through thick and thin, i'll be here

note: this isn't about the actual life series, just a rp server based on them (the one I've been insane about for the last 2 months)

Bdubs had grown used to the shadows that curled and twisted, stretched out as if they are just short of reaching something most desirable. He'd seen them many a night, watching them warp and disfigure with the setting sun. Like the sun that ever so slowly dropped right now. Bdubs was sat on a little patch of grass, one of the very few not covered in flowers or weeds, head rolled back to embrace the golden glow. It was just reaching twilight. It wasn't very often he gave himself a break like this, so he made sure to soak up the moment. The way the clouds drifted through the air, the way the leaves danced with the light breeze. His hand dug into the ground, but no dirt was lifted. Ah. Bdubs had forgotten he was a ghost.

The last few days had been...quite the ride. It was another on of the games, with the watchers monitoring their every move. But this one was different. Not everyone felt that pull, that need, that bloodlust. Only some had that little voice that told them to burn the world to the ground. They were given the name "The Hands," and they had one mission: leave no one alive. And there was only one other difference, but it would change everything for everyone, Hand or not. There was no second chances, or third chances , or any for that matter. One life, that's it. And, of course, Bdubs lost it. Skizz had somehow made his way into the Crastle, and it was like killing a fish in a barrel. He'd tried to defend himself, but there was no point. A 6'1 behemoth of a man versus a 5'4 stick isn't a fight up for debate.

Which is why he's sitting here now, the light passing through his semi-transparent body, most notably the ebbing gash ripped through his gut. Void only knows why it hasn't closed yet, though it's probably a dead thing. But a positive (depending whether your a glass half full kinda guy) is that things like food, water and, most obviously, sleep. He didn't do anything incredible during the night, just watched the mobs stumble around brainlessly. And watched over Cleo, of course.

Once everyone was gone, when the town lost its final stand, only Cleo was left. She never could die, so they left her to rot. Only the ghosts could stay with her, but they all went their own ways. Bdubs didn't have anything against that, they had all been through absolute hell, but he just couldn't leave Cleo. He had nowhere else to go anyways. So, he just, kind of, stayed. He stayed by her side, desperately trying to play a part, even though the credits have already rolled.

Cleo was alone. Well, mostly, but we don't talk about Skizz (no no no no), and Bdubs and Sausage stayed with her. She was nothing but a shell of the person she was. No more cocky remarks, no more piercing laughter, just hatred and fire. The flower valley was the first to burn, the memorials of the fallen lost in the blaze. Next it was the crumbled remains of Dogwarts, then Monopoly Mountain, and the simple but Shelby and Katherine lived in, and the Plainer's house. Last of all was the Crastle, tore down and built back up, Bdubs could only watch as it fell once again.

There was nothing left for Cleo then, so she left it behind. All over the world, she wander hoping for a way to end her misery, but the two ghosts still followed her. Now, Bdubs can't speak for Sausage, but for him, staying with Cleo was a easy choice. He had made a promise to her, they're still a team, and that means no abandoning the other. Despite only talking twice since coming back to this hellhole, despite her tearing down the one thing that distracted Bdubs from the chaos outside, despite everything, he stayed.

Cause they're still a team, right?

Right?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

soooooo i did a thing m'lao. I wrote this in like, 2 hours in the car and. honestly, im happy with it. planning a sequel now, it's probably exactly what you think it'll be.

at some point it's just like. do they even fucking like the thing they're asking AI to make? "oh we'll just use AI for all the scripts" "we'll just use AI for art" "no worries AI can write this book" "oh, AI could easily design this"

like... it's so clear they've never stood in the middle of an art museum and felt like crying, looking at a piece that somehow cuts into your marrow even though the artist and you are separated by space and time. they've never looked at a poem - once, twice, three times - just because the words feel like a fired gun, something too-close, clanging behind your eyes. they've never gotten to the end of the movie and had to arrive, blinking, back into their body, laughing a little because they were holding their breath without realizing.

"oh AI can mimic style" "AI can mimic emotion" "AI can mimic you and your job is almost gone, kid."

... how do i explain to you - you can make AI that does a perfect job of imitating me. you could disseminate it through the entire world and make so much money, using my works and my ideas and my everything.

and i'd still keep writing.

i don't know there's a word for it. in high school, we become aware that the way we feel about our artform is a cliche - it's like breathing. over and over, artists all feel the same thing. "i write because i need to" and "my music is how i speak" and "i make art because it's either that or i stop existing." it is such a common experience, the violence and immediacy we mean behind it is like breathing to me - comes out like a useless understatement. it's a cliche because we all feel it, not because the experience isn't actually persistent. so many of us have this ... fluttering urgency behind our ribs.

i'm not doing it for the money. for a star on the ground in some city i've never visited. i am doing it because when i was seven i started taking notebooks with me on walks. i am doing it because in second grade i wrote a poem and stood up in front of my whole class to read it out while i shook with nerves. i am doing it because i spent high school scribbling all my feelings down. i am doing it for the 16 year old me and the 18 year old me and the today-me, how we can never put the pen down. you can take me down to a subatomic layer, eviscerate me - and never find the source of it; it is of me. when i was 19 i named this blog inkskinned because i was dramatic and lonely and it felt like the only thing that was actually permanently-true about me was that this is what is inside of me, that the words come up over everything, coat everything, bloom their little twilight arias into every nook and corner and alley

"we're gonna replace you". that is okay. you think that i am writing to fill a space. that someone said JOB OPENING: Writer Needed, and i wrote to answer. you think one raindrop replaces another, and i think they're both just falling. you think art has a place, that is simply arrives on walls when it is needed, that is only ever on demand, perfect, easily requested. you see "audience spending" and "marketability" and "multi-line merch opportunity"

and i see a kid drowning. i am writing to make her a boat. i am writing because what used to be a river raft has long become a fully-rigged ship. i am writing because you can fucking rip this out of my cold dead clammy hands and i will still come back as a ghost and i will still be penning poems about it.

it isn't even love. the word we use the most i think is "passion". devotion, obsession, necessity. my favorite little fact about the magic of artists - "abracadabra" means i create as i speak. we make because it sluices out of us. because we look down and our hands are somehow already busy. because it was the first thing we knew and it is our backbone and heartbreak and everything. because we have given up well-paying jobs and a "real life" and the approval of our parents. we create because - the cliche again. it's like breathing. we create because we must.

you create because you're greedy.

that relatable moment when you assumed the girl you used to care for perished in a tragic lab ablaze incident and only realized she still lived when you stumble upon her years later after you've erased yourself from everyone's memories and now she no longer remembers you

i think an incredibly funny part of the aiichi dynamic is that at least one of them has to be traumatized and/or possess incredible worldly exhaustion in order to even consider the other as a romantic love interest

like they need to go through decades and time loops of war and hopelessness and death and destruction in order to be like huh maybe this guy isn't so bad

of course this doesnt go for every fic (academy blues my beloved) but. a lot of them do and it's SO funny

im actually going to tear into totk’s dragon’s tears/ memories rn bc i remember feeling distinctly unsatisfied with them when i got all of them so im just going to write some general bullet points about them, about what i dislike or maybe what i do actually like about them, leaving out both master sword scenes and the mummydorf one because i’m here to talk about the stuff in the past not that

- off the bat (i play this game in english btw so all of this is based on the english text and translation i am aware some stuff is slightly different in other languages) im not really a fan of how the descriptions of all of the tears is just a literal description of what happens?? i think my issue with it is that some of the text is a little bit too in depth, as in it just tells you literally everything about the scene. this might be nitpick-y but i personally dont like it

- what’s up with zelda saying ‘but that must mean...!’ at the end of the scene. is it suggesting that she’s made the realization that rauru and sonia are the first king and queen of hyrule? because they literally tell her that like ten seconds before. i guess it’s suggesting she’s realizing she’s in the past but... idk the texts says ‘she’s left startled by a suspicion that she’s heard those names before’ yeah theyre the first king and queen of hyrule?? they tell her that. they tell her their names and that they are the first leaders of hyrule is she just now connecting the dots that she’s in the past? that’s what the next cutscene implies. but all of the surrounding dialogue and the description don’t suggest that that’s what she’s realizing i feel like this was kind of muddled in the translation

- why did sonia elbow rauru he was just standing weird he didnt say anything this isnt a nitpick im just confused. is it because he’s not being very empathetic towards what zelda’s going through? she elbows him and then she goes and talks to zelda why even elbow rauru. ordinarily you elbow someone like that if you mean for them to go do something why elbow someone if you’re going to do the thing you want anyways

- why doesnt zelda offer to help with the purah pad or anything like that. what happened to her sheikah tech fascination from botw. not even as someone actually familiar with the technology who could give mineru some points as to how it works

- what are sonia and zelda doing behind rauru when he shoots that insane fucking beam at the mulduga swarm they’re clearly doing something with their stones but like... are they amplifying rauru’s power somehow?? what do time powers have to do with the beam of light i dont- what were they doing please the text description only mentions him using his powers so are sonia and zelda just... supporting his powers? idk man

- dragon tear #5 is a whole can of worms with its worse-than-oot reenactment of that one scene from oot. why the focus on sonia and her tear btw. i mean yeah she dies to motivate rauru and zelda but like. why not aim for the new girl who probably doesn’t know how to use it as much and is probably more likely to be separate from the king who can shot insane lasers. im really not a fan of this scene for how strongly the game sides with rauru and zelda being passive and judgemental but ganondorf is literally the best part of it there’s a lot of character in just how he picks up his sword and stands up to leave

- putting memories 6 and 7 together just because of how there was just. no fucking care put into the idea of zelda learning to use her time powers. memory 6 zelda talks about wanting to use her time powers and sonia gives her tips on how she could use it and visualize the use of it and then in memory 7 she can just use it perfectly with great control and timing. why even bother talking about her nothing yet understanding how to use it when the very next scene she just uses it like it’s nothing. how much time has passed we get nothing to show us zelda trying to practice this power just. nope. she’s good she can use it perfectly. also more awkward dialogue sonia saying ‘what a picture zelda paints of him’ as she is. looking directly at zelda. change the line to like, ‘what a picture you paint of him’ she is literally looking right at zelda so why would she say it like that

- generally i feel like memory six should have been before 4 and 5 (4 being where she uses some power to... support??? rauru and it being before memory 5 so that there isnt this weird break in between the memories concerning ganondorf.) memory 6 does not have anything to do with memory 4 or 5 so just put it earlier so there isnt a weird shift in focus between the two big ganondorf scenes

- good god they introduce the idea of sonia and zelda being aware of ganondorf using a fake zelda but theres literally nothing about it having been a problem or them having experience or like. anything. they just TELL you that they know and suggest that it’s been like. a thing for a bit??? also obligatory ganondorf’s face model rigging is fucked comment he’s still the best part

- the pacing of these memories is just weird in general, memories 7 and 8 being separate but the same scene is strange when other memories are long as fuck but cover one event each, plus theres clearly barely any passage of time between memories 7 and 8 it almost feels like they were split up to fill space or just because otherwise it’d be... too long? man idk

- ‘queen sonia needs you!’ girl she is DEAD good fucking luck doing anything to help her

- ganondorf’s horse and its armor both look sick as fuck i really wish you got to see more of it outside the memory it appears in

- everything about the original sages honestly sucks. they aren’t characters they’re just walking macguffins. they have no names and are not relevant or mentioned or make any appearance until they are needed by the story. why does the zora sage talk about getting word about the attacked gerudo village in this scene when like. they’ve all met up and have clearly. been together for a bit. when she gives them the news it’s clearly the first they’ve heard of it... but... why would she wait until this moments to give this info unless for the benefit of the player watching the scene. why does the ZORA sage have this news and not... the gerudo sage?? what’s with the masks. they’re all made of zonaite or whatever sure theyre gifts from rauru but like. i hate that it kind of denotes them being subservient and lower than him and the zonai. honestly i really hate this scene in general mostly because of the uncomfortable showing of how rauru absolutely holds power over them and despite them being leaders as well they are expected to be wholly blindly loyal to him. rauru only gives them these stones when he needs their aid and they swear loyalty too him soon after but you also see that sonia and mineru have stones, too, so they’re clearly withholding these things despite it being kind of reasonable for him to give each race their own secret stone as further proof of their pact? there is so much shit to be said about the imperialistic themes or whatever in this fucking story and i really hate it

- i do kinda like how the next scene shows you that the one rock in the corner of that first hidden room in the forgotten temple is sonia’s grave

- zelda’s phrasing and description of how she and link found ganondorf is weird to me ‘he’s still alive’ ‘he lives on’ girl that was a mummy. he was not moving until you got there. he’s undead at best as far as you know. this is def a nitpick but eh. also the reliance on link is a... bit odd when zelda does not actually know that link is safe until she gets the master sword. its fine but still. also her shell-shocked expression after rauru talks about her being in the past for a reason is a bit... it doesn’t fit her emotion it’s kind of similar to the expression she had when sonia was killed

- the memory about the imprisoning war starts with practically the whole story up until now being repeated back to you by mineru with a decent amount of bias on mineru’s part and while it’s fine because of some of the extra stuff you learn but it does a lot more telling rather than showing when it comes to the actual imprisoning war and... idk the whole thing about their ‘fight’ kind of falls flat when you don’t actually see any fighting you just see that the sages have gotten their asses beat. i think it would have been a little interesting if in the god-awful repetitive sage-awakening scenes they had actually showed you the og sages fighting ganondorf instead of just. slow-mo freeze-frames for whatever. once again ganondorf if the best part of the scene

- the rest of the memories are fine idc

i get the feeling that the japanese-to-english translation was either all-around rough or somehow rushed, because some of the phrases in the game as well as some of the dialogue is really awkward and... could have been better. i don’t know how it works but it feels like a lot of it was very literal, direct translation and no one at noa thought that it ought to be tweaked just a little bit

these memories also do a fuck-ton of telling rather than showing and it really is like they don’t really trust you to connect the dots, and some of it does come off like they either didn’t want to make more memories or ran out of time or something. i felt like the memory of ganondorf just summoning his monsters and riding on his cool horse could have been a bit longer to actually show us the forces of hyrule fighting him and having a hard time with it

a lot of the character animations doesn’t have a whole lot of personality to them, ganondorf is the character who had the most distinct and interesting movements. rauru and sonia had their... singular movement (rauru putting a hand to his chin and sonia taking zelda’s hands) and zelda was kind of just... standing around and reacting to stuff, and neither mineru nor any of the other sages had any really interesting animations asides from mineru’s coughing fit in memory 16 (plus her reclining chair that was a nice touch). very few of their movements really express anything about the characters besides some really baseline values or traits.

the ordering of some memories is kind of odd, the excessive flashbacks in memory 17 are a bit much, the telling rather than showing, the sometimes awkward dialogue, a lot of the scenes are characters just... talking at each other, you don’t actually see very much of hyrule in the past or any characters beyond the main four, and it really did nothing to actually get me to care about these characters at all.

tldr i dont like totk’s dragon tears

i AM a violent dog i DO know why i bite

More spidersona art because why not

most alarming thing to hear at night: random thud from quemada's terrarium. ms. girl some of us r trying to sleep

my succulents :)

maybe it's on campaign 3 for not emphasizing it so much beyond frida (though as we're probably about to meet devexian, it may expand in scope), but it astonishes me how no one on any side of any cr meta discussion here seems to remember aeor at all. and when they do, it's this scoffing "well every aeorian deserved their fate" (which.... i have thoughts on. not nice ones. as a texan who hears that one often. and before anyone points it out yes this is a parralel to takes on the gods as well). i wonder how meta would shift if people were (re)aquainted with the extremely prominent fact from c2 that aeor was destroyed, entirely, by every god teaming up at once. c3 adding that half the city was fighting not to anger the gods makes it all the more disturbing. and this impact left exandria in a dark age it still has not recovered from.

i feel that ive seen maybe one take maximum on here that seems capable of acknowledging regardless of your opinions on the conjecture of c3 the gods, including the primes, have in fact made choices & spurred to action before. they exist as more than concepts or guiding voices in the story. their hands have literally molded history in more ways than just creation myth. and their molding, at times, turned into a fist, squelching blood. a fist that punched a city open like plaster.

hello brand new customers of the moel sekiyu tumblr branch who mightve seen the limited edition wares perhaps not noticing the main product of this fine establishment or what of it

non roleplaying translation -> hi guys welcome to my blog. funny how i notice this trend of generic persona blogs trying to follow me for persona when i dont actually. no i wont draw adachi with yellow eyes looking sleazy while sitting on top of a TV. the next time you'll see yukiko amagi is probably next year. i actually think it's more funny if yosuke's whatever feelings are unreciprocated and unrequited. i know izanami because thats my best friend in the entire world not izanamilf. if youre looking for anything else an actual persona fan would make you can go visit them instead

go across the street or farther into town. otherwise you can keep your membership card and come back again and review this security footage with me of two goofs doing whatever the fuck for five minutes and talk about it for the next sixteen hours

Fucking hell I am going to have A WEEK

.

that clone thang

waves at you. Hi welcome to the post where I answer the clone question but don't really have a fun linear way of doing it so it ends up being as many words as my brain allows

[really fucking long warning]

anyways this question is reallyreally interesting and actually something I never think about despite the nature of it?? Like it's sorta one of those things that gets joked about or referenced a bunch but it's never actively on my mind. I think one of the major decision points for me would be whether they have the same memories as me, the same feelings, the same thought process, etc or if they're just some sorta guy that looks like me. I'm assuming it's the first but the latter is. Interesting at the least.

I said last time I would kill them which. Isn't anything I could morally justify in any way whatsoever. It's not from a place of fear or hate towards that guy in particular. It's not like "oh no I don't want a clone what time to kill him" it's more like,, yk. I think I would have more difficulty killing an exact clone of me, memories and all because that's such a dick thing to do?? I would hate to die so. They would presumably hate to die.? But there's also that mutual. Morbid curiosity I suppose. WHICH this whole thing is really generally dark and not on theme with this blog in general I guess but idk suck it up or whatever for now.

I would hate to kill someone in general actually, I don't condone murder, shockingly enough. Which this whole. Whatever. Opens up an argument about how I don't have the,, right? To kill my clone. Which I don't. I think he knows that though. I also know that. If we got into a? Legitimate fight. I don't know who would win. Obviously yes I should say me because I'm so cool and the original but that just goes back to the superiority thing don't you think? We're literally the same person and most of my actions outlined here is just some sorta. Mean.

Famously, I am not a fighter, not according to my dad at least. But that's just because I'm not? Running around and getting into fights?? I think if I jumped myself I could kill him. Or even just. Had a knife. I don't think we would fight though,? I think us killing each other or one of us could be arranged relatively peacefully. If that makes any sense.

I think if they were just an empty shell, some sorta guy that I don't know inhabiting my form, I would kill them. Without much thought behind it. Not out of hate for them, more out of hate for myself

back to less. Murderous thoughts, I think it would be incredibly comforting having someone I could like. Talk to. Assuming it's just. Me but not me. I could talk to them about absolutely anything! And they would get it! They would nod their heads and go mhm I know what you're talking about. I think in that respect we could be really good friends but that's not even really... friendship,? And even in terms of being comforting that's really limited because it's still just. Me. I'm still stuck with myself even if he does happen to be outside of my own mind. And I hate it and hate it and hate how as I'm going over all this I'm sitting here thinking "he would get it" because he's me!!! Of course he would get it.! Out of everyone on the goddamn earth if anyone was to get if of COURSE it would be myself!!! And it sickens me because there's still no further outside connection. I can talk to myself all day long but in the end does that really get me anywhere?? Does anything get resolved??? Like the whole thing with therapists and such is that you get an outside perspective on your problems or whatever and that's an INCREDIBLY inside perspective. i don't know.

getting away from that trainwreck because I'm trying oh so hard to get away from negatives here I think if like. I ignored all of that. We could be good friends. Maybe. I sort of hate the idea of having like? A reflection of myself? Some Guy that's not me yet still me. But in this ideal imaginative world, we could be good friends. We could bring each other up and all the good stuff. But at the end of the day I can't really escape the fact that.. it's me...?

I don't think I could live with that. I think we should walk away and never talk to each other again. I think the fact that there's some guy who's just. Me. Out there, somewhere would haunt me and eat away at me. In the perfect world we would be great friends! Do all that stereotypical "I have a clone time to make them do work for me" type stuff but in a loving caring relationship type way! But it's not really a perfect world and I'm not really a perfect person either and I would kill some guy that looks like myself just for the hell of it because I'm a dick I guess?????? I hate it and I'm a terrible person for it and i would not admit this in a court of law but oh my god!!!! I WISH I could just sum it up to one of the the generic responses but I CANT. I want me dead and I think I would also want me dead and it's some sorta terrible cycle till someone dies. Maybe it would be fine. Maybe I'm over thinking it. Maybe he wouldnt think too hard about it. But since he's me it probably would.? I sure would over think the implications of me being a clone of someone just look at me now! Documenting my delusions online. In a tumblr dot com post. We would be great friends if not for the horrors. I think we should vivisect each other.

but there are lots of fish left in the sea, there are lots of fish in business suits that talk and walk on human feet & visit doctors & have weak knees ...Oh Please Let Me Join Your Cult..!!! Ill Paint My Face In Yr Colours!!!!!!! (u had a real nice face, i had an early death.)

Kamen Rider Geats episode 35 poorly summarized via memes with as little context as possible: