when I was little)

#about me

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gaymer-hag-stan · 11 months

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Ok so, with the Tekken 8 Closed Network Test now concluded, I'd like to share a few thoughts.

The game looks great, I love the new redesigns, I love the new animations and the fact that they got the entire cast to rerecord their battle grunts and win / pre battle quotes, it was especially weird to have certain characters use voice lines from different actors, some of whom weren't even speaking the same language 🤣

The redesigns are almost exclusively great so far, but I do hope we get alternate costumes. Yeah customization is there but I don't really care to have Nina in jeans and cowboy boots or Jin in platinum blond pigtails like... A lot of fighting games just have a palette swap as the second costume and call it a day, but from the very beginning all the way up to Tekken 6, Tekken had an alternate outfit for every single character. Not only that, but it was usually a more "casual" outfit too like, Kazuya's Tekken 1 1P was his karate gi pants but his 2P was a tank top and jeans. Asuka's Tekken 5 1P was her Aikido uniform and her 2P was her trademark shorts and tank top and so on. Tekken 7 originally went for the 2P palette swap, but at some point they added extra costumes, including classic looks, via an update, and I hope they are there from the start this time.

I played almost exclusively as Nina because she's been my main since 2005, with a little Jun, a little Xiaoyu and a little Jin thrown in. I also tried Lili's, Hwoarang's and Asuka's combo trials (nice that they FINALLY added combo trials, I don't know what took them so long lol) I gotta say it's extremely satisfying to see Harada CONSTANTLY shading Street Fighter on Twitter by saying that the base roster will feature a lot more fighters than our competitors an also Mortal Kombat by saying that they are focusing on legacy fighters before they even start considering guests. Like. That's a ball move and a huge reassurance for the fans. I also know it's in good faith and no harm is meant towards Capcom or Netherrealm but he's right and he should say it!

If there's one thing I hope they copy off of Capcom is Word Tour mode. Yeah NetherRealm Studios' cinematic story mode is fine... I guess... But World Tour mode is the best single player mode ever featured in a fighting game and Namco even have their own blueprint in the form of Tekken Force. We're probably still getting a cinematic-style story but there's still hope for Tekken 9, or maybe even a smaller-scale Tekken Force return, in the style of Tekken 4 or sth.

Arcade Mode needs a proper reintroduction as well, in Tekken 6 you only got 4 battles and you were done and in Tekken 7 you straight up got nothing at all out of Arcade mode and character endings were instead for the base game characters who weren't prominently featured in the cinematic story and you got them after a single battle... Very underwhelming.

Also hoping other "missing" modes like Team Battle return and maybe Tekken Bowl will be included from the get go this time? I've also had this request forever but I'd love to see 1P Vs. Com or Com Vs. Com fights be included in offline versus. Literally every other fighting game has it except Tekken and Virtua Fighter and I can't tell why. It shouldn't be hard to implement and honestly sometimes it's just fun to pick characters, costumes and stage and just fight it out with the computer, as a break from online grinding and whatnot.

Now, as for the battle system itself... It's lots of fun! There's tons of stuff going on at all times but it feels great to experience and it's not really overwhelming or anything. It's cute that they have included an "easy mode" for new players to ease themselves in the fun. I'm not a master player by any means but I've had almost two decades of experience in Tekken and legacy skill does play a big role in the Tekken meta so it's an interesting way to even out the playing field. Interestingly, they also seem to have simplified some of the more complicated commands like, I can pull off all of Nina's combo throws now with a total of like, four button presses at most? Crazy! The heat system feels a bit weird at first but it's a huge asset once you get into it which doesn't take all that long anyway.

Overall I am very satisfied with what I got to play and I feel like Tekken 8 is gonna be another huge chapter in Tekken's history as well as the FGC's as a whole and I honestly cannot wait! Hopefully I will have moved out of Greece by the time it's out because my internet connection was killing me 😭🤣

I also better see miss Anna and Christie in the game or else I'm rioting.

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stars-of-kyber · 7 months

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20 Questions for Fic Writers!

@dreamstone28737 tagged me on this fun thing <3 thank you love!

1- How many works do you have on AO3?

32! Holy shit that's a lot.

2- What's your total AO3 word count?

351,009 words and counting. Again, I'm shocked at how much I've got done lol

3- What fandoms do you write for?

Right now at this moment, Bridgerton.

4- What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1st- You Belong With Me - 821

2nd -Falling For You - 451

3rd - You're The Only Thing I'll Ever Need - 423

4th - Lost, Drifting - 407

5th - Faithfully - 397

(The next one is Bad Habits which never stops to surprise me just how many Kudos it gets since it was one I thought I wouldn't get anything from.)

(God, I need to update my WIPs)

5- Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

Honestly? Only when I feel I have something to add to the comment. Sometimes I see a comment with "Great Chapter/Episode" (which I really absolutely love, btw. Any comment makes me so damn happy I can't even explain) and I never know what to say to that and I don't want the person to feel I don't care about their comments when I just reply with "Thanks! I'm Glad you liked it <3" and I keep thinking about different things to read and I never can and when I see it, I have a bunch of unanswered comments which makes me overwhelmed to start.

So yeah, I usually only reply when I know what to say lol

6- What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Ending? (none? lol)

Posted, I'd say "The Way I Loved You", which I thought the ending might be kinda open? I don't usually do sad endings. I think "Faithuffy", "Of Noble Blood" and "You Belong With Me" have some rather angsty parts, along with "Lockdown" which touched a rather sensitive part of me. But all the endings were/will be (THEY WILL HAPPEN I PROMISE!) happy.

Unposted, it's probably "A Dead Man's Tale" which I'm writing right about now and I hope to start posting by Halloween on Tuesday (fingers crossed). The ending is... sentimental? Idk Kinda sad but happy too? I have no idea how to describe that. Either that or Raise a Little Hell, my Bonnie and Clyde, which will be my only NHEA story ever(if), when I get to write it.

(Feel free to tell me which of my fics you think it's the angstier. I'm curious!)

7- What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

All of them? Lol

Walking The Wire because I finished it? sdakljfkdsgh I have no idea. Maybe Lockdown bc it's such a hard battle to end happily in the end.

(Which of my fics yall think is the happiest? Please tell me bc I have no idea.)

8- Do you get hate on fics?

Not on the Bridgerton ones, thankfully. Everyone that reads it is amazing which makes me really happy.

I had a pretty harsh time when I started on the Reylo Fandom in Star Wars. Not fun, I'll give you that.

9- Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

I write hotter scenes, although I don't think I've ever finished an entire sex scene. That said, I have a one-shot called Stockings that is about 85% done which is porn/no plot that I might one day finish but I'm not that much of a fan of it, to be honest.

10- Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written?

Unless you count crossover with Julia Quinn's own other series, no I don't.

11- Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I am aware of.

12- Have you ever had a fic translated?

No, which is kinda sad because I am a translator and I could very well do it myself lol but Idk if there are too many Portuguese-speaking readers that would be interested in it, and although I speak pretty good Spanish, I'm a tad out of practice and I don't master the written language nearly enough to attempt to translate something to Spanish.

13- Have you ever co-written a fic before?

A long time ago in a Galaxy far far away. It was... nice. And not at the same time. I hold myself to very VERY high standards, so I'm extremely self-critical and working with someone with different styles and ideas can be really harsh without trying to dictate the way you want the story to go. Plus the three times I did, we ended up giving up halfway through the story lol

14- What's your all-time favorite ship?

This is a stupid question and I hate it. I'm not good at picking. I am deeply, truly in love with Kathony, and have been for the past couple of years, but if I had to say at the top of my head, the oldest OTPs that have been in my heart, the ones here for the longest time and never really left are Percabeth from Percy Jackson and Jily from Harry Potter. Reylo and Rebelcaptain in Star Wars were also a very big part of me for a long time and I love them.

Asking all-time faves is mean.

15- What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Sought you, Sang you, Dreamed you, my Reylo Kidfic. I love it so much and I am so sorry my baby, but I can't focus on Reylo anymore. I have complete faith I will finish all my Kathony fics one day, I really do.

16- What are your writing strengths?

I honestly have no idea. As I mentioned, I am very self-conscious about what I do and I have incredibly high standards about myself. It's not uncommon to see me saying I hate my story and I won't post it and it's absolutely shit, I have no idea why people read it. So pointing out a quality is really hard.

I guess I'm good at dialogues? I always felt they sounded nice, idk.

17- What are your writing weaknesses?

I'm running a risk of repeating myself too much if I mention standards and self-consciousness, don't I?

I am terribly wordy. Nothing I do is short because I need 1k words for something I could have done in 200. I always feel people will get bored by it.

I also sometimes feel I have issues representing the emotions I'm trying to put through in my story. Many times you'll find me going to a neutral third party saying "Please tell me what's missing here." bc I feel it lacks.

Let's not mention the lack of self-discipline and the amount of time it takes me to write a story/update something. And overthinking things. Also coming up with more ideas than I have time to write.

18- Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I do that all the time? I am a native Portuguese speaker and English is my second language.

19- First fandom you wrote for?

Lol that's going far back, isn't it? I have been writing originals since I was 10 (I have a lil notebook with the first story I've ever written, it's adorable, but as usual, incomplete), but in 2011 I was obsessed with a soap opera called Rebelde (the Brazilian version, when I liked the Mexican RBD one, I didn't really know what fandom was yet. BUT I'M GOING TO THE CONCERT ON THE 9TH I'M SO EXCITED) and my first fic was a Roberta x Diego one, which is complete and (unfortunately, -or not- not all of it) available in Nyah Fanfiction, although I wish it wasn't bc it's truly shit. Like very very very shit. It was crazy, she died of lung cancer in the end. I swear to God, I had no clue what was going on with me at 14.

20- Favorite fic you've written?

Okay, look, this is not fun lol

I truly, honestly can't pick. Each one is special for me for a different reason. The Way I Loved You was my first Kathony. You Belong With me my first WIP and I have such a special place for it. I could go on and on for hours. I love them all, even the ones which are not my faves (Bad Habits, Reading Project).

But I will be absolutely thrilled if you guys tell me your fave of my fics. I would love a lot to know.

I'll tag @mimix007 @waterlilyrose, @harnitbee, @bellascarousel, @ladystanbury, @searching4paradiso, @alihightowers and her dragon people and @suspendingtime

#my writing #Tag games #writing tag game #my fics #bridgerton

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innerchorus · 1 year

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Gurgin for the ask game, pick and choose whatever numbers you want! It's a free-for-all! :D

I probably am gonna ask you about Shapur, Isfan, and Kubard later too because of course I am

I said I wanted to answer every question for him and I wasn't lying. Thank you for enabling me! (Ask game post is here, for anyone else who wants to send something in / reblog it themselves. I have a few others to answer already which I'll get too asap now this post is done, but feel free to send in more!).

My first impression of them

Just one of a handful of evil masked guys. Best mask design by a long way, though.

2. When I think I truly started to like them (or dislike them, if you've sent me a character I don't like)

I first got curious about him when I read about his backstory and found out about his shared past with Farangis. Honestly I'm not quite sure how I got to the point where I love him as fiercely as I do now, but I know I started shipping him with Zandeh after seeing art by @strangeshipper and it built from there. I don't know. I just find him really interesting.

3. A song that reminds me of them

I know I've mentioned You Are The Blood by Sufjan Stevens before, but also Don't Worry, We'll Be Watching You by Gotye (POV: you are being recruited by Team Zahhak).

4. How many people I ship them with

Always with Zandeh. OTP status for sure. I have considered other stuff (such as the Zandeh/Gurgin/Parizad OT3) though. And Hilmes/Gurgin in Mage Hunt AU. And if anyone wants to suggest other ships for him, I'm listening.

5. My favorite ship of them

Zandeh/Gurgin, obvious answer is obvious.

6. My least favorite ship of them

I don't know whether anyone actually ships it but Gurgin/the Master.

I won't lie, it's crossed my mind, but my headcanon is primarily that although the Master was once interested in stuff like that he's been alive for so long that he doesn't really have those sorts of urges any more (overlaps a bit with my thoughts on how the type of magic that Team Zahhak use might affect sexual desire, I don't think I've directly mentioned that before but the basic concept is that it can warp it from its baseline just as it warps their bodies, and results vary from person to person, but it's quite common for it to be either dulled or switched off completely and kind of goes hand in hand with the headcanon that their magic renders them sterile).

Gurgin in Sacrifice AU falls into that category, he doesn't completely lack interest but his focus is dominated by his work for Team Zahhak and by the time the AU picks up his story afterwards he's also underweight and depressed so his sex drive is basically 0. And then he meets Zandeh, and gets better, and realises what it's like to want someone so badly you can't think of anything else, lmao

(My headcanons for Gurgin vary a bit in this respect depending on the AU, though. There's probably an AU out there where his desire never returns or he never had any in the first place but even in that case I still see him and Zandeh as life partners and feel they'd work it out somehow.)

7. A quote of them that you remember

What he says when he's rallying his comrades at the end of Book 7 after their Master is (temporarily...) killed: "Let those who do not respect the Snake King Zahhak boast of their victory! Three years, just three years is enough. At that time, they will fall from the peak of joy to the bottom of the valley of despair. The higher they climb, the further they fall!"

It's primarily the last line that sticks in my mind. If I ever make the Gurgin playlist that I daydream about so often, I'd definitely title it 'The Further They Fall'. Anyway, that's actually the last line of dialogue from the final scene of Book 7 (the last book before the timeskip). A very ominous way for it to end, right?

8. Your favorite outfit of them

He has One Outfit. (He would've worn something different when he was a trainee priest, but there's no description of it. A manga flashback to that time feels much less likely now, but you never know, maybe Arakawa will decide to reveal a little of Farangis's backstory before the end… my one hope…)

9. Your least favorite outfit of them

One Outfit, and I love it so no complaints. But I wish Arakawa had planned to adapt the second half so I could see him getting drenched by the rain in Soleimaniye.

10. Describe the character in one sentence

My blorbo who did lots of things wrong.

11. What’s the first thing you think about when thinking about the character?

Huh, this question made me realise that in the mental picture of Gurgin that first pops up when I think of him, he's not wearing his mask. His hood is up, though, and he's in Team Zahhak black. Maybe it's because I've been thinking about the Magical Healing AU more recently, where his appearance is often like this.

12. Sexuality hc!

He doesn't waste much time thinking about it, but he's mainly into men. However, I do headcanon that he had a crush on Farangis when he was young.

13. Your favorite friendship they have

This question makes me sad because I don't see him as someone who's ever had many friends. I don't think his peers at the temple liked him that much (though honestly I think he probably felt quite indifferent about this). There were a handful of other trainees he spent time with, but his closest friends were probably his brother and Farangis. There's certainly no real evidence of friendship between any of the Team Zahhak disciples.

He deserves more than having one-sided conversations with winged apes! Was that mainly for exposition purposes in canon? Perhaps, but it's also a result of a lack of human contact — the novel makes it clear that the mages feel loneliness as their numbers dwindle, and at that point Gurgin is operating alone and hasn't heard from his remaining comrades for a while.

(He absolutely does talk to Hamkar from time to time in Sacrifice AU before Zandeh arrives on the scene, too.)

14. Best storyline they had

Is there anything about his canon trajectory that I really wanna label 'best' lmao? I mean, I wish things had turned out different for him but I do find his loss of faith / corruption arc interesting. Though that's because I also love to think about a future for him where that all gets reversed.

15. Worst storyline they had

His involvement with what went down in Oxus, probably. Oof.

16. A childhood headcanon

You know, I haven't spent much time thinking about what his childhood was like (aside from Mage Hunt AU specifics that differ from whatever a general /baseline headcanon would be). I guess the only thing I feel certain of is that he and his brother had no other siblings, and whatever region they grew up in didn't have much to offer in terms of creating a better life for themselves, and that's why they ended up at the Temple of Mithra in Khuzestan. (Tentative headcanon is that he grew up in / near the Nimruz mountains.)

Aghriras entered the priesthood because of ambition, and that reasoning makes sense for Gurgin, too (they're azat, freeborn commoners aka the lowest social class above slaves, and if they want to climb above the few opportunities that affords to them then it's either joining the priesthood or proving their merit on the battlefield) but I do think that to a certain extent Gurgin followed his brother.

lmao I can feel a backstory headcanon forming even as I type this.. like, what if their father died or left them when they were young (Gurgin probably doesn't remember him much) and they were raised by their mother, who wanted them to have a better life than she had? She wouldn't have wanted them to face the horrors of war, so she encouraged them to work hard on their education so that they could find their place in the priesthood. Perhaps she, too, had passed away by the time they left for the temple, so at that point they only had each other. I feel like Gurgin didn't have any close family after his brother died.

Oh no Gurgin, are you desperate for recognition from your Master because you never had a father figure? Fuck.

17. What do you think their first word was?

Eh, probably some variation of 'brother' or 'mother' (with the headcanon above). I feel like most first words are… not that interesting.

18. How do you think they were as a kid? (Like, were they shy, noisy, wild, etc)

Curious and intelligent! Asked a lot of questions. Easily frustrated when things didn't go his way. I imagine at school he had trouble making friends as he both sought approval from his teachers and thought himself superior to others who were not as clever as him, plus he could be impatient with others. (He was, in general, a bit better about all of this at the time he joined the priesthood, but when he's with Team Zahhak all those negative traits are brought to the fore.)

19. The most random ship you've seen people have with them

Well, I'm not sure this really counts but sometimes I'll ask my boyfriend really weird ArSen questions out of the blue, and recently I asked him "give me a Gurgin ship" and usually when it's something like that he'll try and pick something at random that he thinks I won't like… He said Gurgin/Farangis.

(No, he didn't remember that they knew each other. And I can't think of a way this would work but it sure gave me a whirlwind of feelings to think about. The thought of something happening between them because of shared grief, years after they last saw each other? It's so angsty and messy. If something did happen I think Gurgin would feel immensely guilty for it, but I'm not sure about Farangis. I feel like she might be able to compartmentalise it as something that happened that shouldn't have done, and move on. She'd handle it better than Gurgin, at any rate.)

Wait, my Hilmes/Gurgin ship is pretty random I suppose? Think of that as an alternate answer. Zandeh/Gurgin probably qualifies too given that they don't ever meet in canon, but I can't see it that way now, not after spending so much time thinking about them together.

I've also had very vague thoughts of yeeting Gurgin back into the past, but would I ship him with anyone in that circumstance? Eh, not sure.

20. A weird headcanon

I'm sure I have many! The 'he likes hot baths' headcanon is a pretty random one that came from 1. reading that the real Mount Damavand has some pretty nice hot springs near it (which in ArSen verse are probably disgusting bubbling sulphurous poison mud pits but whatever), and 2. the fact that he probably had a bad time during the flooding of the Dark Temple and it amuses me to imagine him enjoying water in a different context? I just want to let him relax from time to time? He works hard, he deserves it.

I want to write a bath scene for him in Interlude (Magical Healing AU). Or I keep thinking about a comedy scene of him at one of Ecbatana's bath houses with a gaggle of bird-faced beasts for company, because it amuses me.

Here's another headcanon: he's pretty bad at archery. It was taught at the temple, but it didn't interest him much and he wasn't that motivated to work on his skills, even though Farangis tried to instruct him. As far as weapons go, later on he uses a Team Zahhak-typical knife, which he wears strapped to a thigh like Farangis. (He still has it in Sacrifice AU! Chekhov's Snake Knife lmao.)

21. When do you think they were at their happiest?

When he was at the temple with Farangis and his brother, before things went wrong. Other than that, he was pretty fucking ecstatic in Book 16 when the Master said that he would be his successor (disregarding the fact that it's because there is literally nobody else left at that point lmao). I'm not sure I believe the Master was ever planning on stepping aside, but whatever.

22. When do you think they were at their lowest?

After his brother's death.

23. Future headcanon

The whole of Sacrifice AU, I guess. Just anything where he makes it out of Team Zahhak and tries to lead a different life.

24. What do you think is a secret they have that they never told anyone?

I love this question. I wouldn't necessarily know the answer for every character but I do have a headcanon for this for Gurgin, and that is that no matter how vehemently he protested his brother's innocence, a small part of him wondered whether Aghriras really had done it. I don't think he'd ever admit that to anyone (except perhaps to Zandeh in Mage Hunt AU, where Gurgin's backstory adjustment gives him very good reason to hope that Aghriras had killed that particular person). The fact that Aghriras's innocence was later proven only makes it much worse.

25. When do you think they acted the most ooc

I don't think any of his canon scenes are OOC? Is that what this question is asking? I may not like what he does, but none of it feels unbelievable.

26. When do you think they were being "themselves" the most?

Maybe I'm picking this just because it's before he went down a dark path, but I think the conversations he used to have with his brother back when they were at the temple are pretty typical of his true self. The little flashback conversation we get in particular gives the impression of someone who's curious about stuff he maybe shouldn't be, and is attracted to power, but it also shows that he was willing to listen to his brother's guidance. I don't think he'd have ended up with Team Zahhak if his brother had lived.

Otherwise, his Book 16 decisions that get him killed are unfortunately also peak Gurgin, at least in his Team Zahhak era.

27. If they could meet a character from another show/movie/etc, who would be the most fun for them to meet?

Either (or both) of the Devil Forgemasters from Castlevania, 100%.

28. The most unnecessary thing they ever did?

Killing the dog at the temple. Or lashing out and cutting off the hind legs of a winged ape (a creature that is on his side, and under his command!) when his plans started to go wrong in Book 13.

29. How do you think they would be as a parent? (and if they are a parent, how do you think they would be if they weren't?)

Honestly, not great but not as bad as he might think. But it's not something he wants. Thoughts of having a family aren't really on his mind (except for AU instances where he's worried it's something Zandeh might want that he won't be able to provide).

30. The funniest scene they had?

Okay, Gurgin's not actually present in this scene but it's hilarious to me so I'm choosing it: after the winged ape attack on Soleimaniye in Book 13 was thwarted, Kubard and Narsus are discussing what happened. They don't know that Gurgin was the one in charge, but Narsus's opinion is that it couldn't have been Ilterish (the usual commander of the demon army) because Ilterish would've done a better job, lmao. Sorry Gurgin but your inexperience is showing.

Anyway, that's the end of the questions! Not sure how many people are interested enough in Gurgin to make it this far, but like... if anyone does want to talk about Gurgin with me... my inbox is always open...

#arslan senki #the heroic legend of arslan #gurgin #if farangis can have a sexy thigh knife then so can he #this post took me ages to write #i went on... so many tangents...#the irresistable urge to keep talking about my blorbo

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derry-rain · 4 days

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My beloved @roseszirnheld tagged me in this a while back, and I am 80% sure that I've done this before, but I can't immediately find it so I am doing it again. and tagging it properly this time.

1. How many works do you have on ao3?

63 currently

2. What's your total ao3 word count?

173,322

3. What fandoms do you write for?

Most recently, SAS: Rogue Heroes, The Pacific, The Terror, Justified and Masters of the Air, but I also have things on the go for Band of Brothers and Dragon Age and every year I do Yuletide, which has had me writing The Alienist, Sharpe, Exandria Unlimited, Dunkirk, From... etc. What I'm saying is that I flit.

4. Top five fics by kudos

I Relied Upon the Moon (Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens), Poe/Finn - 6,380 kudos

Thunder Rolled a Six (Ready or Not), Grace gen fic - 234 kudos

Fairytale of Staten Island (Law & Order: SVU), Barba/Carisi - 131 kudos

somewhile before the dawn (SAS: Rogue Heroes), Paddy/Eoin - 101 kudos

to be where i'm going (Masters of the Air), Ken/Rosie - 75 kudos

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yep! Sometimes it takes me a little while, but that's exactly the same as like, all my friends know about texting me.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

bay and violets (SAS: Rogue Heroes) is probably one of the angstiest, it's a Paddy/Eoin soulmate fic that's, uh, pretty canon compliant. The Paddy/Eoin hanahaki also probably qualifies. OH, or stars, i have seen them fall (SAS: Rogue Heroes), which... is... also... Paddy/Eoin.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I like happy endings, or at least hopeful ones! I Relied Upon the Moon is definitely a happy fic, So I Picked On You (Mass Effect) which is my beloved Diana Allers/Kaidan Alenko fic, is happy rebuilding fic and I love that.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

I've been around a long time, it's happened. Touch wood, nothing particularly recent.

9. Do you write smut?

I have written smut, it's not the area I feel most comfortable writing (the Mike Sadler Gets His Fuck On series notwithstanding), so I don't tend to do it all that much.

10. Craziest crossover?

No crazy stuff on my Ao3 right now, but I've written a few in the past. There used to be a comm on LJ that would give you random pairings to write for, through which I've definitely written wild things. IIRC, there was a Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Master and Commander crossover at one point.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Years ago.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Not to my knowledge.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not since I was a teen. I've done a couple collabs with artists, but it's not my favourite working space.

14. All time favorite ship?

Impossible, I love all my ships. Very soft spot for Paddy/Don, Diana/Kaidan and Hodgson/Pilkington, but I love them all.

15. What's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

I. Will. Finish. All. Of. Them.

16. What are your writing strengths?

Paddy Mayne.

More seriously, I like fucking with language and atmosphere a lot, which definitely helps writing Paddy Mayne, which is probably why I like to write him so much. I also think I'm quite good at working out relationship dynamics and finding the core of how folks relate to each other.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

I can be a little impatient with plot, so sometimes pacing I struggle with. I'm working on this this year with developing outlining methods.

18. Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

I do it relatively regularly. If it's a long chunk, I'll usually provide a translation, but mostly I don't worry about it. Also I will sometimes mark that the dialogue is being spoken in another language, but write it in English. As an exception, I am translating all the Dalish for the SASRH/Dragon Age fics, and will with any other fictional language, but that's a lot harder to figure out/google.

19. First fandom you wrote in?

Oooh, I don't know. The Mighty Ducks? Newsies? We're talking like, 25 years ago. I can't remember that long.

20. Favorite fic you've written?

Of the things currently on my Ao3, come now, and I'll show you what I keep is one of my favourite Paddy/Eoin fics, it's an odd little story based on the fairytale written by an Irish author, Thomas Keightley, in which Paddy is a Merrow and Eoin is a fisherman. Otherwise, my current big WIP, the Don/Paddy series, every line in your palm is bringing me constant joy.

Tagging with no pressure, @upontherisers, @emilykaldwen @dukesoakedoats @ginabaker1666

#derry: meme

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drafthorsemath · 10 months

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I gotta rant about the state of math education for a minute. I say this as a math educator with a math PhD who currently works to create digital math content and assessments (primarily for high school and college level). We have to do better for students and the way we're attempting to do that is mostly garbage because of publishing companies.

I currently work for two educational publishers who will remain unnamed. They're competitors and I think it's funny that I and one other person I know work for both of them.

Anyway, company M, who I primarily work for, is finding that students are using fewer of their tools and appear to just guess when they don't know an answer instead of attempting and getting feedback. Instead of figuring out what would actually help students, this company is taking a more bare bones approach to authoring math assessment tools going forward, firing authors (the team I was on used to have over 20 people at any given time and now there are 4 of us), and then complaining how we can't keep up with authoring new content. The problem is that they are not offering a wider variety of content for different types of learners, but they don't want to hear that. They write a textbook, make online homework and study guides for it, and call it good. That's not nearly enough, but they don't want to invest in getting better.

This week I started training for a new part time job at company C to try to make a little more money and they are trying to do a better job. They want higher student engagement, fewer assessments, and for students to explore a topic instead of traditional lectures. Great. Research supports a more interactive approach to learning. Except their idea of student engagement and interaction solely focuses on extroversion: reading, writing, conversing, analyzing, actively listening, group work, sharing with the class, and more. And none of it has the options of being done alone. On top of this, they do not address disabilities and are only just starting to realize they need different content for multilingual learners.

Some students can actually read and learn and do not need to interact. Some students are anxious to interact. I've seen it. I've had a student stuttering just trying to talk in class to ask a question, and making her come to the board? Why? For what purpose? Said student was already doing well in class and she simply wrote everything out. I had multiple students who were combat veterans; one in particular who had a brain injury and needed a lot of repetition. Having a lot of approaches in a 50 minute class would have been overwhelming for him since he needed clear examples and lots of independent practice. He thrived in my office hours. Forcing this model will not help these students. While I think there are some good things about this versus just using a digital textbook, I take issue with the approach because it is still forcing students to all learn the same way. It's a different way of learning than using a textbook, but there is no room for flexibility.

Look, I know that it's impossible to teach a classroom of students in a way that gives each enough time and resources to perfectly meet their needs. I taught at a university for 8 years. I've tutored students in grades 3-12 for over a decade. This is not me bashing teachers, lecturers, or professors. I know they are simply limited to what math ed materials are on the market and what they write themselves. (Thinking of Dr. Bell who wrote his own book for Modern Algebra because he hated every book on the market.) I just get frustrated when everyone (publishers) tries to push new teaching styles and tools, saying "there are multiple approaches to suit multiple learners." If each student must go through and master each approach, how is that any better than saying they must all master this one approach?

I'm just a frustrated math lady. Also, this has reminded me of the time many years ago when I had an anon who would ask for math homework help in my inbox because they had no where else to go. That was also before we had DMing on tumblr. Thinking of you today, Stats Anon.

#math #math education #about me #math publishing #so many educators out there trying their best and the materials they have to work with are just not enough #the answer to this is probably increase funding for education

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sam-glade · 1 year

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15 Questions Tag, OC edition

Tagged by the wonderful @another-white-hole here. Thank you💜

And passing the tag to: @writingmaidenwarrior @tabswrites @outpost51 @liv-is and leaving an open tag.

I've done it for:

Rilna

Anthea and Erya

Ianim and Gullin

So next up are Lissan and Marta. Blank list of questions is at the bottom.

You meet with the siblings at a pub. It's just past dinnertime, and not too busy - it's perfectly comfortable to hold a conversation. They sit side by side and you marvel at how similar they look, with round, tanned faces and bright smiles. They lean in, as curious about your request as you are about them.

Are you named after anyone?

Lissan shakes his head. Marta is the one to answer it out loud:

"Nope. But it's worth pointing out that Lissan chose the name 'Lissander' at his first shearing, to appear all serious and grown up as he trained up to be the master of ceremonies, and now he hates it."

Lissan glares at her briefly, but doesn't deny it.

2. When was the last time you cried?

"There was this bird with a cut wing that I found on Wednesday, and it was in so much pain..." Marta sniffles. "It's fine now, it'll fly away in a couple of days."

Lissan rubs her shoulder in sympathy.

"Does laughing so hard I cried count?"

You move on.

3. Do you have kids?

They shake their heads unanimously.

4. Do you use sarcasm?

"She does," Lissan says, jabbing his sister in the side. She squirms away from his finger.

5. What's the first thing you notice about people?

"Uh... I've no idea," Lissan says first.

Marta shifts in her seat.

"Well, I'm still getting used to the empathic sense that comes with my Crystal, so I keep sensing people's emotions and I'm still learning how to filter them out. So I get this wave of... whatever they're feeling, as they approach me."

6. What's your eye colour?

"Light brown," Lissan says, and Marta nods.

7. Scary movies or happy endings?

"Scary movies," Lissan says at the same time as Marta:

"Happy endings."

8. Any special talents?

"His would be running head-first into state secrets on a monthly basis," Marta says with a nod towards her brother.

He shrugs.

"Then I guess Marta's is being insufferable and yet having Prince Anthea somehow put up with her."

"Oy!"

9. Where were you born?

"In the cottage back in Beetletun," Lissan answers for both of them.

10. What are your hobbies?

"Embroidery," Marta says.

"Uh... does sparring with the guys from the Heavy Infantry count?" Lissan answers with less confidence.

"No, but reading books on ethics and philosophy when nobody's looking does."

11. Have you any pets?

"There's a handful of chickens and a goat, but I wouldn't call them pets," Marta says. "And also, we have our Spirits."

12. What sports do you play/have you played?

"We used to kick ball around the village green as kids," Lissan answers, his expression turning wistful.

"And he likes to wrestle bulls at fairs to show off for-"

Lissan smacks her on the shoulder.

13. How tall are you?

"5'10, I think?" Lissan answers first.

"5'6."

14. Favourite subject in school?

Marta pinches her lip thoughtfully.

"I can't remember, to be honest," Lissan speaks first.

"Mine was geography, I think."

15. Dream job?

"Surgeon," Marta answers instantly.

Lissan shrugs.

"I'd like to stay in the Army for a few more decades, maybe get to a captain or a major-"

"-Because there are rules against difference in rank between-"

"Because I want to help people, and while I look for a better way, this works for me," Lissan finishes quickly.

Days of Dusk taglist (please message me to +/-): @acertainmoshke @another-white-hole @poetinprose

List of questions below:

Are you named after anyone?

2. When was the last time you cried?

3. Do you have kids?

4. Do you use sarcasm?

5. What's the first thing you notice about people?

6. What's your eye colour?

7. Scary movies or happy endings?

8. Any special talents?

9. Where were you born?

10. What are your hobbies?

11. Have you any pets?

12. What sports do you play/have you played?

13. How tall are you?

14. Favourite subject in school?

15. Dream job?

#lissan #days of dusk #15 oc questions #tag game #writeblr tag game #writeblr

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hospitalterrorizer · 4 months

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diary142

2/3-4/2024

my weekend begins #now.

i started it with a damon packard movie, foxfur, a friend sent me it and i was like, entranced by it. really great movie, feels like it gets at the precarity/nightmarishness of the world atm and all ways people cope, especially w/ new age weirdo stuff. so oddly on with that, all the way back in 2012.

otherwise, my day was okay, my work note:

stuck there too long, one kid tried to scam me and it was so obvious and bad, insanely stupid attempt. the rides are scary, someone almost lost their phone, but mostly, dull. i didn't get to take a break.

i did work on music but i'm too exhausted/spaced out to get to the next song, i've just been fiddling with the last one, the issue w/ it is that in order to get it more disgusting sounding in the distortion/how it distorts, i need to figure something out, and the fiddling/ solutions i've come up with are a bit flabby sounding i guess, coming back to them. the flab is in the lack of sharpness. something weird needs to happen or whatever. might need to go back to the guitar fixing thing for the right channel sound, i've started messing with some octave effects, but there may be something else i need to try too, maybe a re-done effects chain in parts. idk. i'll see how this export comes out where i boost some of the highs in each separate track.

did something where i went and eq-ed out the ugliest signals solo, seems to have worked in a first pass but i forgot to turn some stuff back on. i also decided to change something in the master. it's impressive to me how much stuff regarding guitar sounds/tones online is so useless and how boring most people want to be.

having thoughts now, about ai, that's how you know i've been up too late. here's my new whacko theory about it, or i guess i can't present it from there, immediately, here's the source of the thought, seeing the cover art for zazen boys ii, and the illegibility of it, basically, its failure to say zazen boys ii in a way that's immediately readable. it's willfully against being read, it's a mess, it's beautiful, it's a typographic explosion, it looks like several different languages slammed together, congealed. i don't think it's important it was done by a human or whatever but i think what it is, is something that fails at what you'd expect, and what you'd want from what is basically an advertisement to get people to blindly buy something, or that's what cover art is when viewed from the perspective of not caring about the music. many times, they are related, but it's positive also with the selling/potential to get someone to loo, i think maybe this is is only worth thinking about because zazen boys are a japanese band and cd sales are still hugely important over there, because piracy is so scary for them. for anyone who steals the vast majority of music, it's more freely interrelated to the music/meaning of the music, it's something that is liked and connected with in that way. this is an aside. basically the other thing is it reminded me of what those neural nets or whatever they are now, do when they try to write something in an image. signs, anything. it bugs me when people act like ai is novel, is what i think i'm feeling lately. it's a lot of futurists basically taking up a fetishistic desire to point at something as new, a new method, a new field of potentiality, a new capability for people to adopt, maybe flatly, it increases our ability, for them, and so this novelty in technology revitalizes art, but these things only scrape and congeal, they do it at a scale that people cannot, because they can remember more, with their monologic weighting and construction of meanings as largely singular and not fluid. people may bring the nature of ai writing which does get rather figurative and strange, but so does any good writer, it rarely produces sentences i think nothing else could produce, it just feels like a lot of excitement over the fact that capital has now moved into the territory of the illegible, it creates nonsense information, it absorbs centuries of ways of writing and sequences them, somehow, this is enough to some people to seem better than all fiction currently produced. a strangely eugenic approach to art, we seem to have arrived at in recent times, where people are quick to say, this is the end of everything, this makes anyone doing the same thing unnecessary, there is not vitality in (x), there is no hope for anything new in (x). a sickness over novelty, it is so purely and psychotically spectacular, it should be seen as special i guess how even people who act outside/above this get very wrapped in it, or act like it is real. i can never see or feel how it's real. i don't know why. is that wrong of me?

i know people who find ai to be very exciting, but when i see what they think of it, all i feel is that really what they want is to be the manager of creative work, and ai is finally a worker they can have. it's not about freeing up who can make things, the novelty is the fantasy it sells, the fantasy of not having to communicate with others in the creation of something, and the feeling that you are communing with some vast well of meaning. in short, you are enabled to be a creative director, you direct an image making, text spewing machine, a machine which has absorbed meaning/constructs meaning in a way that snuffs out the negative, there is never lack, it is a system of pure success, it is eugenically improving itself always, at least this is my read on it, creating memories / facts / linkages that are essentially a kind of super-infrastructure for information. this is totally opposite to the waste-products created in our mind, which we trip over, and months of not considering them, surface, corpses in rivers, eggs which never spawned, and now gleaming and bobbing, they seem pearls you may fashion into something terrible, and carry it for the rest of your life, with a special sort of love. the value of failure, and waste, is in that, spoken more i guess, directly, it is that when you are shut up in yourself, mute, and when you cannot find the words, something else comes to you, and when you cannot explain yourself, you are something else, you are fallen between words. a.i cannot fall between, it cannot be anything but the sun, not as solar anus, not as the life-expelling force bataille describes, but the implement of measurement via shadows cast, a ruler set to earth, set to voice and thought to collect data and surveil, a system perfected, something that can encapsulate some of the world.

our next cybernetic apparatus of agitation and gentle discomforts. it will not think for us, it will make us think we think as it does, and thus we will chase the capability, ability to conclude, be read, and to read, falling for the novelty, and whatever.

this isn't to say though, it's utterly useless. ai should probably be used in pointless clerical data entry work, and i don't especially care if some people steal pokemon with it. the palworld thing is so weird because people should be wigged out that people are just getting super into something that seems like ark or whatever. that awful game with the dinosaurs. survival game slop, you do not need anything other than minecraft.

okay i think i got the problem song pretty good. right guitar needs something though... idk what. maybe it's missing some frequency from something i notched.

re-exporting now.

i think it sounds really good now, i hope i feel that way tomorrow. i also just made a new guitar sound thing. i am up too late but at least i'm having fun.

this has too much white noise in it but idk, it's kind of cool, also.

anyway i need to sleep now, or soon, at least, so

byebye!!!!!!!!!!!

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soverane · 5 months

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4, 12 and 13 for the writing ask game? 👀

hi <3

4. What's a word that makes you go absolutely feral?

the verb "undo." yes as in ctrl z. according to the dictionary: - "to make of no effect or as if not done; make null; reverse" - "to disturb the composure of" - "to come open or apart" - some nice synonyms: derail, discompose, disquiet to ruin! to disassemble! to unmake! isn't that what true love does to the ego?

12. If a genie offered you three writing wishes, what would they be?

1st wish: more free time and energy to read

2nd wish: more free time and energy to write

3rd wish: more rarepair content that caters specifically to my tastes so i do not always have to make my own food every single time! and isn't this where it all began for me? am i a creative writing major? no! am i pursuing a writing career? no! i just needed to cook my own food so i can eat! rahhh

13. What is a subject matter that is incredibly difficult for you to write about? What is easy?

this is gonna be very specific but i'm gonna say, any piece written from the pov of a submissive in a Dom-sub relationship or kink play dynamic. it's hard for me to enjoy reading, let alone enjoy writing. i'm honestly not sure why! either i just haven't read a good piece, or haven't read a piece that handles this subject matter well (which i doubt, bc i've read some works that are very informative, thoughtful, and you can tell the writer has experience in these; maybe i just didn't enjoy reading it from the perspective of the submissive i guess?), OR more often than not, for some interesting reason, i see many Doms in the (limited!) media i consume depicted as naturally cruel, inconsiderate, disrespectful, etc. outside of play/sex, and unless that was pre-negotiated after all, true Doms are usually super considerate and responsible. maybe it's just bc bdsm doesn't get a lot of proper, accurate rep in mainstream & i also can't blame people for the lack of accessible information out there. this might also just be a product of my own experience and exposure to my local bdsm community, which (again, just in my experience) is full of incredibly understanding, kind, open-minded, inclusive, knowledgeable people (excluding of course the predatory creeps that occasionally sneak into the community under the guise of being a Dom/Master). at the same time, this just might be my preference! and this might be a roundabout way of outing myself bc now if you ask me what's EASY for me to write about, it's the pov of a Dom. now if you pay attention to who my skrunklies usually are, it might click 😭

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escapaldi · 6 months

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So… I followed you a long time ago, and then I left tumblr. I can’t remember if we interacted much back then, but since you’re also active here I have to ask: what did you think about the specials as a Capaldi fan?

Hello! I know I've seen your name around before, so welcome back! Even when I wasn't posting on this blog specifically, I was still on tumblr posting fic and stuff, so even though there is a gap I've always been here.

Now, as far as the 60th anniversary specials: I haven't watched them and don't plan to for a long time. A long-winded and salty rant by me is under the cut.

To be honest, I haven't felt the need to watch any new Doctor Who since Capaldi and Moffat both left because it all sounded like boring and cringey fan fiction (derogatory) I wasn't really jiving with. If that makes sense? Then RTD came back on as a showrunner and I was severely disappointed because it felt like such a step backwards. Plus that Tennant was going to be in it? No thanks.

Like... I get that to a lot of people, his return makes these specials "feel like Doctor Who again". I've seen that statement a lot from both randos and people I know. Which, fine, whatever, I'm not begrudging people for it, but for a lot of folks saying that, the statement includes a bunch of the show that doesn't feel like Doctor Who to me. I came in w/s5 because of a series of events that turned me off to the show early on. I was nearly sixteen when s1 premiered in the UK. That should have stuck me in the prime demographic to not only love s1-4, but have a sort of nostalgia filter over it to help facilitate excitement over the 60th specials. Well, there's some problems with that.

I can't stand Rose Tyler and any reference to her as something positive makes me cringe. Doctor/Rose in any form makes me viscerally nope out of anything. She was not as likeable as people lead others to believe.

I've been Pavloved into disliking Tennant due to the oversaturation of his interpretation of the Doctor in the series and the fandom as a whole, despite the fact he's just meh. The Doctor is not his best role and in general he doesn't do it for me in the looks department, especially as the Doctor. Which, it's fine if you like watching him (I'm sure Georgia loves watching him and she is a very good sport about a lot of shit) and I know my DW experience has been enhanced by watching the pretty but I am a demographic outlier lol.

What I did see of s1-4 before I got into s5 was Rose being an idiot, getting a deeply unsettling feeling over Jack Harkness, being pissed off for Martha and Mickey and livid about Donna, being irritated by the Master and the angsty space Jesus shite, and thinking Ten and Donna would make a good couple actually.

Oh yeah, and very specifically I'm mad because I watched The End of Time Part 2, like, almost soon as I could, and knew immediately that Martha/Mickey was Pair the Spares Race Edition even though at that point I hadn't watched all of s1-4 and for all I knew they hit it off in an unseen-by-me episode for a reason that wasn't getting drunk over their mid-tier white exes hooking up. Like, I clocked that shit back in 2009. There was a lot of shit I was not clocking in 2009, but I caught onto that, which should be an embarrassment.

...and, like, I'm on the internet, so I've seen spoilers. It's difficult to not see spoilers. Some of the spoilers I love to see hello Fifteen's THIGHS we love us a good slutty Doctor and I do have one UK-based friend specifically whom I've talked to at length about the specials. My fiancé also has been watching this entire time w/o stopping since 2005 (bc he caught it all as it premiered here in the US and at least he got to watch s1 Billie Piper; I fault him for nothing), so he's been giving me updates on what's going on as well. He is a good man who has done saintly things like drive me across three state lines to meet Peter Capaldi at a Doctor Who convention, so... he's generally trustworthy, but also a lot more forgiving than I am. But he was also the one who broke to me the news about Rose Noble because he knew I'd get upset that she's not Donna Jr. So I've got some good fonts of information. They tell me that I'd like the second and third more than the first, that we've just got some extra Ten-Donna adventures, and that generally everything's stepped up a bit from Thirteen.

...but to me, a step up from Thirteen is still not a step towards where we need to go.

You can't go from Eleven and Twelve, an ancient eldritch god trapped in a body with the grace of a baby giraffe and a legit punk who punches diamond walls for his wife and racists for his daughter, respectively, to a Tory apologist who never really got a scary "I am the Doctor and you're stuck here with me now what a shame :)" moment like Nine through Twelve got and think that "a step up" from that is going to catch me. I'm not enticed by the prospect of another Ten-Donna adventure done by the man whose writing and showrunning kept me away from Doctor Who for so long. I. could. not. care. less. There is literally no nostalgia filter making this okay to me. I cannot see what other people see.

I don't want to be an anti, I don't want to be a NMD, but they keep pushing my fucking hand and now I'm sitting here having not watched new episodes of what is literally one of my favorite shows since before the pandemic, watching from an arm's length as it sort of caves in around itself, going and absolutely pissing away their chances at having a really cool, massive-multi-Doctor bonanza like no other. You could have twelve Doctors. TWELVE DOCTORS. Eleven if our most venerable just kinda taps out like nah I'm done unless you give me Bill's job from the Three Doctors special. Like, the fuck, y'all. That got whizzed right down the fucking leg. Did they even try? Did they get rebuffed? Whose decision was the 60th specials? Do they even like Doctor Who? Or are they part of the set that thought that Tennant's Doctor would never be topped?

So... yeah... that's the gist of it. I'm sure it's gonna take being sat down for a marathon by Mr. Nehs before I get into Doctor Who again, which is honestly sad. The BBC has hated this show and been visibly trying to run it into the ground since they decided to make the divisive decision of casting Matt Smith (which worked out great in the long run but having been on the internet at the time as that announcement I can assure you it was not received well) and now they've got Mouse Bucks and some straight-up boring as sin seasons/series under their belts and idk what in the hell's coming for us now.

#replies #dielittlehero #sorry I kind of went off it's not your fault #a scary thing to consider is that by the time the 70th and 75th anniversaries roll around I might have kids old enough to watch #and not just watch but APPRECIATE as well #that's a terrifying thought considering everything #I'm not gonna tag w/fandom to keep it out of searches but yeah #and I swear to fucking God if they try to do a UNIT spinoff like they did to Torchwood I am going to SCREAM bc Torchwood is trash #I'm only vaguely 'in' the fandom rn and i feel freer for it tbh

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zoeykallus · 1 year

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I've watched Clone Wars ages ago and back there I wasn't much of a fan of the clones but now I am OBSESSED. Are there any episodes you would recommend me to try to quench my thirst for these gorgeous men?

Aye! Good question. Well, if you are not afraid of some good angst and tension, I totally recommend the "Umbara Arc", starting with Season 4, Episode 7 "The Darkness Of Umbara" up to Episode 10 "Carnage Of Krell", Fives and Rex hot as hell. But be aware there is a lot of angst in these episodes, so better bring tissues. I tear up every time I watch it, and I still come to rewatch it again. - As heart aching as they are, these are probably my favorite episodes.

Another one would be the last four episodes (9-12) of season 7, very dark, very heavy, but awesome. But I'd save that for last.

Another sad gem would be the first four Episodes of Season 6, it's tense and angsty too, but it's with Fives (I love Fives, which is why these episodes hit me pretty hard)

I have to admit I had trouble with a few episodes of the first season, and season two as well. Clone Wars didn't catch me right away either, the series gets much better with later seasons, at least in my opinion (Not just in terms of story telling, but also the animation gets better). But there were still a few gems, one of which was the second episode of season one, showing Jedi Master Ploo Koon and how much he cares for the clones he's leading, loved that. We get to see Wolffe here for the first time... I think.

And Episode five of season one, where we get to see Echo and Fives as shinies.

Episode 16 of Season 1 is an interesting one in terms of clone behavior, I won't say more about it, because I don't want to give away too much.

Episode 20 of Season one is a cute one, I mean there is the war in the background, but there are two clones (Waxer and Boil) that I pay more attention too throughout that episode, I guess you'll see what I mean, if you give that episode a chance.

Season 2, Episode 10 "The Deserter", love how Cut and Rex meet and how they get to understand each other. I can't say much without giving away too much, it's worth a watch.

Season 3 Episodes 1 and 2. We get to see how clones get their final training and how hard it actually is for them. We meet 99 as well and learn that there are actually clones getting sorted out, who are not "fit" for duty. There is also some angst in these two episodes, especially in the second one.

Maybe I should stop here, there is a lot more I could tell you, but on top of my head, these are the ones coming to mind right away. Well, all in all I'd say, get ready to fall in love with those clones and be ready for them to die, cause a lot of them actually do 😭

And Of course, very important, if you haven't done it yet, give the two seasons of The Bad Batch a try 😁😊

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sunberry-strawflower · 1 year

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Hi so SIF2 came out a week ago and I decided I'd post how I feel abt it so far (as someone who played the original SIF for nearly 7 years)

Pros:

1. Calibration is SO MUCH BETTER OMG. The last game's engine must've sucked or something bcz the rhythm was so weird. You had to change your calibration every 3 secs it was awful😭the only reason I even full combo'd most of the songs is bcz of the timer cards. Now in SIF2 I just had to set my calibration to 3 and I was good to go like the notes actually went with the beat.

2. Most (keyword being most) of the cards are really pretty and well done! I can tell they went all out with these initial URs they are GORGEOUS MY GOSH. And the first event URs are really good!

3. The home menu is a lot cleaner. I rlly like it!

4. OVER 500 SONGS HOLY COW. Ofc more doesn't equal good BUT if you know Love Live you know almost all of their songs slap I can't rlly think of any bad ones. I'm so happy they added their whole song catalog.

5. 3% UR rate instead of the last game's 1% thank God.

Cons:

(Note some of these are just some personal gripes I have with it)

1. Still no co-op live for some reason? Like maybe when an event rolls around there'll be one but idk why we need an event to do co-op lives. Plenty of other games have co-op lives without any events and the Rhythmic Carnival was a thing back in LLSIF and that stopped being event based why do we need events to do co-op lives? </3

2. We can't sort by characters in member lists. There are WAYYYY too many characters for us to just sort them by group come on😭what if I just wanna see my (not that great) collection of Keke cards? But nooo I have to see all of Liella.

3. Remember when I said most of the cards were really pretty? Well yes they are but then there's that some that I don't rlly like that much tbh.. Like You's card for example. I saw quite a few ppl like it bcz of the background and all that and I get that but ngl You's butt being in most of the shot kinda rubs me the wrong way like I get she dives but can't we just use a different camera angle? Why do we have to focus on her butt? She's SIXTEEN. Alsoalso some of the nijigaku and liella cards don't rlly do it for me--maybe it's cause of the differing art styles from the muse and aqours cards idk. I will say tho that Chisato's new event card and cards like Ayumu and Emma look AMAZING imo.

4. You can't set certain songs as favorites and sort them by your favorite :( that would've been a great feature to add especially bcz of the amount of songs there are. Looking for some of my favorite songs is a pain sometimes even with the member sorting system cause there's just SO MANY SONGS. Ik I just said 500 songs is great AND IT IS BUT PLSS LET IT BE EASIER TO SCROLL THROUGH </3 you can only scroll by like 3 songs it's pain.

5. The "Live 2D" is kinda disappointing to me. Like yea they move but that's kinda it. They don't change poses and bcz of that they aren't rlly that expressive. Poor Muse and Aqours especially they've been stuck in those same poses since 2013-2016 LET THEM MOVE MORE PLEASE💔also the "lip syncing" is just random mouth movements it doesn't actually sync with what they're saying.

6. I find the texting system to be very limited and tedious. I know it's the only way to bond with your members (other than grinding songs but bond points are given at a snail's pace with that method) and the chats don't last very long but aaaaa I just find them so boring. Even the group chats. And I can understand the gist of what they're saying so it's not like I don't understand. It's just boring.

7. There's not a lot of master charts for songs tbh--at least not satisfactory enough for me. Only 240+ out of the 500 have master charts for some reason? I know most rhythm games also have a limited number of master charts, but their expert/extreme charts make up for it. LLSIF's expert charts are so easy for me. Maybe it's cause I've been playing for a long time idk. I'll cut them some slack for this one tho bcz the last game also had this issue.

8. They removed a good majority of features SIF had. The rhythm game screen, notes, etc. aren't as customizable, you can't message your friends anymore, nor can you look at your friends activity like stories they read and cards they got. You remember side stories from the last game? Welp, they're gone. Remember the sticker shop? That's gone too. Support members? Gone. N girls? Gone. Blue vouchers? Nope. School idol skills? Screw those, amiright? They removed so many things that made School idol festival...School idol festival.

In conclusion, uhmm it's alright. The rhythm game is fun but that's abt it </3 I can't help but be a little disappointed by this game simply because they took away so many features the original had and the features they did add weren't rlly doing it for me.

The fact a lot of the player base lost their accs for this is rlly upsetting.

I still have hopes this game can improve. Especially because it's in its first week so I don't wanna be TOO harsh. But with the way it is right now, I can't rate SIF2 any higher than a 6/10 :(

#this is just me stating my opinion on the game so far #it might change but right now...yea #I typed wayyy too much but look when I start talking abt something it's hard for me to stop--#anywayz sif2 come on I believe in you #you can do better than this #sif2 #love live!#love live! school idol festival #love live! school idol festival 2 #love live! school idol festival 2 miracle live #LLSIF2 #llsif2ml #sif2ml #love live #love live school idol festival #love live school idol festival 2

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