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cinnnamongrl · 9 months

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sorority secrets- ellie williams (part 5- final part)

pairing: college!ellie williams x fem!reader

summary: final part of this fic. you can find part 4 here.

warnings: [18+ MDNI] explicit language, top!ellie, bottom!reader, fingering, oral sex, strap-on sex (all r!receiving), ellie refers to the strap as her dick 💯, praise. i think that’s it!

author’s note: final part! here she is! i’ve had so much fun writing this series, hope u enjoy <3

a relaxed comfortable silence clouded over the eta house living room. for everyone else at least. for you and ellie the silence was full of tension, regret, and apologies that sat on the tongue but were stopped by your egos. you felt bad for leaving her dorm after yesterdays fight. ellie felt bad for letting you leave. avoiding each other wasn’t an option when you were in a sorority together, but part of you was glad you were being forced to see ellie despite how awkward you felt.

“EW” madison’s voice broke the peaceful quiet of the living room. “what?!” chloe asked. “i just tried that old person filter on tiktok and i look BUSTED” a few girls moved over to look at madison’s phone and laughed, moving their heads to the middle of the screen so the filter could take effect. you watched on from the sofa, knees brought up to your chest. ellie was watching you; she was frustrated, less at the situation now and more at not being able to sit next to you and put her arms around you. it was an extra blow that just as everyone found out about you, you couldn’t touch or kiss anymore anyway.

“ellie, you try!” emilia took madison’s phone and hopped over to ellie, sitting down next to her to show her the filter on herself. ellie gave a dry laugh and emilia giggled, screenshooting the screen, “that’s what you’ll look like when you’re 60!” chloe got up and took the phone from emilia and showed the screenshot to you “are you still gonna be into her when she looks like this?” she joked. you exhaled in an awkward attempt at a laugh, not really knowing what to say with ellie looking right at you. you noticed emilia rolling her eyes. chloe took the phone from your face, “oh- are you guys not cool anymore?” you looked at ellie who was looking down at her lap. “oh we thought cause you kissed you were like, dating or whatever” madison spoke. “did you break up because of the campus news thi-“ “guys can we change the subject-“ emilia interrupted, “-i’m sure they don’t want everyone going on about some stupid kiss in an alleyway!”

a moment passed.

“an alleyway?” chloe asked. ellie’s head shot up. then yours. you stated at each other. a million words passing between you but none actually spoken. “how do you know it was in an alleyway?” chloe elaborated. you didn’t miss the way emilia’s eyes widened ever so slightly. “it’s- uh- i’m just guessing!” she stumbled. brittney watched the way you and ellie stared in shock at each other and she stood from the sofa. “everybody out.” all the girls looked towards her. “i’m serious everyone out, i have stuff to do.” everyone got up to walk away, emilia grabbing her bag and making a quick walk towards the door. “except emilia.” brittney spoke. “i need your help with something.” emilia stopped in her tracks and turned back around, looking extremely uncomfortable. your brain was barely processing what was happening as you walked out of the eta house. ellie was right behind you and she put a hand on your back as you stepped away from the house, “hey, are you okay?” you looked at her and blinked a few times. “yeah… i think so? just in shock.” ellie nodded, “do you want to come back to my dorm? you can say no i understand if-“ “yes please.” neither of you said a word on your way to her dorm. as you sat on her bed with crossed legs, she had placed herself sitting by you, back leaning against the wall against her bed.

“so emilia huh?” ellie broke the silence. “yeah, but… why?” you twisted your body towards her. “beats me” ellie replied. “but uh, hey at least you know who to go to to try and get it removed” she added. all the regret from yesterday paired with the craziness of what just went down at the eta house was feeding you the courage to put all the complicated shit aside and just do something for yourself. “i don’t want to get it removed.” ellie frowned at you, “what do you mean?” you shuffled closer to her, sitting on your legs “i don’t care about the feature. i was being stupid and scared but i’m not gonna be stupid and scared anymore. i’m sorry. i’ll email it to my parents if you want, honestly-“ ellie laughed and put both hands on your upper arms shushed you, “shh baby, it’s ok. i don’t need you to email it to your parents. it was never about that-“ you were breathing heavily from your outburst, listening to her talk “-i just wanted to know you really liked me. and were… serious about things. ‘cause i’m obsessed with you.” she finished. a small laugh bubbled from your chest and your eyes started to water, all the emotion from the past few days catching up on you.

“i do really like you els. i’m sorry for caring so much about what my parents think and about the campus news feature, i just...” a tear rolled down your cheek and ellie moved closer to wrap her arms her arms around you “‘s ok, angel. i’m sorry i was being pushy; i know your parents put a lot of pressure on you and i don’t want to make you feel rushed to come out or anything like that. you need to go at your own pace” she spoke softly as she held your head in her neck, fingers stroking the skin there. “but we really should get that feature taken down, that photo did not get my best side at all,”. you giggled into her neck. “plus… the title was all wrong. you’re not chad’s girl,” she smirked, “you’re mine.” you lifted you head to look at her, “right?” your cheeks were warm and there was a little smile on your lips as you nodded. “‘m your girl.” she smiled at you “my pretty girl.” and she kissed you. you melted into her, body relaxing completely before being suddenly jolted from a loud bang at her door. “i swear to god we are uhauling and getting a house far away where no one can interrupt us kissing anymore” ellie sighed before getting up and opening the door.

brittney stood, hand on hip, usual face of displeasure as she glided into the room “i should be getting a fucking salary for this job” she chucked her bag on the floor “mom never told me that having to kick girls out of the sorority because of batshit crazy lesbian drama was part of the job description of eta president but here we are.” she crossed her arms. you tried to hide a laugh. “you kicked her from eta?” ellie asked. “yeah she’s a freak.” brittney clarified, waving a hand in dismissal. “so uh… why did she do it?” you tried. “ugh. she’s like, in love with ellie or some shit.” your mouth fell open in shock “yeah i don’t get it either” brittney said, straight faced. ellie snorted, “sorry, she’s what?”. brittney huffed “she said she only did it because she was into you and that you,” she looked at you, “were stealing her away and would be much better suited to chad anyway” your mouth was still dropped “that is.. actually deranged” “yeah i know right. all that over ellie”. ellie ran a hand over her face, trying to process everything brittney was saying, as were you. “i was suspicious of her for a while. i mean who cares that much about setting someone up with a guy. and chad as well,” she pulled a face, “-i’d rather watch fucking paint dry”. you were running through all your interactions with emilia, everything piecing together. ellie was thinking about brittney; amused that despite the subtle insults towards her that she threw in every sentence, she wasn’t doing well to hide that she actually cared about her in some form. she was always grateful when she’d drag emilia away when she interrupted you two but now it was in a completely different context; it was for ellie’s sake not her own. she couldn’t help but let out a small laugh at this newfound discovery of brittney being a decent sister. brittney’s head snapped to ellie “what?”. “you care about me”, ellie chuckled. “oh shut up. i just wanted an excuse to kick emilia out, she was annoying me anyway. like who the fuck still sends snapchat streaks in 2023. anyway, i’m needed elsewhere. bye losers” she picked her bag back up and left. despite defending herself against the horrors of being nice, after years of living with brittney, ellie knew she wouldn’t have kicked her best friend out of eta for nothing. ellie had a silent moment of collecting her thoughts after the quiet of the room resumed after brittney’s exit.

you let out a big sigh from ellie’s bed and she turned her head towards you. “crazy day, huh?” you spoke. ellie chuckled and sat herself next to you. “yeah,” she huffed, “i’m still annoyed at brittney though.” you frowned a little, and rested your hand on top of hers “why?” “because she interrupted our big dramatic make-up kiss”. you laughed and shuffled back a little onto her bed crossed legged facing towards her “an unforgivable crime”. ellie turned her body to face you “well that moment’s gone so i’ll have to find another excuse to kiss you”. you looked to the side “hm how’s ‘we haven’t kissed in over 24 hours and i’m getting serious withdrawal symptoms’ for an excuse?” she grinned at you, “perfect”, she leaned towards you and connected her lips to yours, one hand gently holding your face. you sighed into the kiss and she deepened it, letting her tongue find yours. you repositioned yourself so that your legs were flat and she took advantage of your position by slotting a leg in between yours and pushing you down onto her bed gently, mouth not leaving yours. one of her hands stayed on your face and the other travelled down your side slowly, from your ribs down to your thigh, past your skirt. need was building with every second longer she kissed you and ellie was trying to take things slow and not rush despite having you pressed against her bed like she’d pictured since the first time you sat there with shy hands shuffling around. it had been even worse since the sleepover, spending nearly every night since then with her hand down her boxers thinking about your mouth hung in pleasure and the pretty little sounds you made.

a little squeak came from your mouth and ellie discovered she’d pressed her thigh perfectly against your cunt without even realising. now that she knew, she was absolutely going to use your reaction as an indication to carry on. she adjusted her leg and it pressed perfectly into your clit again, tearing a small sound from you, making your face hot from exposing how worked up you were already. ellie chuckled slightly “needy thing” you pouted at her tease and she smiled down at you “‘s ok. that feel nice?” you nodded and she copied it, hit of mocking there, “aw. you want more?” you nodded again and she tutted “need you to use your words, sweet girl” you twisted your mouth to the side and chewed on your bottom lip, embarrassment prickling at you, “want more, ellie” “what do you want, baby?” you huffed lightly, “jus- want you to touch me”. she attached her mouth to yours again and your eyes fluttered shut again, all thoughts lost when she was kissing you.

she let a ‘mm’ sound into your mouth as she reluctantly left your lips “where?” she wasn’t ready to give up the pleasure she was getting from making you flustered trying to vocalise your neediness. “want your fingers again li- like last time.” ellie smirked and let her hand travel to your inner thigh, stroking your soft skin under your skirt. “yeah? you want me here?” as the last word left her mouth she cupped your pussy through your panties and you jolted at the pressure against your clit. a strangled “yes” left your lips. she pecked your lips “good girl” and her hands travelled up to the hem of your top and she held the bottom of your top with two fingers as her thumbs stroked your stomach there, “can i take this off?” she whispered. you nodded and she bunched the material up, when it moved past your tits she let go and a groan you could’ve easily missed was caught in her throat. she brought her hands up and cupped them, staring at your tits like you weren’t watching her. seconds later she was dipping her head to attach her mouth to your left tit, fingers rolling over the nipple on your other. you let out the quietest little whimper and ellie felt like her eyes might roll back just from hearing it “so sensitive all over” she admired, before bringing her mouth to your other tit, swirling her tongue around your nipple and sucking, bringing another little whimper from you. ellie was already getting desperate; fighting down the urge to pull out her strap from its place under her bed and make you take it right now. but she was willing to be patient and she was equally as desperate to keep you here for the whole day and night if it meant getting to see you like this for hours more.

her hand finally made its way back under your skirt and she hooked a finger under the elastic of your panties and inched them down your thighs slowly. when they reached your ankles the realisation that you were completely exposed dawned on you, no panties and top bunched up over your tits, ellie not even having bothered to take it off in the end. you made a move to close your legs together and she held your thighs with both hands, forcing them back open and looking at you with blown out pupils “need to taste you. please?” her desperation causing her dominant act to slip a little. “ok” your voice small. a half-second later she had shuffled herself down your body, face lined up with your cunt, skirt flipped up onto your tummy. “god.” she mumbled as if to herself. “you’re pretty everywhere.” your face went hot and you fought against the urge to close your thighs again in embarrassment. she dipped down and licked a stripe up your pussy, collecting your wetness with her tongue and her strangled moan vibrated against your cunt. as she closed her mouth around your clit, your hips lifted, chasing more pressure, strain of little whines leaving your mouth. ellie gripped your hips and pressed you back down as she sucked on your clit, ripping a loud moan from you. she was almost feral; lapping you up like a woman starved and working her mouth on you with an eagerness that didn’t compromise her skills. your mind went cloudy at the pleasure and you hadn’t even realised her finger had been circling your hole until it dipped into you slowly, only a little way inside you.

ellie had this way of consuming you fully whenever she was with you; all your mind could focus on was her, and right now, how she was making you feel. more specifically the beautiful pleasure of her mouth working on your clit combined with the aching feeling of her finger teasing your entrance, there but not fully there. “please” is all you managed, voice shaky. ellie debated taking her mouth from you to force you to ask for what you wanted properly, but she was drunk on you; the feeling of you in her mouth, your taste, smell, sounds, so she let you have it. she pushed in deeper, curling her finger and reaching that perfect spot inside you. your back arched and she gripped you tighter, keeping you in place as she continued her movements.

it wasn’t long before you could feel yourself getting close; it was obvious to ellie from the way your body tensed and breathing got more erratic. “ellie-mmh” your hands gripped the sheets beneath you and ellie groaned into your cunt in response, pushing you to that final peak, loud moan leaving your mouth as your body shook slightly.

your breathing slowed and body relaxed as you came down from your high. with your eyes still shut your hand reached out to ellie “els?”. she kissed you sloppily, your juices on her tongue mixing with your saliva intensifying the pumping in her clit. she couldn’t help but grind down on your thigh a little as she kissed you. “els- wanna touch you.” she looked down at you, and then placed little kisses over your face and neck “mm kiss not as much kiss as i want to kiss touch you” you let out a short breath, “but- wanna make you feel good too” you pouted slightly. she moved her head to look directly at you again. “you wanna make me feel good?”. you nodded your head eagerly. “then let me fuck you.”

you blinked a few times “you- you just did?”. she chuckled and pecked your lips before getting up from the bed and kneeling to reach for a box that was packed underneath it. as she located the box and held it in her hands a flicker of doubt went through her suddenly; what if this was too quick? what if it scared you off? what if you didn’t wan- her sudden flood of doubtful thoughts meant that she missed you crawling over to lay on your tummy on the bed in front of where she kneeled and lift open the box in her hands, snapping out of it when a tiny sound could be heard from your throat. her eyes snapped up to you and her doubts were promptly washed away when she saw the way you were looking down at her strap sitting idly in the box. your cheeks were warm and your tummy was doing flips but even your shyness couldn’t cover up the lustful look you carried in your eyes. “you want it?” ellie asked, voice dark. “mhm” you murmured. “lay back down for me then, angel”. you obeyed, laying back down, head on her pillow as she stripped off her pants and adjusted her strap over her boxers. she got back up on the bed and rested two arms beside you as she leaned over you,

“you can change your mind if you want. i don’t want to rush you into anyth-“ you pulled her body down to yours “i want it, ellie”. she smirked at you, “yeah?” “mm. i need it. need you inside”. ellie’s brain short circuited for a moment at your words before she grabbed the length of her fake dick and lined it up with your cunt. “tell me how badly you need it.” she practically begged as she stroked the tip up and down your folds, not missing the way your body would jerk every so slightly when she’d let it nudge against your clit. “so badly. needed it for so long”. she pushed into you slightly and you gasped, mouth open and eyes big and glossy. you wanted more so you pushed your hips down a little in an attempt to take her in further. ellie kissed the corner of your mouth before slowly pushing all the way in, filling you completely, forcing a whine from you. “me too, pretty girl. wanted you like this since the first time i saw you.” your eyes watered slightly from the stretch and your tummy fluttered with pleasure. “‘m gonna move ok?” she warned and you nodded, “please”. she started to thrust into you slowly and your head fell back further into the pillow. she continued her strokes, your walls tight around her “good girl, taking me so well” she praised and you whimpered in response.

your body and mind was filled completely with the feeling of ellie’s plastic cock deep inside you and her weight on top of you. you could tell she was being gentle for you, but your body was chasing the euphoria, desperate for whatever she could give you. “faster-“ you whined “please”. how could she say no when you looked so pretty and desperate? she picked up her pace, fucking into you quicker and harder now your body had adjusted to the size. ellie’s own arousal was reaching even higher, the harness rubbing against her clit perfectly as she fucked you. she watched you with admiration almost, your pupils blown and staring doe-eyed up at her, pretty mouth parted and tits rising up and down with each thrust. “you’re so pretty like this-“ she uttered, voice a little strained “-my perfect girl”.

“ellie” you whined and lifted your hands to her face, pouting to communicate what you wanted. she leaned down to kiss you, wet and hot and messy while her strap was repeatedly hitting the perfect spot inside you. as she pulled away she placed both hands on your hips so she could keep your body still as she fucked into you deep as possible. you cried out at the feeling, any consideration for ellie’s neighbours a forgotten thought to your fucked out brain. she lifted a hand from your hip and placed it on the side of your face, thumb ghosting over your lips before pushing past them into your mouth. “suck”. you did, swirling her thumb around in your mouth, a gentle hum coming from your throat. she took it out of your mouth and moved her hand down to where your bodies met, pressing her thumb against your clit. she started to rub little circles, flooding your body with even more bliss. soft strangled moans moved past your lips.

“i know baby. you like when i rub your little clit while i fuck you?”. you were completely gone, coil in your stomach tightening and head completely fuzzy. so much so you didn’t even realise ellie’s own climax was fast approaching, the friction against her clit and the way you looked underneath her was making her quickly fall apart. “g’nna make me fuc- fucking cum” she choked out. you hadn’t even realised that was possible but you knew it made your own release start to creep up on you even more rapidly “please, wanna come with you” you babbled. she was chasing her own high but still keeping the perfect rhythm for you. “you wanna come, yeah? show me baby, come all over my dick.” your body started to stiffen as all the pleasure you were feeling reached it’s peak. “that’s my good girl, coming for me so well” she rambled as she watched you fall apart. half a second later her own orgasm hit her and a string of praises, curses and your name left her mouth in a jumble. you watched, brain not fully functioning still but enough to appreciate the beauty of the sight above you, ellie coming apart completely with her face screwed up in pleasure and your name on her tongue.

your next coherent thought came when she was already laying beside you, both of your heavy breaths the only sound that could be heard, a harsh contrast to the obscene mix of noises and words bouncing around her room only a few seconds ago. she draped her arm over your stomach and nuzzled into you a little. you giggled and moved into her closer.

“i’m obsessed with you too, you know” you spoke. “i can tell” she joked and you nudged her arm off of you playfully. she laughed, “kidding, baby. i’m glad. cause you’re not escaping from me now. never” you smiled at her possessiveness, it was a joke but you knew it rang true. “‘s ok with me” you replied. ellie adjusted herself to sit up slightly, “you should go pee.” you nodded smiling, appreciating her taking care of you and got up to use her bathroom. when you came back she was tucked up in bed, covers pulled up high, little smile on her face. “come back here, i have something for us.” you raised an eyebrow and hesitantly crawled back into her bed. she yanked her hands from under the sheets and you saw her hands holding two capri-suns. you burst out laughing and grabbed one. “i see” your voice bubbling with amusement. “gotta get your energy back up somehow, babe” ellie told you. “are capri-suns good sources of energy?” you pondered. “i dunno, you bought them” she joked.

you laid for a while, capri-suns in hand and voices chatting consistently about nothing. possibly an odd scene to any on-looker but both you and ellie were exactly where you wanted to be. all the little issues from the past few hours, days, weeks were completely insignificant in the moments you shared alone; you were peacefully content and basking in the high from each others company.

and stupidly obsessed with each other.

tag list @ximtiredx @gold-dustwomxn @nil-eena @alexpritch @robinismywifee @sc0ttstre3ted @ilovemoneymorethenmen @amberlynn28 @eyeluvangel @amitycat @callmelola111 @endureher @villainousbear @lazyotakuofficial @rolly-pollie @emiiiiiiiiiiiie @sophlovesbooks @lveunoialv @spaceshipellie @rqmantics

#ellie tlou 2 #ellie williams smut #ellie williams x reader #ellie williams x you #ellie tlou #ellie x reader

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starsandhughes · 9 months

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Penalty Box Series— Shoulder Check Showcase Edition

photo credits via instagram by _msfilms, henchcliffe_media, and greghorowitzphoto! all accounts are public dw! look at the tagged photos of the shoulder check on insta for more pics and the videos i took screenshots of!

22-23 Season & Summer Masterlist

p.s. kreider is in this bc it makes sense… sue me. tw to non rangers fans on him ig??

this is a long one to make up for all my short ones recently <3 (lie i just couldn’t shut up)

yourusername

liked by trevorzegras, shattdeuces, and 11,469 others

yourusername “the shoulder signifies something very important. it’s a commitment to reaching out, checking in, making sure everybody is okay. it’s a small gesture with a very big impact— the impact being that kindness is cool.”

on august 3rd, trevor participated in the shoulder check showcase for the HT40 foundation post being drafted first overall for said showcase!

he was captain of team moulson (the black jerseys!), scored the eighth goal for the team with a pass from my good friend nesty! the fifth slide is his celly where the damn fool kissed his stick. (this was post him failing at the michigan about nine million times) (it’s your signature move, babe. get it together.)

🚨he also committed the only crime of the night!🚨(the refs didn’t penalize him and i’m guessing that was just to keep the fast pace going) (the crowd had other opinions) (so did i) what was the crime? HE TRIPPED CHRIS KREIDER! aka his summer training partner! don’t worry though! he was belittled at dinner with chris and i AND i made him sit in the bathroom for two minutes to account for his crimes<3

sorry you lost in a shootout, my love! but you missed two shootout goals so this is all your fault, captain!

thank you, father zegras, for being a founding board members for the HT40 foundation and being a huge part in this cause. as someone who has struggled in the past, the work that this foundation does really means a lot to me.

p.s. i loved seeing shatty/mom, nesty, sonny, and spencer! i’ve missed you guys! mwah!

remember besties: reach out, check in, and make contact. because kindness is a contact sport🩵

tagged trevorzegras and theshouldercheck

view all 433 comments

trevorzegras i’m so proud of you for all that you’ve overcome❤️ i love you, forever

yourusername i love you, always, z-baby❤️ (except when you make me cry like rn ihy)

trevorzegras i’m not taking it back! p.s. tackling me for a hug is not what was meant!

yourusername kindness is a contact sport and i chose football <3

trevorzegras can’t you choose any other sport?

yourusername i could choose water polo and drown you out of love

trevorzegras football it is!

yourusername kisses can be my field goals!

trevorzegras what about your two point conversions?

yourusername foreplay!

jamie.drysdale @/yourusername @/trevorzegras don’t play football in front of me

_quinnhughes @/yourusername @/trevorzegras i don’t think you two gave water polo enough thought

user42 he really tripped that old man… so trevor zegras of him

_quinnhughes you forgot to mention that when he called me to have you let him out you turned his penalty into a five minute major

yourusername two minutes for snitching->📦

_quinnhughes you’re in stamford?

yourusername update: i facetimed quinn and screamed until he sat in the bathroom

trevorzegras update: i’m giving her a penalty for screaming

yourusername update: trevor has a penalty for attempting to give me a penalty

trevorzegras update: kisses got me out early

_quinnhughes update: i hate you both

yourusername update: quinn has a double minor

yourusername update: jacky boy has two minutes just because

jackhughes update: i’m looking for a new soulmate

user6 the fact that if the refs were calling penalties z wouldn’t been starting the season with -1 games since his last penalty 😭

jackhughes strongest girl i know alert!

yourusername pls don’t make me emotional online i have a reputation to uphold mr. “heart not boobs”

lhughes_06 @/yourusername accept that you’re basically wonder woman

yourusername @/lhughes_06 accept that miley cyrus’s song wonder woman makes that comment 1000x more emo for me

jackhughes @/yourusername accept that you’re loved (despite the speech comment)

lhughes_06 @/yourusername very loved

_quinnhughes @/yourusername extremely loved

yourusername @/jackhughes @/lhughes_06 @_quinnhughes i love you all too! now stop before i sob!

user17 tell trevor thank you for signing my brother’s forehead! he was so happy!

chriskreider19 thanks for having z pay for his crimes against me!

yourusername ur so welcome thank you for feeding us occasionally!

trevorzegras please don’t thank her this has now become a common thing

yourusername @/trevorzegras mwah!

shattdeuces i’ve missed you, daughter! i’ll miss your post roadies gift bags next season!

yourusername you’ll get one when you play the ducks next season! i’ll start fires to give it to you if i have to!

shattdeuces just don’t get caught!

yourusername i never do! i’m a stealthy ninja

trevorzegras @/yourusername i’ve been catching you from falling since we were sixteen i’m not sure that qualifies as “stealthy”

yourusername @/trevorzegras that’s all part of my elaborate plan to never be caught when it’s important. no one will see it coming. my clumsiness is an act.

jackhughes @/yourusername an act that started at five years old?

yourusername @/jackhughes yes!

user4 announcers before the game started: we might see trevor do the michigan in person tonight! trevor: *attempts and fails 3 times*

_alexturcotte yeah babe! it’s your signature move! get it together! @/trevorzegras

trevorzegras don’t tell me what to do

yourusername @/trevorzegras get it together!

trevorzegras @/yourusername …yes dear

_alexturcotte @/trevorzegras I’VE KNOWN YOU LONGER DO I MEAN NOTHING TO YOU?!

yourusername @_alexturcotte jealousy isn’t a good color on you

trevorzegras @_alexturcotte ily babe

_alexturcotte @/trevorzegras ilym babe

yourusername @/trevorzegras ten minute major for infidelity!

trevorzegras @/yourusername worth it

user66 I CAN HEAR THE FIRST PICTURE 😭

jamie.drysdale i fully expect to be tackled next time i see you ms. “i choose football”

yourusername trevor will want to ask us to get a room because I MISS YOU SO BAD JAMIE BABY

trevorzegras @/yourusername what do you plan to do?!?!

jamie.drysdale I MISS YOU TOO

yourusername I LOVE YOU WITH MY WHOLE BUTT

jamie.drysdale I LOVE YOU TOO YOU WEIRDO

trevorzegras @/yourusername WHAT DO YOU PLAN TO DO?!?!?!

yourusername @/trevorzegras commit infidelity

trevorzegras @/yourusername ten minute misconduct

yourusername @/trevorzegras worth it

jamie.drysdale @/trevorzegras technically she was my wife first

trevorzegras @/jamie.drysdale ejected from the game

yourusername @/trevorzegras hold up you can commit infidelity and i can’t?!

trevorzegras @/yourusername correct

yourusername @/trevorzegras misogyny at its finest. you’re kicked out of our mojo dojo casa house.

jamie.drysdale @/trevorzegras ejected? nah. evicted.

trevorzegras update: i’m now homeless

_quinnhughes @/trevorzegras you’re not living with me this time

user97 this game just made me miss hockey more

slknight35 you wouldn’t ever give me a penalty right?

yourusername never. you and coley can do no wrong ever. and if you do, i’ll cover it up or take the fall. i’ll kill for you. i’ll sell trevor. i love you.

slknight35 i forgot that you’re so violently endearing😂 i love you too

jackhughes @/slknight35 she’s gotten worse since high school

colecaufield @/yourusername i love you best friend number two!

slknight35 @/jackhughes that’s terrifying

yourusername @/slkight35 yes i am <3

yourusername @/colecaufield I AIN’T GONNA EVER STOP LOVING YOU B(est) (fr)I(end) (number) T(wo) CH

colecaufield @/yourusername you ain’t slick

jackhughes @/yourusername but you are cringe

yourusername @/jackhughes bitch <3

yourusername in hopes that this comes up as a top comment for someone: you are all so loved. every single one of you. thank you for all the support that you give me, the boys, and to all the other teams, players, and their families that you share your love to. check in on your friends. even the ones that always seem to be the happiest person around. spread love, spread hope, and spread kindness🩵 mwah!

#penalty box series #penalty box series: bonus editions #trevor zegras #trevor zegras au #trevor zegras x reader #trevor zegras imagine #trevor zegras insta edit #trevor zegras x hughes reader #jack hughes #quinn hughes #luke hughes #jamie drysdale #cole caufield #spencer knight #hockey imagine #nhl imagine

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accio-victuuri · 6 months

Text

(130) FAKE RUMORS FOR YOU. 💭💌

i have definitely made several posts related to fake rumors both from cql era & rumor houses so this is definitely one of my favorite things to share. these are all from cql filming timeline where the practice of fake rumors really started. this does not include the 49 initial fakes. as usual, these are not real. 🤐

i found the screenshot compilation over here. so there you go. enjoy! 🍰🍪🍭

1. the two of them are very close on the set and when female supporting role has not been deleted yet. During one scene, wyb once asked the director with a black face ( angry ) in front of xz “I can’t tell what the relationship between Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji is. I can’t immerse myself in the role”

( I think it’s common knowledge that in the beginning, the production had some hetero agenda to appease censorship. As we all know, the book fans weren’t happy with that because it takes away the key essence of the story. I’m so happy we got the depiction of WWX/LWJ relationship that we did. I’m happy that XZ and WYB both voiced their bias to follow the source material. Remember XZ also said ( in an unofficial bts so let’s take it as fake too ) to cut the scenes with a female lead that seems romantic. so whoever is saying that these two were somehow tricked into starring in a bl drama needs some serious common sense lol )

2. xz watched wyb’s video of “yelling lyrics” and laughed at him for a long time

3. they looked up each others’ dark history, wyb searched xz’s old pictures, and xz searched are wyb’s videos.

( i think this is proven in an interview, they did look up each other’s previous works. HAHAHAHAHA! it’s so cuteeee cause this is like when you have a crush on someone and you stalk their socials to know more about them. but ofc theirs was all professional courtesy. or was it? )

4. next, xz said when he pulled out his blonde video he said that wyb was so cute. wyb even flipped up his hair to show him, but when another actor said it, wyb just smiled but didn't respond.

( lol omg dandan yibo! )

5. when playing Honor of Kings, wyb likes to play as topsolo and jungle, xz usually plays as midsolo, xz once complained that wyb has no team awareness and being unable to score points with him.

( there is a whole cpn about this that’s super interesting over here. )

6. likes to praise each other exaggeratedly in front of the camera and in private. even if they have NG scenes.

7. many scenes were deleted from the drama, such as the branding on the chest. There was also a scene where Lan Wangji went off the cliff to find Wei Wuxian. The scenes were not aired. I guess it’s too ambiguous.

8. wyb sometimes leaves the crew to do other work xz will often chat with him on WeChat. Once the director asked him who he was video chatting with. Then he just said “it’s Lao Wang”. The director was shocked at that time.

( we have cpn about this too, them sending each other photos and videos. chatting and video calling when they are not filming together. )

9. wyb introduced xz to motorcycles and raced with him at the scene. I feel like xz is not interested in the video but has been listening patiently.

10. The two of them often eat together after work, wyb loves to eat sour food. One time, xz staff bought two portions of “liang pi” xz thought it was a bit sour and ate a little. Wyb finished his portion and still ate xz’s leftovers.

( this is basically true as well. i mean we have video/s of them eating off of each other’s plate )

11. wyb taught xz dancing and korean on the set.

12. both of them are very childish and like to use all kinds of strange words.

13. wyb once used a forehead ribbon in the dressing room to tie xz’s hands up, xz looked at him indifferently and helplessly.

14. when filming the scene in the cave, both of them got wet. The makeup laoshi asked them to hurry up and put on their costumes outside. The two of them were still in the water. When playing inside, wyb immediately took off xz’s outermost coat.

15. two people have discussed the issue of body hair xz asked wyb: Why do you have so little leg hair? Wyb said he was born with it. xz looked at him with an interesting expression.

16. the deleted branding scene was after Lan Wangji recovered from his injury. Looking for Wei Wuxian's body on the cliff, but we only saw the battle in the Nightless City. He was so angry and sad that he burned the torture instrument with lava and burned the same wound in the same place on his chest.

17. another one that was deleted was the conversation with Wei Wuxian on a snowy night. After Lan Huan finished talking about Lan Wangji, Lan Wangji came back, and Wei Wuxian called Lan Wangji with emotion and choked up, "Why didn’t you tell me? Lan Wangji lowered his head and said nothing. I heard that the producers thought the deleted parts were too ambiguous. The explanation is unclear, and there are many small scenes that have been deleted.

18. wyb once complained that xz’s playlist is very old because wyb can’t tell what kind of children’s song xz sings about 😂😂😂

19. wyb often plays Wei Wuxian’s flute on set but xz doesn’t play much with Lan Wangji’s sword. Wyb once said that he (xz) was the best blowing the flute the group. xz beat him because of that. Lol.

20. the reason for Lan Wangji’s shape is that there are two strands of hair in front. so when waiting for the scene, he would pick up the hair at the back xz and help him. He said it many times, and also said that Wang Yibo can get married if he has long hair that reaches his waist.

21. xz said that wyb has a shape that looks like bamboo shoots and then at noon that day, he asked the assistant to order the fried pork with bamboo shoots from the small kitchen. then ate together with wyb.

22. there is a scene where Lan Wangji needs to carry Wei Wuxian on his back. He tried and was officially filmed after one take. After the filming, the director asked them why they were joking. XZ said he didn’t know how to put his feet after lying down. Lan Wangji didn’t catch it either, both of them laughed.

23. wyb doesn’t eat snacks very much on set, but he does eat director Nie and about xz’s snacks. he said that xz does not eat snacks properly. The most common meal he eats is the fruit salad that xz brought to the set.

24. wyb’s sword tool was thrown around once and fell down. When we got to our feet, xz happened to see it next to him and laughed for a long time.

25. there were several group scenes shot in the suburbs of Hengdian. both guys have lots of mosquito bites. xz told wyb I will teach you how to get better quickly, so he used his fingers to make a cross on wyb’s mosquito bite. wyb’s face was like “you must be lying to me” but he still made a cross on every bite

26. the first time they filmed outdoors, when they talked about what insects there were in the fields, wyb told xz that he was scared of insects, especially those with many tentacles, then he carefully counted every thing that he was scared of.

27. xz likes to scare him with insects, during wyb’s birthday he also scared him with insects

28. once, other actors used a horror video to scare wyb, wyb didn’t know about it and immediately jumped to the side after watching it. xz stood at the side and said “he is really scared, don’t mess with him”

29. the two of them have different make up artists to help them touch up their makeup. One time, the make up artist who helped xz was absent, so wyb’s make up artist did both of their make up. wyb was standing at the side and he said “Bi Jie, if you use the brush that you used on his face on me, my face will become really pale” then xz hit him.

30. the two will play games together in xz’s car, xz gave one side of his bluetooth earphone.

31 . the staff watched the two of them arguing and at first I thought it was really a bad relationship, but after, they saw that the two will together. so he got used to it.

32. xz watched the pd 101 girl group dance in front of wyb, it seems that it is also a dance compilation. after watching it, xz has been obsessed with it and calls wyb asian dance king.

33. in the first month of filming, the two of them competed for a few days. Speaking in Beijing dialect, I can hear it from far away: “Have you eaten?”

34. continuing from the previous one, when filming started, the director requested that the right person be called Fang Zai’s name in the drama. The two of them like to call each other all the titles in the drama that was later developed. Brother Cheng! Elder! Senior! and so on.

35. xz has many types of eye drops, wyb uses them too and will ask xz to help

36. the two of us competed when they were bored waiting for the scene. waist strength and flexibility, xz bent over and touched his toes but can't stand still, so he fell forward. wyb’s hands were quick to help him up. he wanted to laugh because xz is an old artist who cannot break his muscles and bones

37. continuing from the above entry, wyb’s hand is big and he can wrap both of xz’s with one hand. wyb is proud of it. he also said his hands are whiter than xz’s.

38. when wyb sits on the chair, his legs are spread wide. Once while, he was sitting there looking at his phone, and then across from him xz kept looking at him and laughing without saying a word. wyb was pissed off by him. xz told him that wyb was wearing shorts today and his legs were too wide and was - little exposed.

39. when filming nightless city, there was a scene where Lan Wei stood high on stage xz secretly pinched wyb's waist to make him stand up straighter.

40. two people like to play games together and they always looked at their mobile phone. some directors have said that when Wei Wuxian is there, you will be sure that 3 away from him, there will be Lan Wangji coming out 😂😂😂

41. the two actually got to know each other very well quickly. the director also praised that it melted ( break the ice, so the ice was melted in this case ) very quickly, but the staff didn’t think about it. when it comes to wyb, he is actually very childish and lively, but also very matured.

42. Watching this pair for more than 3 seconds will definitely make you laugh, and xz laughs the hardest.

43. they often sing together while waiting for the filming. wyb can also teach xz the choreography he wants to dance on the show. xz complimente wyb’s legs for being so flexible.

44. xz is a very gentle person who is sincere and has no attitude. one time, the film assistant talked to him about his stance, but he may have said it wrong, which resulted in two wrong shots. he (xz) only told the director that it was his fault and then helped him after filming. the staff apologized to him and he said it didn't matter. The set was too busy and he should have checked again, it was super warm.

45. Occasionally, the crew will open interviews together and there are fans who will sneak in. Once in the wild, someone shouted xz, mommy loves you. sister loves you. If wyb hears it, zg brother loves you.

46. the scene was filmed three or four times where lwj caught the chicken because it so crowded at first. the cages are full of chickens. Wyb didn’t catch them the first time he started. there were only two chickens left inside as props, and they were caught by xz a few times later. the chicken was obviously frightened but the director cut it. the scene was chaotic.

47. in lwj’s drunk scene, wyb refused to drink. He also said that the drunken blush that the makeup artist painted on him was "not cool at all." xz said that after that he turned into a red peony and then was beaten by wyb. 😂😂😂

48. two people often bicker and go back and forth most of the time. it ends with the meaningless repetition of very young students talking to each other.

49. when filming the scene with snow, the two of them discussed it. they made an appointment to go to the ice sculpture and ski resort in Erbin during their vacation before the Spring Festival.

( I think is the place they planned to go ⛷️ )

50. the two often work with directors and producers on scenes and when telling directions, when the director said some very straightforward words, the two of them just look at each other and smiled.

51. the two people shot a scene outdoors, the wind was very strong, xz’s hair keeps blowing in the wind. he was talking excitedly, wyb naturally removed all the bits of hair stuck to the corners of his mouth.

52. In fact, they still like to move their feet most when they are fighting. There is one time xz pretended to kick wyb, but accidentally kicked wyb's thigh on the back, because there is mud on the upper part and there are some marks left, xz immediately said I was sorry to wang laoshi and cleaned him— but he was still beaten by wyb. yibo chased him with a sword for 5 minutes.

53. they discovered various strange ways to reduce swelling. once they discussed on the set how to reduce swelling faster, wyb asked xz “zhang ge have you tried taking a hot shower in the morning?” xz seems embarrassed to say so. wyb nodded wildly with a very understanding expression.

54. Continuing from the previous entry, the two of them were doing some exercise on the set— like raising your legs or something. The funniest thing is to lose face for swelling, there is an action to pull the ear on the same side upward with one hand. With the other hand, press the side of the face that stretches the ear, and push it toward the ear. Pushing in one direction, the two people were pulling each other in the corner, screaming in pain. It's all because the other party used too much force.

55. they are very concerned about each other’s appearance in the camera. shoot After Jin Dan's cut, the two of them watched the replay on the monitor together. but xz said that Yi Bo’s face was not in the best condition and it would be better to take a rest. Wyb is applying make-up next to him and listening.

56. when preparing for wyb’s birthday, xz was the first to say yes. xz wanted to give him a racing suit, wyb explains to him that the racing suit is specially customized by the team, so it wasn’t sent as a gift. xz looked a bit disappointed.

57. continuing from the previous entry, the helmet given as a gift was not there was delivered to the crew. After cutting the cake, I gave the first piece to xz, and said “zhan ge the helmet you gave me is placed in the C position at home. It is a lucky helmet and should be kept well.” xz smiled happily.

( c position means in the center, whatever or whoever is in the c position is the most important )

58. even when we they shooting for several days at night, there were two of us. when they stay quiet and don’t fight, they quietly get together and play with their hands. they take the opportunity to show the other person something interesting from time to time.

59. wyb once felt very uncomfortable while putting on makeup and couldn't hold it anymore, so the producer rushed me to the hospital. xz was filming a solo show. He heard that and made a phone call to ask wyb about the situation.

60. wyb will recommend clothing brands to xz and gave him a vx purchasing business card.

61. there is a period of time when two people will check each other out before putting on makeup. they will check hairline and then laugh at the other person and say who will be bald before you are.

62. wyb likes to eat pasta, garlic, coriander and the like.

63. one time xz fell asleep on the chair, lying on his back and mouth is a little open, then wyb surrounded him from all angles and took at least a dozen photos. but xz later found out and took them away, he deleted them all.

64. xz had some very hard scenes, crawling on the grass and had to use a blower for more than an hour, and his hands were covered with tiny wounds. His eyes were also inflamed. When the director asked him, he said it was okay. As soon as he saw wyb the first sentence he said is "I'm so miserable, lan er gege"

65. wyb seems to like the title Yiling Patriarch very much. he thought he didn’t have a domineering nickname, so he gave myself the nickname Gusu Wu Enemy. he told xz to say it, xz rolled his eyes and never said it.

66. the behind-the-scenes team gave each of them a GoPro to film some scenes, such as meeting for dinner together or playing games or something.

( lol where are the footage from the go pro?!!! )

67. After receiving the article, wyb took a photo and handed it over. It was him. they eating chicken together in the room and listened to the editorial team for seventeen minutes. In the video, wyb said xz more than 20 times.

68. xz told wyb that if he wants to raise a dog, it is best if he it’s obedient. It must be a large dog, if you really have a dog, name it Lizi. wyb said with a disgusted face that the name was not domineering enough, xz immediately retorted, he said it was called Red Haier, and then started fighting with his teeth bared.

69. wyb is actually very cold-faced and warm-hearted. He once helped to beat the board. He noticed that the field attendant was shaking a bit and was about to fall over after being there for too long. he immediately called cut and told the director to let the staff member rest. later wyb assistant also gave him water.

70. xz touched wyb’s Adam’s apple and compared it with his own, and was shocked and surprised, then gave wyb a thumbs up.

71. in the scene where the donkey was being led, xz was sitting before filming officially started. he was singing the theme song of Journey to the West on the back of a donkey, wyb also sang the vocals with him

"You carry the burden"

"deidei"

"I'm holding the horse"

72. xz likes to eat Japanese food, there are two Japanese food restaurants in Hengdian and many people have been there. If you don’t have time to go, the most popular place to order takeout is He Feng Na.

73. continuing from the previous entry, one time wyb rushed to announce that there was someone returning to the group and brought a bag full of bread to xz. I heard it was almond croissant.

74. the motorcycle helmet xz sent to wyb still has a stamp on the top of the head. there is a hand-painted lion drawn by xz himself, based on Simba’s drawing. xz showed the manuscript to wyb on the set, and wyb was very satisfied.

75. there are many scenes that are not good-looking during the shooting. the producer told wyb privately on the set not to watch this. they said they are all confident that the effect of the finished film will be very good. wyb said he didn’t mind, but was a bit in a low mood that day. when xz found out, he kept hanging around him and making fun of him to make him happy.

76. Lan Wangji’s hair once when shooting in the farmhouse, his crown ( headpiece ) is really a bit high, higher than a haystack, and he had to wear it several times. xz complains that wyb is not tall enough to wear a headdress.

77. Once when we were filming a group scene in the inner hall of the Chang family, xz and other actors performing the lyrics, wyb was always there to pick him up.

"interesting

"not interesting"

"In terms of thick skin, I am second"

"You are number one"

"wyb shut up!"

78. It’s the same scene, there’s always something fishy about wyb. there was nothing fishy about it, and it made two people laugh again, so much so that the director asked them to pinch each other's faces and pinched each other's arms and legs.

79. Following the previous one, xz’s mantra will change in the next two days OK—there must be something fishy about this blower. I’m eating eggplant in my lunch box today. There must be something fishy, there must be something fishy about Lan Wangji, and then he starts to act again.

80. In one scene, he was injured and was recuperating in an unknown place in Yunshen. , xz did a good job of subduing it and said wyb’s first sentence was “Wow xiao laoshi is very hot today."

81. The director is from Hong Kong and is fluent in Mandarin but standard. Once he said something quickly through the microphone : "The chicken is going to lose its wire, so be careful when having sex." xz and wyb went crazy after hearing this and burst into laughter, and then made the director laugh too and explained what he said, It was actually "As long as you are wearing a wire, you must be careful in everything."

82. sometimes when the two people are photographed looking at each other, because they are one beat by beat, the emotions must be connected, xz told wyb that if you're afraid of laughing, don't stare into my eyes, look at the place between my eyebrows. When the filming started, wyb stared at it and deliberately made cross-eyes.xz burst out laughing and had to apologize to the director immediately.

83. one time they probably watched a horror movie together. The next day when they arrived at the set, they danced and imitated the other actors. Wyb looked scared, but Wyb just sat on the side and smiled helplessly.

84. wyb often says wow, yeah yes yep and the like catchphrases, later xz also started to say yeah yes.

85. wyb liked to twirl xz’s flute, but accidentally lost it. he will the make amends to XZ like the ancients did.

86. there was a scene with three people, and wzc was also there. the whole time the two were talking about random little topics and even pointed swords at each other. Wzc tried several times to join in but couldn't get it in, so he just stood there bored.

87. later, when they saw wzc stopped talking, they thought he was angry. they started teasing him together again, wzc became furious when he was teased and made a loud noise. he complained to the director and said they were childish.

88. when the two people conduct dual interviews, wyb will wait for xz’s single interview to end. and then go into the business car together.

89. xz, wyb and senior sister have a three-person scene, while waiting for the performance, the senior sister suddenly asked: Mr. Lan is here to see you.

Did Xian only bring Qin and not Bichen? Didn't wait for wyb to react?

Come on, xz and senior sister fell to the side laughing, wyb was very confused

Miao explained dryly, "Aren't you here to play the piano for Wei Wuxian?"

90. When the two of them joined the group, they realized that they both liked songs by girl groups from foreign countries. When that group released a new song, they watched the MV together on the set. xz asked wyb if he could dance after watching it a few times, wyb taught him on the spot . xz said very sincerely, Lao Wang, you are amazing.

91. When other actors are wrapping up filming, they will be given cakes, both of them are just tasting, only wyb gave his first piece to XZ who ate it completely.

( so this is more like, with others, they will just take a bite. but when wyb gave him, xz ate it all. )

92. wyb's posture was very upright when he was hanging in the wire, Wu Zhi commented that there are times when it overturns, usually with waist control. If the body is not well controlled, it will easily become distorted. Although xz laughs at him every time, he will still always praise him. He said wyb is a kid from Springfield Flower Kindergarten, a friend that needs to be praised every day.

93. When filming Yi City, the scene required smoke machines to create fog. It feels like the field manager is waving a prop stick behind wyb. wyb asked xz, do you feel it? xz said what do you feel? wyb said let me go. xz's expression is speechless.

94. When filming the Baifeng Mountain section, wyb made an action where he needs to hold xz's wrist tightly to make him concentrate, and he will be very nervous when shooting. When he entered the scene, they took a few close-up shots in order to cut the scene. Director 1 after saying ok, xz rubbed his wrist and said Lan Zhan, you hurt me, wyb said can i see?

95. the people were waiting on the roof during wyb’s birthday , xz hummes and look at the stars one, two, three and four connected in a line. later wyb also sang along in a low voice.

96. filimg the heavy rain scene on Qiongqi Road. because xz has experience he told wyb in advance how to keep warm and prevent colds, tell him first that when the time comes, ask the assistant to get a blanket to soak up the water and prepare ginger soup or hot water. etc.

97. but he still felt a little bit uncomfortable the next day after wyb finished filming. he had a nasal sound when speaking. If his assistant brings medicine, xz will wonder if this cold medicine will have some antihistamines, which will make you sleepy and... are there any details such as whether the medicine will cause allergies?

98. In fact, there was another time when the forehead ribbon was removed and the hands were tied, the costume teacher wanted to tie it up. wyb said I would try it, so he did it on purpose and tied it tightly, then raised his hand and pulled it up with xz's hand, said very childishly, "Wei Ying, look"

99. One scene was in a teahouse, and it was about hearing that Wei Ying was not well. Lan Zhan put down the water glass heavily. Wyb once mentioned to the director if he wants him to silently crush the cup to express your mood? The director and editor after discussing the drama, said they felt that the emotions have not reached that level at this time.

100. The director mentioned in the drama that 16 years later Lan Zhan saw Wei Wuxian’s smiles will change unconsciously, wyb also said deliberately “then when I see Brother Zhan’s sweet smile, I will follow him (laughing)”

101. they spent the Dragon Boat Festival together on the set, and also had sweet and salty rice dumplings. they had an argument xz said that Chongqing people basically only eats salty rice dumplings, wyb must follow him. Just tell me sweet rice dumplings are delicious. I was noisy and wyb suddenly said he will also eat salty rice dumplings, and then he will be beaten by xz and said that you insist on following me. wyb only laughed.

102. There happened to be a night show on the Dragon Boat Festival, and the producer specially bought it rice dumplings to eat together. The two of them had a meal on the set, xz had a video chat with his parents on WeChat. He especially introduced wyb to them as ttxs’s super awesome host. wyb said hello obediently, and then after xz finished the video, he slapped him with his sleeve.

103. xz once asked wyb how to make one eye flow first when crying, wyb smiled evilly and said that I have great control.

104. Taking pictures of Hantan Cave, the temperature inside the cave is very different from that outside the cave and it’s nearly ten degrees. Be white clothes are easy to see through and can be irritated by cold water it’s easy to expose your flesh and bulge. If xz finds out, he whispers to wyb for a while and then went ashore to find the staff. When we he came back — the two people had an extra layer of white coats inside.

105. wzc often rolls his eyes like Jiang Cheng when seeing the two of them fighting, xz once caught him and said it he was against him. “Jiang Cheng, you don’t help me” wzc just said that “I will not interfere with the affairs of the two of you.”

106. Let’s talk about wzc first. There was a scene where wwx was beaten up while filming wzc. During the break, he said that wwx was beaten badly enough and was beaten by xz.

107. In Xuanwu Cave wwx went to pull up the collar of Lan Zhan’s clothes, maybe he used a bit too much force to make the area under wyb's collarbone red. After the cut, wyb pulled it open and showed it to xz to accuse him. xz said he was right and said I'm sorry, but then said it's because your skin is too fair and tender. Showing it, wyb replied that it was because he was young. 😂😂😂😂

108. When two people are filming a fight scene, they will feel a little uncomfortable. they didn’t want to injure each other such as being hit by a prop or scratched. Once xz was at front door of Chang's house bumped against my knee, and it turned blue instantly, and wyb asked the assistant to bring some muscle tape from his bag and help him apply it himself.

109. Continuing from the previous entry, xz will also bring his own band-aid, the kind that is cartoon style, including Little Yellow Duck and SpongeBob SquarePants.

110. When they were in Guizhou, they made an appointment to get up in the morning and go for a run but did not persist for a few days. xz complained about wyb in the morning and when he arrived at the gym, I was still wearing the hotel slippers.

111. There was one scene where we faced an enemy together in the woods. While waiting for the set, xz started singing and their backs were to each other. wyb while listening, he scratched the ground with his sword.

112. To shoot in the hanging cliffs, xz actually has tools on the ground that is easy to pull. The director didn't have any requirements when looking at the location. The two kept holding hands, but never let go. After a while, xz has been put down to the ground, wyb stopped his hand and looked at his palm, It took five or six seconds to stand up.

113. In that scene, a close-up of Lan Wangji’s face was also shot. Yan asked xz not to leave yet and help Yibo pick up his feelings. xz is looking up at wyb, the director is using a microphone to narrate the introduction and roughly speaking

"Wei Ying broke free and was falling. He was trying to prevent him from falling.

“You fell with me"

"He has no desire to live anymore."

"He is the most important person to you. For the first time in your life, you feel panicked”

"You are desperate, you are regretful"

"There is no more Wei Ying”

114. wyb did a great job, it took only two or three shots to pass. The staff members were so empathetic to him that they choked with tears.

115. but xz just stood under that cliff background and kept looking up at him, he was obviously crying too.

116. Continuing from the previous entry, after this scene, the makeup teacher will wipe off their tear traces. There is a path between the two of them. They kept looking at each other and said nothing.

117. The sleeves of Lan Wangji’s costume have always been very wide. He once did a dance move of doing cartwheels on the spot, and it was so smooth. xz was working very hard to cheer him on and compete with him.

118. When wyb seems to have pharyngitis, xz has asked him, and wyb said it usually happens. xz for some time then replaced his green tea for medicinal tea, wyb asked why the taste was different, xz pointed at his throat “It's good for you here”.

119. Continuing from the previous entrt, when wyb takes cold medicine, xz specially tells him to drink more warm water for 2 days and stop drinking my tea.

120. We sang together in the days after we came back from participating in a variety show. they repeat this sentence, child, you are the best. then later in the one-shot scene of wyb, xz would sing wyb, you are the best.

121. strings of Lan Wangji’s qin are specially made and are better than ordinary string so it will be flexible. One time when he was bored outdoors, he was playing with strings. After a while, he became quiet and pulled XZ aside to whisper. xz after listening, immediately raised his hand to signal to the director: Director Wang Yibo played the strings and broke one! He broke the prop!!! Wyb is behind him and the man who was caught got angry and pushed xz on the shoulder.

122. One time wyb was spraying sunscreen, xz saw it and asked him to help spray. wyb held the sunscreen to xz and said "呲呲 "呲呲——" but I didn't press it on purpose, xz Look at him with an expression like "Are you sick?"

123. The scene where Lan Wangji agreed to buy the rabbit lantern, xz smiled brightly, and wyb smiled back. Then after cut he was told, "Yibo, don't smile so big."

124. xz accidentally said this in front of the behind-the-scenes camera that after he and wyb finished work, they will go to see a traditional Chinese medicine practitioner for massage because both of our waists hurt.

125. On the set, they lifted up each other’s hems to see if they were wearing basketball shorts, and they will high five and say “hey man!” they have a tacit understanding.

125. When filming the scene with Jin Ling, XZ asked him his age and learned that it’s actually a month or two older than wyb xz was so shocked that he turned his back. wyb is so young and wants to play the role of an elder, and he still acts so similar.

126. In a one-person interview with both people present, they will tease each other, when wyb teases xz he will obviously look away and smile. On the other hand, wyb will look at him openly and give him a warning look.

127. During breaks on the set, xz would often sing some songs, Korean, Mandarin and English are available. wyb is sometimes next to him and when asked to change songs, xz also cooperated with him to change songs. There is one time he was asked to cut the song after I had just sung a few words. xz was obviously confused. If you can't change the subtitles, just say wyb, have you bought a membership? Changing songs is VIP. It’s a Unique service!

128. The scene where the two people fell out holding each other in their arms started posing on the ground. The director felt that the position where XZ was leaning was too low and he should have raised his head. You can see the position of wyb's eyes, just turn on the microphone, Commander Feng said, "Wei Ying, move higher on Lan Zhan." "No need." “Stand up and move directly." "Come up a little bit, and a little bit higher, yes. "XZ's ears were red after shooting that scene.

129. When they were in the mountains of Guizhou, because it was a real wild place, tge grass and other plants are very tall. When wyb reached the top of the mountain, he asked xz, Do you think there will be snakes here? then XZ said: But Hanguang-Jun, aren't you a master of martial arts? You can just use the sword. Later, xz saw that wyb was really scared, so he used the flute and wiped a circle of grass around him and said that Brother Zhan will protect you even if there is a snake.

130. wyb once took a big bite while eating noodles. he was chewing while looking at my phone, xz “said something: Brother Bo, you are like a hamster eating, and then he changed his mind and said, more like a camel. Have you ever seen a camel eat? How about learning to eat slowly like a camel?”

wyb laughed and then didn't even bother to eat the noodles.

BONUS: wyb’s fingers are very long and have distinct bones. He told xz that his hands and the joints are old and aged. It was because of his training in dancing and some were sharpened by riding bicycles. xz was very surprise said, Lao Wang, your life experience have so many vicissitudes, and then he started a few words, "Until it feels like your wrinkles have the marks of time."

wyb had a question mark face and didn't know what song he was singing.

( I tried to look up the lyrics listed 直到感觉你的皱纹有了岁月的痕迹 and google is giving me “atleast i still have you” by Sandy Lam. but i’m not sure. )

Note: I might go back to this and edit some bits. I’m just in a fake rumor coma and my eyes and brain are aching at this point. 🙃🙃🙃 but i hope you still had fun reading!!!!

#yizhan #bjyx #there is no science here i’m just clowning like i always do #accio victuuri translation #NUMBER 17 IS MAKING ME MAD I WANNA SEE THAT SCENE AHHHHHH HOW MANY WERE DELETED (ALLEGEDLY)#some of these i mildly rephrased to better explain the message across

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deliriumzer0 · 11 months

Text

Gen Loss' shooting location

I'm super into dead/dying malls so I knew what mall it was as soon as I saw the ending of Ep 2, but I didn't wanna post anything about it until after Ranboo had left NY just in case. I'm not about to facilitate any creepy behavior, you know?

So GenLoss was filmed at the now-closed Galleria at White Plains, which -- fun fact! -- is the same mall used for interior mall shots in the movie Eighth Grade (so everyone who enjoys Ranboo/Bo Burnham connections, there's a fun one!). It opened in 1980 and positioned itself as the mall for "normal" people, in contrast to the more upscale Westchester mall nearby. Sadly, that other mall is still alive & kicking, while this one was closed at the end of March 2023. There are apparently redevelopment plans in the works to turn it into mixed-use (retail + residential) space.

I was too curious about what some of the stores used in the shoot used to be, and how much of what I saw in GL was set design and how much was already in place, so I looked up old directories & photos of the mall to see if I could sleuth some of it out. In case anyone else was curious about the set designers' work, or is into retail history, I figured I would share my findings!

The central elevator area of the mall in GenLoss, and how it appeared in 2019. (Screenshot from the 2019 video linked below)

Apologies for the multiple different angles on this one, but this is all the same area, first in GenLoss (right after Ranboo starts walking away from the panel where Hetch is appearing), then from the Fleabitten Adventures 2023 video, then from the Raw & Real Retail video from 2019. (Couldn't resist screenshotting the drone ad on that last one, lol)

In the GenLoss screenshot, at the far right edge of the Sears entryway, you can see a bit of the painting left behind, so my guess is the GL set decorators got rid of that artwork for the shoot.

The screen where Ranboo first speaks to Hetch in ep 3. The empty store behind them was an American Eagle Outfitters at one point, but it was already closed by February 2023. (screeenshot from Fleabitten Adventures 2023 video)

Here's a before & after of this directory panel. (Screenshot from the Fleabitten Adventures 2023 video)

The store full of "props". In the original store photo (Google's only photo of this shop), you can see how the existing shelves were repurposed for GL. Also way at the far end of the store there's a black & white photo of someone with a basketball that was left hanging up.

I had a hard time finding a closer angle of this Victoria's Secret, but in case you were curious, here's one from the Raw & Real Retail video lol.

Where Ranboo almost left but Hetch stopped them: a Kay Jewelers.

The streamers are sitting in the following establishments: My Kitchen, Bourbon Street Cafe, Sarku Japan, Dunkin' Donuts, and of course Charley's. The last empty storefront was a Burger King before it emptied out. (Photo from Foursquare, cropped by me)

The Dental & Foot Care storefront is unchanged except for the seating out in the open area. It was a rounded wooden bench set as of Feb 2023 (screenshot from the Fleabitten Adventures video), but for GL it was the standard metal benches found throughout the mall. Not sure why.

Going far back enough, this was a Radio Shack. Couldn't find ANY photos of this particular location though, so here's the only photo I could find of what it was in the interim: a dress shop called Gloria's. (Photo from Yelp)

This one is my favorite part. :) As of February 2023 (screenshots are from the Fleabitten Adventures video), the "Heart of the Facility" is this weirdly sparse artsy furniture store called Home Splash. But before this, what the shop's facade was designed for, was...

A Charlotte Russe location. Ranboo died in a fucking Charlotte Russe. When I learned this, I could not stop laughing.

More/Sources:

https://www.reddit.com/r/deadmalls/comments/zupwhw/the_galleria_at_white_plains_ny_in_late_afternoon/

A great youtube video from Fleabitten Adventures walking through the whole mall in February 2023

Raw & Real Retail walkthrough video (from 2019)

A shorter walthrough video from HELLOTHISIS4U

Photos from FourSquare

I didn't cover everything I learned here, just the stuff I thought was coolest (and that I had images of), so please feel free to flood my ask box with questions about what certain things used to be!

#generation loss #genloss #filming locations #dead mall #abandoned mall #ranboo

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vaspider · 3 months

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I genuinely hope this isn’t too prying or intrusive, I am strictly asking out of curiosity but…. What…. Is going on with that 16 year old and why is it on a post about a house coat? Are you ok?

I'm fine.

That kid has been fixated on me since I said, basically, that the French Revolution killed a bunch of innocent people and isn't something to be emulated.

For the past 3 weeks, since I told her to leave me alone on Tumblr, she's been stalking me across the internet, digging up every possible way to contact me, and sending elaborate death threats along with suicide threats. I've turned off the contact forms on my professional website and NK. She's sent asks here and contacted me from multiple Tumblrs, multiple Facebook and Instagram accounts, TikTok, LinkedIn, Reddit, YouTube, BlueSky, and multiple email accounts. I'm pretty sure I'm missing something, though I do have it all screenshotted and saved. She found my phone number and left multiple threatening voicemails, and she kept contacting my business, sending death threats to places where my employees, including my younger brother, had to deal with them.

She seems to think that I'm a man, and that I'm attempting to use magic on her, and that she can threaten me into doing whatever it is she wants. I don't really understand what's going on in her head, and I'm not trying to do so. I don't really read the things she writes.

At this point, the FBI is involved - she's been sending death threats pretty much every day for about a month now with a few breaks here and there - and I've been declining to respond to her for the vast majority of that time, hoping that she'd get bored, or, hopefully, that someone who cares about her would realize how deeply, deeply unwell she is and get her help before this becomes a criminal matter. I really, really don't want to be put in that position, but I also can't ask the people who work for me (some of whom are my family) to deal with a constant barrage of messages detailing how if I don't publicly apologize for ... fuck all if I know or care... she's going to "slit [my] throat like a Sicilian" and throw my body in the Willamette River.

I really, really, really just want this kid to leave me alone. I didn't seek her out - she sought me out - and I'm not interested in talking to or debating with a 16 year old. But, also, the things that she's been doing for the past month are crimes and truly beyond the pale.

As to why that's on a video about a housecoat... your guess is as good as mine. Her last comments before this were on the two public videos on my abandoned YouTube account, both of which were process videos about making patches, and she left death threats on a post on my old personal Instagram that I made on the day of the Tree of Life shooting. It has nothing to do with me or what I'm saying - she seems to just randomly pick things to add her bizarre urban fantasy VASpider fanfic to.

Please leave that person alone, everybody. She is a third my age and very clearly deeply unwell. I'd been ignoring her, but I'm kind of hoping against hope that knowing that, yeah, actually, what she's doing is a crime, people take that seriously, and I really really really don't want her to fuck up her life? will convince her to stop.

I'm not afraid. I'm mostly just tired and very, very sad. It is really upsetting to see someone who is so out of alignment with consensus reality, and it's even more upsetting when that person is so young. I feel deeply sorry for her, both that she's unwell in a way that's clearly causing her harm, and that she doesn't seem to be getting the help she needs from the people around her. I hope it's just that the people around her don't realize what's going on and that someone can make them aware, because it is just... rotten... to see someone that young making such a mess of things.

I don't want to talk about this further. I've been avoiding talking about it publicly at all, but at the point where we're closing on a month... I dunno. I hope saying something directly and making it clear this isn't going to go the way she thinks gets it through to her.

I'm gonna go play with my dog.

#harassment #harassment tag #asker is not harassing me #this just deals with my current stalker

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halfusek · 26 days

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What do you think about that new Bendy game coming out on the 14th?

hard to tell from how little there is

the trailer didnt really captivate me, but i guess its fair how much of a nothing there is considering the game will be free, so i'd expect something like batds - i did enjoy batds for what it was (maybe except for the final "reveal" about the collage which was uh. a giant nothing burger)

seems like this is leaning to the scp / found footage / analog horror territory, which ive gotta say im very sceptical about, at least personally to me they are often executed in an unsatisfying way but who knows maybe the devs who kept delivering a disappointment after a disappointment will surprise me

i do like the design of that thing that you can see clearer in the screenshots, im intriguied by the possibility of meeting a less messed up butcher gang character, and im especially excited about The House

seems like im not the only person reminded of the little barn allison painted on the wall we can see at the beginning of batim's chapter 5, i would love a tie in back to that (cuz it never really was tied back to and thats quite interesting why she'd paint something specific like that)

but i am begging them, i am getting on my knees - stop STOP copy pasting the bendy face png on everything, i promise the house doesnt need to have a giant bendy face, it looks sooooo out of place

speaking of overdoing things, mentions of 414 are starting to get a bit tasteless, especially that the number isn't really meaningful in-universe - yes i know that's henry's assigned subject number - but 414 really started as a joke from one of the developers which was picked up by theorists. that meaning was given by fans and it doesn't seem to have any satisfying origin in-universe. yes henry has the 414 subject number *now*. what does it refer to? there's a few theories (like we used to theorise about it waaay before batdr) but there's nothing that's really clearly stated. if it's just gonna be a number that appears cuz ooooo oooh look its a number you guys like isn't this fun like jiggling car keys in front of a baby that's gonna get old Pretty Fast. but maybe they are planning to give it a meaning, i'd be looking forward to it

i will give them that the game being officially developed by Gent Corporation is kind of funny

it seems like they're trying to alleviate responsibility for Whatever Horrors That Happened Really off of JDS shoulders (and joey's by extension) and put the blame on gent for being The freak evil corporation and im not sure how to feel about that (weeeeeell i do not like this direction the way it is looking now. i would have liked it more if it was executed differently)

my thoughts are that this is going to be a game that will not really answer any questions or will answer questions we didn't/wouldn't have but it will be more or less entertaining while we wait for the main course (the cage)

#halfask #bendy and the ink machine #batim #bendy: secrets of the machine #bsotm..? lol #anyways i just reached the beginning of the year while looking through the bendy tag #i have scheduled like 100 posts #for now #:)#feels like i have loaded a barrel of a gun lmao

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multifandom-onigiri · 9 months

Text

Ok I’m going to rip off the bandage and talk about the age gap discourse surrounding DarkMilk

I’m going to preface this with a few disclaimers

1. The post is mainly going to center around Dark Choco as a character because there is (unsurprisingly) more to be said about Dark Choco Cookie from what I’ve gathered. (Edit: There was a lot more to be said.)

2. This post isn’t here to force you to change your interpretation or have your take away from this post as “I have to see Dark Choco as this age” or “DarkMilk’s age gap is [insert said range]”. Rather, it’s me presenting an interpretation with an analysis of the game. But nothing about their ages is explicitly confirmed or denied so I could be wrong. You could be wrong too. None of us are the writers.

3. Around half of this post relies on analyzing the Korean names of Dark Choco and Milk. As seen in my pinned post, I’m not Korean so I ran this post through with a mutual who is. That being said, that doesn’t mean this post is immediately 100% right so please correct this post if needed. (To the mutual in question, thank you so much for the help I really mean it.)

A while ago, I found a tweet and then a conversation under it between two users about young prince dark choco’s age based on his name is written in Korean: 어린 왕자.

It’s stated as such on the wiki for Cookie Run Ovenbreak (italicized because we’ll get to this in a bit) but here’s a screenshot in game

There’s two things to note with 어린 왕자

1) 어리다 means young but significantly so (as in the age of the person numerically is small, and thus they can be easily recognized as a child).

2) 어린 왕자 is apparently also the official Korean title for the book The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (Named as such for the young boy dubbed as the little prince and also yeah I’ve never read this book… else I’d have a segment in this post in speculating why this is the case)

Out of curiosity (and also because I hate missing or getting info wrong), I checked the Cookie Run (for Ovenbreak) wiki to confirm that’s how Young Prince was written. And then I rewatched the CRK Dark Mode cutscenes.

Turns out they changed the way they refer to Young Prince Dark Choco: 어린 왕자 다크초코 쿠키-> 젊은 시절의 다크초코 쿠키

Notable changes are:

1) For starters, 젊은 시절의 다크초코 쿠키 directly translates to “Dark Choco Cookie of Youth”. Note that the word prince was added in the English localization and is not included in the original text.

2) 젊다 is a different word that also means young. Specifically, it refers to being young in thought or action. However, it’s not the same type of young (think like how you would treat a baby/toddler vs. how you’d treat an older teen. With a baby, they’ve just started living and thus know very little about how things and people work. It’s cute at times and annoying at other times. On the other hand, teenagers are still children but they’ve lived much longer than babies, so you expect them to be more mature/responsible than a 5 year old). Also unlike 어리다, 젊다 can be used to describe anyone that’s younger than you and doesn’t really suggest a certain age range because it depends on the speaker and the person they’re referring to.

The big question that can be taken away from this is:

1) Why the change from 어리다 -> 젊다 ?

Disclaimer: I’m not Devsisters so I can really only make guesses but here’s the take we ended up with.

The writers for CRK realized that using the word 어리다 ended up making Young Prince Dark Choco seem younger than he should be, and that 젊다 was a more reasonable choice to properly depict Dark Choco’s age.

Something interesting that was brought up in addition to this point while this section was being checked over is that 어린 왕자 다크초코 쿠키 makes Young Prince Dark Choco sound like he’s a naive little boy who doesn’t know anything about the world because he is too young while 젊은 시절의 다크초코 쿠키 makes him sound like he’s a proper aged man who went through lots of things to obtain many achievements.

I’d also like to point out that they also haven’t changed the way they refer to Young Prince Dark Choco in CROB. It’s still 어린 왕자 다크초코 쿠키 (and I took the screenshot yesterday as of writing this to double check). And both CRK and CROB are treated as mainline games (but probably alternate universes) that are no more canon than the other.

If you ask me what this possibly means, I really don’t have an answer LOL

“So if they aged Young Prince Dark Choco up in CRK, how much older is he supposed to be compared to? Is it possible they aged him up to be an adult?”

The answer to these questions can be found on a specific post posted on March 25th, 2022 by @ gingerbrave_dev on instagram (and @ GingerBrave_Dev on twitter). Gingerbrave_dev is one of the official Cookie Run accounts.

It’s a collage of 4 pictures that depict Dark Choco Cookie growing up. The caption on both Instagram and Twitter is the same which reads as follows:

The important thing here is that Young Prince Dark Choco is *included* in this collage which is said by an official Cookie Run account to be a depiction of his childhood.

Meaning that it’s more likely that if there’s a possible cutoff for Young Prince Dark Choco’s age, the oldest Young Prince Dark Choco could be is 18. (The age range for adolescence, the last stage of child development, is between 13 - 18). But because they include Young Prince Dark Choco in this post, I personally think that Young Prince Dark Choco isn’t meant to be an adult overall.

(Ok quick edit: Adolescence is apparently the transitionary stage between childhood and adulthood but tbh I’m not sure if most people sit down and double check that every exact piece of info aligns with the correct word and definition when designing a character).

And that’s pretty much all I have on official statements and canon that directly (not really) talks about Young Prince Dark Choco’s age.

However, I want to shift the focus from discussing directly about what his age is to why I personally read Young Prince Dark Choco more as a teenager.

When I first saw Young Prince Dark Choco back in 2019, what stuck out to me was the stark contrast between this past version of Dark Choco and his current self. Young Prince Dark Choco is so much more hopeful and driven compared to his current self. He exudes a lot more confidence based on his lines and his main goal in CROB is to save his kingdom by gaining more power. We get the implications from how pessimistic current Dark Choco is that his own actions (obtaining the Strawberry Jam sword) leads to his kingdom’s downfall and he regrets those actions from his past.

For me, that was how I originally concluded he was a teenager. And honestly, I never really reflected about the actual reasoning until we started having this discourse 2 years later because the headcanon just seemed really natural to me.

Fast forward to January/February 2021 with the release of Cookie Run Kingdom, which ended up giving us a lot more lore on Dark Choco. There are two things that are relevant to my proposition of Dark Choco being a teenager.

1) The CRK Artbook

First released during the game’s release, it contains concept art of the world building and the characters (playable characters at the start of the game + ancients + legendaries), who get their own page or two to themselves.

I’m pulling this image off the internet because the one thing that stands out to me and that is also relevant to what we’re talking about is that the current Dark Choco presents more similarly to when he was a child (they’re both quiet and hold serious expressions on their faces).

Meaning that Young Prince Dark Choco is confirmed to not be Dark Choco’s original personality (for lack of better words. I don’t know how to word this better). And seeing Dark Choco and Dark Cacao standing next to each other, you can see how much they resemble each other. Like father, like son.

So the question is: why is Young Prince Dark Choco’s demeanor completely different from when he was younger?

Personally, I think the answer is much more simple than one might think: Young prince Dark Choco was a teenager. More specifically (and this is how I’ll segueway into the next section), Young Prince Dark Choco was an earnest teenager prince who began to question and challenge the traditions/structure of the Dark Cacao Kingdom and of his father.

2) Dark Choco, Dark Cacao, and the Generational Divide that Drives Them Apart

The release of Dark Mode would bring both a lot more long-awaited lore for Dark Choco, and also Dark Cacao Cookie, who piqued people’s interest especially since he is Dark Choco’s father.

The most significant moments happen through the magic-induced flashbacks Dark Choco is forced to relive through, where Young Prince Dark Choco interacts with multiple people. This includes his Dark Cacao, who is the only person to have two separate flashbacks.

The first flashback is a conversation between Dark Choco and Dark Cacao which will be posted below:

What Dark Choco says here stands out to me: “Our Kingdom is in need of change…! We can’t keep hiding behind our walls!

The Dark Cacao Kingdom’s walls is a major subject of Chapters 13 and 14, as one of the main conflicts in that chapter is between the people and Dark Cacao. The villagers outside the kingdom’s walls have been struggling with food shortages and attacks from wild animals. They’ve been trying to contact the king for help but Affogato intercepts and closes the door on them before they can. Meanwhile, most of the resources are being used on maintaining the kingdom’s walls, which causes a change in the portion of the food Dark Cacao’s subjects are receiving. Affogato takes advantages of this to try to cause dissent among Dark Cacao’s court, which was his original plan until the Cookies of Darkness show up.

What’s revealed about why Dark Cacao spends so much time and resources on maintaining the kingdom’s walls is that the walls serve as a safeguard against the Licorice monsters in the Licorice Sea from overtaking the land and eventually the entire world. We get to see a great example of this as Licorice Cookie summons a gigantic Licorice Monster that proceeds to break down a significant portion of the walls.

So from what we read in chapters 13 and 14, we can conclude that the walls is very necessary in protecting the Dark Cacao Kingdom and the Licorice Monsters are nothing to be laughed at. They’re formidable enemies.

It’s very likely from the way that the walls are Dark Cacao’s #1 priority rather than directly addressing whatever is happening with the villages outside the walls that Dark Cacao probably has had previous firsthand experience with the Licorice Monsters and consider them that much of a serious threat.

From the way Young Prince Dark Choco talks to Dark Cacao in the flashback, it sounds like he doesn’t share the same perspective as Dark Cacao.

This is why I think Young Prince Dark Choco being a teenager is a major factor into this difference of perspective.

The thing about teenagers is that during that stage of life, they are going through a lot or at least they think they’re going through a lot because that’s when puberty starts to kick in and the hormones start jumping over the place.

They start questioning their identity. Who they are, what they want to be, what their role is in society. They’re trying to figure out how to be their own person.

They can start questioning the rules. Why am I doing [insert here] ? Why doesn’t Mom and Dad let me do this and that? Why do I have to do this? And because of this, they can become defiant and challenge authority and even what they previously just accepted as fact.

Because of this, teenagers take risks and can make bad or stupid decisions all the time. They end up clashing more with their parents because their parents recognize that their kid will regret what they’re doing later due to the consequences their kid will have to face (and possibly even due to firsthand experience when they themselves were teenagers).

I think all of this applies to this particular flashback.

a) Questioning

Young Prince Dark Choco argues that the kingdom, and by extension, the way Dark Cacao runs it needs to change. He describes kingdom’s walls not as defense, but as a means to hide, which frames the amount of time that the people of the Dark Cacao Kingdom have been living behind as a sign of fear/cowardice. This is also in response to Dark Cacao telling him that he’s still young and has a lot to learn. The flashback seems to throw us, the reader, right into the middle of the conversation without any previous context but with Dark Choco’s response, I think the conversation they were having is overall related to Young Prince Dark Choco’s response.

b) Identity

Something to keep in mind that every person is unique and how they grow up is largely influenced by their environment (the family and friends around them, their socioeconomic status, etc).

Young Prince Dark Choco is not your average human being Cookie. He is the son of Dark Cacao, who is the one of the most powerful cookies in the entire cast outside of the legendaries and the dragons, a warrior known for his abnormal strength (the sword he uses takes 3 regular cookies to carry it) and heroic deeds (like splitting the White and Black Dragon which is treated like a legendary tale), and due to all of the previous, an esteemed king beloved by all of his subjects.

By being the son of Dark Cacao and therefore, the prince of the Dark Cacao Kingdom, Young Prince Dark Choco had a whole legacy to live up to. And although we know Young Prince Dark Choco ends up not being able to live to that legacy due to the Strawberry Jam Sword, we do know from other characters that Dark Choco at that time was doing really well.

Note that if Caramel Arrow, the First Watcher, says that Dark Choco Cookie taught her how to use the bow, then that means that he is most likely also exemplary not with just swordsmanship but also archery as well.

Also don’t forget about how Dark Choco saves the Milk Village from a pack of cream wolves, which leaves a great impression on the Milk Cookie we know.

For the most part, I think Young Prince Dark Choco cares about the people and the kingdom he lives in. He seems very earnest in wanting to help his kingdom from what can be seen in his costume lines in CROB.

But I also think there’s one more underlying possibility behind Young Prince Dark Choco’s character: Young Prince Dark Choco wants to be a hero like his own father because he wants his father’s approval.

In Chapter 14. Dark Choco and Dark Cacao have a very heated conversation right before they try to kill each other. In this conversation, Dark Choco talks about the grievances he’s held against his father over the many years since he was banished. One of the grievances that he mentions is about how he wishes his father cared about him more.

(Note: There’s been issues with the ENG dub for Ch 13 and 14 where the localization makes Dark Choco come off as harsher and more insensitive (so to speak) even if it’s not accurate to the original text.

For the first screenshot, a more accurate translation would be “Ever since I was little, you didn’t give me anything sweet and treated me harshly. We were not even close as father and son like other people.”

Second screenshot is fine.)

This is later acknowledged by Dark Cacao himself as who says after they finish their heated conversation, fight, and finish their sword fight with Dark Cacao defeating Dark Choco: “It is clear as day now… My life’s greatest regret is that I never gave you enough… love”. (And this acknowledgment and really the confrontations leading up to the acknowledgment is the key to Dark Choco finally being able to break away from the sword, but that’s an analysis for another day).

There’s also these illustrations from the art book that stand out to me in this regard (and also makes me depressed). The first illustration showcases young Dark Choco walking behind his father and in his shadow. It actually gets redrawn in a different perspective in the collage of Dark Choco’s childhood I showed earlier, where it adds the detail of young Dark Choco tugging at Dark Cacao’s cloak. In the second illustration, Dark Choco is holding onto the Strawberry Jam sword and staring down at Dark Cacao, who is seated and bent over.

The thing that stays consistent is that Dark Cacao’s back is turned towards him, and I think this represents both this distance in their relationship and Dark Choco’s inability to ever connect with Dark Cacao very well.

I think the combination of his accomplishments during this part of his life and his desire to be closer to his father and gain his approval causes Dark Choco to start both overestimating his abilities and coming to the wrong conclusions. And I don’t necessarily mean this as “Dark Choco became arrogant” because even Dark Cacao says it himself: “What a bright and responsible child he was… Kind, humble…”

But I do believe the reason Young Prince Dark Choco’s costume lines in CROB and the monologue Dark Choco gives after he decides to quit working for Dark Enchantress talks about power and how he was looking for it is because Young Prince Dark Choco wrongly assumed that the kingdom’s problems were a result of not having enough power and then concluded that he could solve those issues if he found a way to become more powerful.

And with what I talked about earlier about how Dark Cacao most likely considers the Licorice Monsters a serious threat that can’t instead just be simply dealt and done with, there’s a chance that Dark Choco not only overestimates his own abilities but also underestimates how powerful and dangerous the Licorice Monsters are because he’s likely never had any firsthand experience with them in his lifetime unlike Dark Cacao.

And my guess is that Dark Cacao noticed this and tried to advise Dark Choco against this conclusion, and that’s what at the root of the first flashback between Young Prince Dark Choco and Dark Cacao.

3) Defiance

Unfortunately, the last two sections I’ve just talked about ends up leading to what we know ends up happening to Dark Choco. He does not listen to Dark Cacao. He finds the Strawberry Jam Sword, believing that it’ll give him the power he needs to solve his problems. Instead he falls prey to what the sword whispers to him, and this results in slashing his father in the chest. This results in Dark Cacao banishing Dark Choco from entering the Dark Cacao Kingdom.

TDLR for this section: The difference in the years of experience between Dark Choco and Dark Cacao causes a major clash between them on how to tackle the Dark Cacao Kingdom’s current issues. Out of both an earnest desire to help the Kingdom he grew up in and the people he grew up with and cares about and a desire to gain his father’s approval by striving to be the type of hero his father is, Dark Choco looks for the Strawberry Sword and falls victim to its powers, which heavily damages the relationship between father and son all the way until Chapter 14 of CRK.

You’ve probably reached this part still absorbing a bunch of information and speculation I’ve thrown at you. Unfortunately, I still have to talk about Milk so yes the post somehow still isn’t over. Luckily or unluckily (depending on how you interpret it), there’s a lot less stuff I can really say about his age, and there won’t be a very extensive character analysis like there is with Dark Choco because Milk Cookie does not have nearly the amount of lore or dedicated writing as Dark Choco does.

Milk in the Dark Mode flashbacks in CRK is referred to as 우유 일족의 어린 쿠키 which translates to Young Cookie of the Milk Tribe. As you can see, the word 어리다 is used to refer to Milk, indicating that Milk Cookie was definitely a child. He’s nowhere close to being an adult.

Unlike with Dark Choco, there really aren’t any other details in his backstory that really suggest a certain age range. The most prominent characteristics about Milk Cookie is that he is strongly attached to his beliefs, and within those beliefs is the belief that Dark Choco is an infallible hero that stems from what happened in the past. The root of that belief is admiration, and admiration… isn’t an age-specific trait. You can look up to many types of people and have role models at any point of your life.

I think really the one thing that does get indicated is that Milk is undeniably younger than Dark Choco.

The first image is the concept art for Milk Cookie that was released around Milk Cookie’s release (I assume. I didn’t see this until 2-3 years later). The second image is from the background of Milk’s doctor costume’s gacha art in CROB.

I think that stands out to me the most is that after staring at it, both of these share a pretty similar height gap between them. However, the second photo makes both of them seem taller especially Milk because of Dark Choco’s legs, which are almost half of his body, gets cut off by the photo. The first image also makes Dark Choco seem a lot bigger because of how it’s sketched out (the shoulder pads and cloak end up making Dark Choco look a lot bigger than he actually is in general LOL).

If you asked me to try to gauge the age gap between these two photos, the only thing I’d tell you really is that there’s no way it’s a 10-15 year age gap; height gap is way too short for that. But I can’t tell you a definitive guess because I’m going to be honest: Cookie Run does not do a great job telling you the ages of characters and just leaves it up to the reader to interpret themselves. There’s not really a standard for what a teenager looks like in Cookie Run, and I feel like that’s the reason why people in this fandom really sort characters into either children or adults. It’s because of this that I also think that nobody in the fandom really knows how to determine that themselves, or else I wouldn’t have written a whole analysis on why I think it’s actually reasonable to see Dark Choco as a teenager in this post. (And there’s also a few other characters that have also gone through age discourse but I don’t want to even touch that right now at all LOL).

(Edit at 12:22 pm because I feel like I need to add this: It’s not the fandom’s fault for not being able to determine ages. It’s solely on Devsisters alone because if the writers aren’t clear, then it’s much harder for the fandom to agree upon anything.)

I also think that realistically you can’t really… come up with an infallible standard for how tall a person is supposed to be at a certain age because people grow up differently depending on multiple factors. People of the same age group aren’t all the same height or weight in real life.

And it’s even more difficult to tell literally anything if the writers refuse to actually confirm anything clearly and instead use vague descriptive terms.

That being said, I can’t actually point at you and say you’re wrong because of what age gap you give to Milk and Dark Choco because as I said in the beginning of this post, I don’t know anything. I also think it does go both ways though, and less people should stop acting like their interpretation has been completely canonized.

But at the end of the day, we’ll keep reading the same stories from the same franchise and interpret how we want to. I HC DarkMilk with a two year age gap. You don’t have to agree (and I bet a lot of people don’t LOL). And that’s okay.

If you ask me whether I’ll make another post talking about this topic, the answer is an absolute resounding no because I think this is the most in-depth I could possibly be about this topic to the point this is definitely my longest post ever. I don’t think there is anything else I can say.

If you liked this analysis, you don’t need to do anything. If you’re extremely tired from reading this, this is the most understandable reaction to this post, and I hope you have a good day.

#holy fucking shit. it’s done. it’s over. oh my fucking goddd #cookie run #cookie run ovenbreak #cookie run kingdom #dark choco cookie #dark cacao cookie #milk cookie #darkmilk #dark cacao cookie gets tagged because he’s an important part of the analysis #cinder rambles #long post

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piosplayhouse · 1 year

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Horse Isle 3: The Yandere Sim of Horse Games

(or, an extended study in how to hate your own playerbase as much as humanly possible)

(or, or, tldr there's pretty much no updated information on just how ridiculously bad this game is so here's a writeup on how I got banned and all the subsequent information I found during my time playing for documentation's sake)

Part I. The Backstory

My beloved followers will know that a few months ago I began playing Horse Isle 3, a horse-raising MMO surprisingly released in the year of our horse 2019 despite its 1997-era website and Runescape-esque graphics. Some of my play through (mostly just horse pictures) is chronicled in my tag #homophobic scum horse chronicles ¹ if you want to see how drippy my horses were before they killed me.

Now, don't get me wrong. I have endless respect for small teams of game devs that manage to create insanely impressive products-- which HI3's elaborate real-genetics breeding system, its main draw, certainly is. Coding is hard, modeling is hard, moderation is hard. Tip a coin to your local small indie teams that work hard to make incredible art.

However, HI3 is far from an admirable success story about a small dev team that triumphed over its obstacles.

The game is known for a variety of things, chief among them being the staff's rampant homophobia (which has earned it the moniker "the homophobic horse game"), hilariously uncharismatic mods (to the point where one of the main moderators, Connie, is mentioned by NAME in the majority of poor reviews of the game), the dev team's unrepentant rejection of criticism, and racism with a side of downplaying war crimes.

(Screenshots taken from Sitejabber, here)

Now, it's marketed as a game for ages 8+, which, as I've briefly talked about before, is unfortunately a rarity in today's hostile internet climate. I grew up on a variety of typical child friendly MMOs like ye olde Pixie Hollow and PetPet Park, and truly lament that so many of these have been shut down over the years. As such, I have no issue with strict rules or word filters in games, with the caveat that they are effective and genuinely intended to keep people safe. Kids are naive, and can and will say things that they shouldn't (I, for example, got kicked from a Minecraft server when I was 8 because I posted in chat that my mom told me sex wasn't a bad word. things happen). Filters are a very appropriate tool to aid manual moderation of chat features, especially in an environment where mistakes will be made.

However, HI3's, as shown below (words that are forbidden from chat are marked in red), are... questionably selective.

(Screenshot taken by Alice Ruppert, from here)

This appears to be attributed to the fact that along with having horrible moderators, HI3 also seems to have a remarkably horrible developer backend, which is a trend that you'll see pop up quite a lot in this post. Taken straight from the horse's (haha) mouth, the lead developer is the only person who seems to be able or willing to add to the filter list, and for whatever reason only wants to block the "most common inappropriate words"- because saying transgender is more of an issue than nazi and gulag I guess.

(Screenshot taken from Top R.'s Sitejabber review, here)

¹ I'm not sure how far this will reach out of my audience, and since people have already assumed weird stuff about me I thought I should probably clarify-- I'm not calling the game "homophobic scum" ghghg, my play through was focused on making horse versions of characters from a novel called "scum villain", so I took the scum and added horse (I actually have another tag for a different horse breeding game called "scum horse chronicles" so I needed to distinguish them easily but am not very good at tagging). That's it.

Part II. The Game

The game itself is, putting it simply, a mess at best and openly hostile towards newcomers at worst. The game's UI is comparable to your average petsite with 20 thousand things to click on but if you tried to navigate that while also watching the Pilgrim's Progress movie by Scott Cawthorn on 90% of your screen. This is a very good overview of what your experience first logging in will be like, with the added caveat that talking in global chat costs in game currency and that the game doesn't tell you this at ALL until you try to type in chat, and that depending when you log on it's entirely possible that you'll spawn into a completely dead town miles away from anyone who can help you, wilderness survivor-style.

To make things more complicated, information about the game is split between the game itself and the laughably horrible website/forums. Spectacularly enough, the forums, which provide vital game information and rule elaborations, cannot be searched in any way (not via Google or any hard-baked search bar) and are regularly purged by admins to erase evidence of scandals and poor moderation complaints.

Now, something you will find to be generally people's biggest issue with HI3 is their strict no "date-speak" rule, which sounds ok on paper but is worded *just* vaguely enough to give the moderators full jurisdiction over whether or not they think you're breaking the rules. Selective moderation is a major theme in the HI3 chronicle, but it is perhaps most documented with regards to this rule, because what the hell does "boyfriend/girlfriend talk" even mean?? Outside of vagueness, this rule has also been scrutinized extensively by others due to the fact that a pair of previous moderators were openly married with the igns "FrogLips" and "MrsFrogLips". I don't personally think this is super condemning, since kids usually address adults by Mr/Ms etc whether or not they know they're in a relationship, but regardless it's clear that the complete lack of elaboration on what this rule means can be easily manipulated to lodge any number of complaints against people.

(Screenshot from the Horse Isle website rules page, here)

What I will say, however, is that this rule would probably hold more water if the game wasn't literally about breeding horses.

You can pimp out your horses, you can pay others to breed your mares, you can put any number of special (real life currency-bought) amulets on your horses to make them more fertile/have twins/give birth faster. I paid $1000 to castrate Jiang Cheng. The word "stud" (which btw, is another word for a black butch lesbian) is used constantly. Perhaps most shockingly, horse inbreeding is very common and accepted among the community, to the point that it is explicitly mentioned and EXPLAINED in the game guide; the only penalization for it is that your incest product foal will have a lower intelligence stat. Call me old-fashioned, but I feel as though implementing and acknowledging that horses can breed with their own relatives is hmm perhaps more harmful than another player saying the word gay, but what do I know.

(Screenshot from the Horse Isle website game guide page, here (only accessible with an account))

Well, you might ask, after you breed and sell a horse, is there any way to put a brand on it so you know it's from your ranch? That's where the "prefix" system comes in. Prefixes are bolded titles that appear in front of a horses name in lists and in the overworld, and are described in the official game guide as follows:

(Screenshot from the same Horse Isle website game guide page as linked previously)

I think you can toggle them off if you don't want to see them, though I could be wrong. They're basically just 1-5 letter titles you can put on your own horses (nobody else's, importantly). There's no way to search prefixes, and you won't see them in game unless either a horse with a prefix is listed in auctions or you actually encounter someone in-game and see their horse.

In fact, I would learn later that not even the moderators monitor the prefixes, and apparently have no way to mass-delete them. At all.

(Image taken from an anonymous friend)

Now, it's not unusual that a game as complicated as HI3 would inevitably have a pretty taxing server-side code. Millions of multifaceted assets and features is really nothing to scoff at. However, the notion that your lead developer has to perform a manual search in the game's code to delete the equivalent of a stamp from every instance individually is hilarious. I'm not going to pretend to be a game developer, but there HAS to be a better way of coding a feature that intakes user-generated content that should probably be monitored regularly than that, right? Or, at least, there should be a robust filter system that could prevent any issues from occurring before they would need to be fixed so tediously. You might think.

On December 29th, 2022, I discovered how to register a prefix. It's very common to headcanon the characters I was naming my horses after as transgender, and I thought it would be cute to attach "TRANS" to my horses as a nod to this. However, a filter blocked the word. I was disappointed, but not surprised², and then tried to think of another word that was under 5 letters. To my complete and gay surprise, "GAY" was not filtered out, and henceforth, this worked as my prefix.

As you can see on the popup here, there are scant guidelines for what the requirements for a prefix should be. And, in this moment of apparently utter foolishness, I was under the impression that since "GAY" was NOT filtered out despite there clearly being a filter on this function, it was ok to register. Possibly it's not filtered because it's a synonym for "happy", I thought, which is also cute because I do like when horses are happy. Perhaps the staff had learned from their past criticism and had loosened the restrictions slightly because they felt restructuring was appropriate now that gay marriage is legal in the US, I imagined.

(My original post)³

What I could not imagine, however, was that the only reason the word wasn't filtered out, despite being possibly the most common sexuality-related word, was just because the lead dev couldn't be assed to add it to the filter list. And that apparently I was supposed to know this because it would lead to a permanent ban on my second offense with no warning.

² Hence typing "eat shit lol". Admittedly childish of me, but I didn't put a lot of thought into the post because it was just part of a casual silly live blog I was doing to blow off steam. The "if I get banned" tag surprisingly was not referencing "GAY", as I genuinely thought I was in the clear for that for reasons stated above, but because I tried to register "TRANS" and then posted about it online. You don't have to believe me, but I feel the need to defend myself since some people have wildly extrapolated that my actions were malicious instead of just a split second decision I made because I was bored one morning.

³ Despite the pop-up box saying that prefixes cannot be removed, they actually can at any time, given only that the person that owns the prefix unregisters the horse from it. The unregistering mechanic is for whatever reason not told to the player upon registering the prefix, but is mentioned in the official game guide linked above.

Part III. The Ban, The Report

I will preface this section by saying that I played the game normally. I do like being outrageous sometimes for my followers' entertainment, but I really don't like dragging random people into my antics if they aren't interested. Because of this, I really didn't interact with other players unless we were mutuals on some other platform. I rarely used the chat feature except to participate in server-wide events that required team participation, and I typically just explored on my own for fun. In general I think I was a pretty ok player, objectively, which lines up with my user trust score.

You see, the way moderators of HI3 allegedly keep track of rule breaking is through a "user trust score" with points added if you use features in the game, help people, etc, and points deducted if you violate rules. Anecdotally I've heard that around the -10 total points mark is when moderators put you on a sort of list to be monitored for suspension or punishment, which is pretty reasonable.

By the time I was banned, I had a score of +31. The -10 offset was a part of this debacle. The only thing I had ever done in the game which warranted any kind of violation was, as you will soon see, literally just naming about 30 of my own horses "GAY", a sin egregious enough to apparently offset about 200 hours worth of playtime with no issues.

Because of this, I was a little bit confused on multiple levels. For one, I had never even seen a moderator in game, nor been informed of discipline at any time before. On top of that, their permanent ban notification is extremely strange and vague. The text pop up when you try to log in just reads "Account currently banned -1 minutes ().", which is probably just copied straight from the server-side code for things and just wasn't translated into user-side comprehensibility. You'll also notice there is a "()" section in the notification, which I would assume is where they put the reason for bans, except for the fact that mine was completely blank.

The website which allegedly would hold more info just repeated a near identical code: "BANNED! -1min. Reason:".

So, with nothing else to go off of, I messaged support on the jankiest help center submissions I've ever seen on a website with this:

"Insisting" and "total disregard" are very strong words to use for a situation in which I just typed a word into a textbox because the game let me, I'd think, which is why I tried to reason with her. The prefixes mentioned in my message are well-known amongst the userbase and are much older and wider-spread than mine, so I would think that there would be at least some sort of precedent for this. The "geldings and yearlings" reasoning was mostly a joke, but also intended to express that the nature of an acronym (as the majority of prefixes seemed to be) is that it can be interpreted in many ways. Intent was thrown around a lot when I was discussing the issues of prefixes with other users, and it seemed to have been used to excuse previous behavior in situations where mods liked the users in question better.

I also cannot emphasize enough how much they did not warn me about my prefix being removed. When I logged in and saw my horses' names did not include it, I was suspicious that the moderators removed it just because of the history of their behavior. However, I had no hard evidence because they did not inform me at ALL. Not through in-game mail systems, not through server messages, not through the website. Complete radio silence except for the addition of an unexplained "-10" to my user score. I did complain to some people that I thought it was removed, but a combination of things suggested that it wasn't a huge deal, so I mostly let it lie. For one, I had over 100 hours of playtime and was mildly worried that one of my chat messages had been flagged without my knowledge. For another, my profile text had also mysteriously disappeared, probably because of a glitch, so who knows what could happen in this game. Lastly, I went to the prefix registry again just to check and hilariously enough, they didn't actually block "GAY" from the database. Yeah, they apparently individually deleted it from all of my horses, but couldn't be assed to add such an "inappropriate" word to their filter system.

So I just registered it again and publicly told people that I would do it again if the mods didn't actually tell me to stop. I didn't really care about the prefix because to me, the feature was purely cosmetic. All I wanted was transparency from the staff.

Well, anyway, I assume Connie couldn't think of a comeback, so she just closed my report. I was annoyed because quite literally none of my questions were answered and she didn't even refer to anything in specifics. It would take less than 1 second to type the number of the rule I violated, but I guess that was too much work for her.

I tried to give them as many outs as possible to just apologize about poor communication, but they didn't even take the bare minimum. I would also like to mention that this support ticket process is the ONLY way to directly communicate with any staff. There's no ability to upload files or images on this system, and no email listed that you could contact. So essentially, there's no way to give actual evidence for anything you say even if you want to.

Kat, who is known as the slightly-more-reasonable-but-still-pretty-bad mod then picked up the case. Her response actually provided specific information, which made it leagues above Connie's, but still included some very strange elements for sure.

The notion that this game is intended for a worldwide audience is especially funny to me because you would really think if they cared about other countries they wouldn't violate their own rule one by using a slur for Europe's largest ethnic minority, but ok. It's a weird hill to die on considering how USA-dominated the staff's opinions towards rules are (Connie justifies the usage of a slur for Rromani people based off the opinion of a single roommate she had who reclaimed it, Joe defends a store in-game being called "The Gulag" because Americans don't think gulags are that bad (discussed and cited in the conclusions section)). But then again, picking and choosing what parts of other countries' customs you want to respect is very American, which is why I think they should add an extra star rating for its patrioticness on the website.

As I mentioned before, the prefixes I included in my response are definitely older and more commonly-used than mine, so I'm not sure how they wouldn't have seen them before. This comment also ties back to the suggestion that the moderators have very little control or insight over a distinct feature of their game, which is not a great thing to admit so casually.

Kat has a strange habit of immediately contradicting herself in the same paragraph, as can be seen here. "The glitches never happen and bugs were quickly fixed, but games still have bugs". "People that break the rules usually write in to ask what was wrong, but most people usually never ask". At this point I think we can confidently say that they don't even make an attempt to proofread any of their responses, to be honest.

Her 7th paragraph has one of my favorite lines in this exchange. "If we had to notify players every time we made moderator changes to their account we would spend 24 hours a day" is giving huge Yandere Dev "stop emailing me because I have to spend 24 hours a day reading all my emails instead of coding" energy. You really have to wonder why these people that seem to hate moderating so much are moderators.

You can tell by my response, but I do not like the use of "most" and "usually" in this at all. What's your standard isn't others' standards, and this is a topic which needs to be navigated gently, especially when kids are concerned. I never played the previous Horse Isles. I had no experience with the mod team, or with violations, or with anything because no one bothered to take five seconds to send me a message. No, I did not know that you would permaban me for typing a word that's in one of the most popular traditional Christmas songs in a place were only people who interacted with me would be able to see it. Most games would not do this. To take a lackadaisical approach to your literal job of community management because you want people to moderate themselves is contradictory to your claims of keeping children safe.

I will admit I was being a bit cheeky here as a subtle hint that perhaps they should take feedback, but I also would have taken a genuine response. I try my best to be as polite as possible to tech support staff because not everyone is! But they're people too and a simple thank you is worth a lot in customer service, even virtual. But Kat... you're not really giving me anything to work with here! If anyone reading this has feedback for how I could've rephrased things, feel free to comment them honestly. I actually ran drafts of these messages through a few people before sending them to make sure I was as concise and polite as possible, even if support clearly wasn't interested in reciprocating the effort ("following out rules using the the GAY to begin with"...?).

Part IV. The Backlash

I won't go too into depth in this section because it's more personal than documentarian, so feel free to skip to the next section if you want!

After this, the girlies were not happy with me. The one saving grace of HI3 that I've heard pop up over and over again is that the community is great. And a lot of users are! Don't think I'm disparaging people who play the game because I'm not-- it's a really fun experience with the right people. I was in a Discord server with a lot of people who were extremely helpful and kind.

However, within the community, there's also a pervasive culture of silence. According to Alice Ruppert of The Mane Quest, a lot of people will refuse to go public with their complaints about the staff due to fear of retribution, which I feel is unfortunate but understandable. There's a pressure to shut up and eat your food lest you be seen as someone causing controversy for the sake of it and ruining the sanctity of the game, which is an attitude explicitly encouraged by the staff (discussed more in the next section).

I liveblogged my entire correspondence with the support team to a group of other players for the 2 days I talked to them, and did have a lot of acceptance from people who appreciated someone speaking out. After the 2020 Mane Quest article, public information had sort of just gone dark as the community was pushed further into niche seclusion, despite things not improving at all. However, towards the end of my messaging, a group of people that I had never even spoken to or seen online before accused me of a variety of things ranging from "displaying my sexuality to children" (note: all I ever did was name my horses "GAY". I never once talked about my own sexuality in-game, nor did I say the word in chat ever) to "joining the server to cause drama" to "mocking the lgbt community by throwing around the word gay" (actually I'll attach a picture of this one even though I don't want to put people on blast in this section just because its so funny).

I think most of this can be attributed to the game having gained such a notoriety that longtime players, especially those with strong nostalgic feelings, have become completely desensitized to it. And this compounds with the fact that the game is so niche it doesn't yet have a good alternative to turn to to create a toxic cocktail where people tell themselves that they have to be loyal to the staff to play this one of a kind game-- and that anyone who doesn't follow them just doesn't understand. It's really sad, honestly.

Part V. Conclusions

I don't necessarily think the devs of HI3 are legitimately consciously homophobic-- unfortunately LGBT rights are still controversial amongst the largely southern and rural population of horse enthusiasts, and I could understand if they felt it necessary to skim the line towards conservatism to maintain a userbase. It's cowardly and dumb but it's not a sin to do what you have to do to survive in a capitalistic hellscape as cutthroat as the game industry.

However, what I do think the devs are is power-hungry and hypocritical. They have failed at every turn at community management because they're unwilling to admit they make mistakes, instead choosing to issue non-apologies like "[we] regret you guys got so upset and did not realize neither our true intentions nor motivations nor the whole situation [that we said it's ok that a player has a shop called The Gulag because it's 'not direct or violent']". To respond this way to a userbase filled allegedly with young children as a fully grown adult with a wife and kids is laughably out of touch. 'Sorry your fee-fees were hurt by our adult moderator responding to a serious complaint about inappropriate user-generated content with "lol", but actually you just misunderstood us and we're going to ban anyone who brings this up again' is the sort of response you'd see from the teenage mod team of an Undertale amino, not the supposedly responsible head dev of a 'rare oasis of kid friendly content'.

Telling an audience of impressionable kids that the fact that their feelings are hurt is their fault for not intuiting the intentions of 40+ year old adults is unbelievably toxic, and it's no wonder why people are so nostalgia-bound to feverishly shut down criticism about the games. They've been guilt-tripped into believing the mod team can do no wrong and any controversy, even if valid, that springs up is just extrapolated by people that haven't been laboriously groomed to know what the mod team wants to hear.

Countless times throughout my time researching and playing the game, the number one advice I've heard has always been "suck up to the mods or they won't do anything for you". It's crystal clear that the moderators care more about the joy they get from having power over some 200 users who will kiss their ass if they say a buzzword more than they care about you, your child, or the game itself.

It's essentially a model scam Kickstarter's wet dream, a game propelled to release and popularity by its singular defining feature and left to fester on the shelf as the only game in its niche market. Because of this, I believe there's truly no better way to describe HI3, with its messy backend, refusal to improve, narcissistic moderators, broken features, poor visuals, and inefficiency than as the Yandere Simulator of horse games.

#img descriptions in alt text!#lmk if there's any way I can make this more accessible! It's my first time writing something this long on tumblr :)#long post #really long posts #long posts #really long post #essay #hi3 #horse isle 3 #horse isle #fandom drama #hobby drama #discourse #homophobic scum horse chronicles

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