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#its genuinely one of my favorite things ever
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Against Lore
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For the rest of May, my bestselling solarpunk utopian novel THE LOST CAUSE (2023) is available as a $2.99, DRM-free ebook!
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One of my favorite nuggets of writing advice comes from James D Macdonald. Jim, a Navy vet with an encylopedic knowledge of gun lore, explained to a group of non-gun people how to write guns without getting derided by other gun people: "just add the word 'modified.'"
As in, "Her modified AR-15 kicked against her shoulder as she squeezed the trigger, but she held it steady on the car door, watching it disintegrate in a spatter of bullet-holes."
Jim's big idea was that gun people couldn't help but chew away at the verisimilitude of your fictional guns, their brains would automatically latch onto them and try to find the errors. But the word "modified" hijacked that impulse and turned it to the writer's advantage: a gun person's imagination gnaws at that word "modified," spinning up the cleverest possible explanation for how the gun in question could behave as depicted.
In other words, the gun person's impulse to one-up the writer by demonstrating their superior knowledge becomes an impulse to impart that superior knowledge to the writer. "Modified" puts the expert and the bullshitter on the same team, and conscripts the expert into fleshing out the bullshitter's lies.
Yes, writing is lying. Storytelling is genuinely weird. A storyteller who has successfully captured the audience has done so by convincing their hindbrains to care about the tribulations of imaginary people. These are people whose suffering, by definition, do not matter. Imaginary things didn't happen, so they can't matter. The deaths of Romeo and Juliet were less tragic than the death of the yogurt you had for breakfast. That yogurt was alive and now it's dead, whereas R&J never lived, never died, and don't matter:
https://locusmag.com/2014/11/cory-doctorow-stories-are-a-fuggly-hack/
Hijacking a stranger's empathic response is intrinsically adversarial. While storytelling is a benign activity, its underlying mechanic is extremely dangerous. Getting us to care about things that don't matter is how novels and movies work, but it's also how cults and cons work.
Cult leaders and con-artists know that they're engaged in mind-to-mind combat, and they make liberal use of Jim's hack of leaving blank spots for the mark to fill in. Think of Qanon drops: the mystical nonsense was just close enough to sensical that a vulnerable audience was compelled to try and untangle them, and ended up imparting more meaning to them than the hustler who posted them ever could have dreamt up.
Same with cons – there's a great scene in the Leverage: Redemption heist show where an experienced con-artist explains to a novice that the most convincing hustle is the one where you wait for the mark to tell you what they think you're doing, then run with it (scambaiters and other skeptics will recognize this as a relative of the "cold reading," where a "psychic" uses your own confirmations to flesh out their predictions).
As Douglas Adams put it:
A towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have "lost". What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.
Magicians know this one, too. The point of a sleight is to misdirect the audience's attention, and use that moment of misattention to trick them, vanishing, stashing or producing something. The mark's mind is caught in a pleasurable agony: something seemingly impossible just happened. The mind splits into two parts, one of which insists that the impossible just happened, the other insisting that the impossible can't happen.
You know you've done it right if the audience says, "Do that again!" And that's the one thing you must not do. So long as you don't repeat the trick, the audience's imagination will chew on it endlessly, coming up with incredibly clever things that you must have done (a clever conjurer will know several ways to produce the same effect and will "do it again" by reproducing the effect via different means, which exponentially increases the audience's automatic imputation of clever methods to the performer).
Not for nothing, Jim Macdonald advises his writing students to study Magic and Showmanship, a classic text for aspiring conjurers:
https://memex.craphound.com/2007/11/13/magic-and-showmanship-classic-book-about-conjuring-has-many-lessons-for-writers/
There's a version of this in comedy, too. The scholarship of humor is clear on this: comedy comes from surprise. The audience knows they're about to be surprised when the punchline lands, and their mind is furiously trying to defuse the comedian's bomb before it detonates, cycling through potential punchlines of their own. This ramps up the suspense and the tension, so when the comedian does drop the punchline, the tension is released in a whoosh of laughter.
Your mind wants the tension to be resolved ASAP, but the pleasure comes from having that desire thwarted. Comedy – like most performance – has an element of authoritarianism. You don't give the audience what it wants, you give it what it needs.
Same goes for TTRPGs: the game master's role is to deny the players the victories and treasure they want, until they can't take it anymore, and then deliver it. That's the definition of an epic game. It's one of the durable advantages of human GMs over video game back-ends: they can ramp up the epicness by "cheating" on the play, giving the players the chance to squeak out improbable victories at the last possible second:
https://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/03/behind-the-screen.html
This is so effective that even crude approximations of it can turn video-games into cult hits – like Left4Dead, whose "Director" back-end would notice when the players were about to get destroyed and then substantially ramped up the chances of finding an amazing weapon – the chance would still be low overall, but there would be enough moments when the player got exactly what they'd been praying for, at the last possible instant, that it would feel amazing:
https://left4dead.fandom.com/wiki/The_Director#Special_Infected
Critically, Left4Dead's Director didn't do this every time. As any showman knows, the key to a great performance is "Always leave 'em wanting more." The musician's successful finale depends on doing every encore the audience demands, except the last one, so the crowd leaves with one tantalyzing and imaginary song playing in their minds, a performance better than any the musicians themselves could have delivered. Like the gun person who comes up with a cooler mod than the writer ever could, like the magic show attendee who comes up with a more elaborate explanation for the sleight than the conjurer could ever pull off, like the comedy club attendee whose imagination anticipates a surprise that grows larger the longer the joke goes on, the successful performance is an adversarial act of cooperation where the audience willingly and unwillingly cooperates with the performer to deny them the thing that they think they need, and deliver the thing they actually need.
This is my biggest problem with the notion that someday LLMs will get good enough at storytelling to give us the tales we demand, without having to suffer through a storyteller's sadistic denial of the resolutions we crave. When I'm reading a mystery, I want to turn to the last page and find out whodunnit, but I know that doing so will ruin the story. Telling the storyteller how the story should go is like trying to tickle yourself.
Like being tickled, experiencing only fun if the tickler respects your boundaries – but, like being tickled, there's always a part where you're squirming away, but you don't want it to stop. An AI storyteller that gives you exactly what you want is like a dungeon master who declares that every sword-swing kills the monster, and every treasure chest is full of epic items and platinum pieces. Yes, that's what you want, but if you get it, what's the point?
Seen in this light, performance is a kind of sado-masochism, where the performer delights in denying something to the audience, who, in turn, delights in the denial. Don't give the audience what they want, give them what they need.
What your audience needs is their own imagination. Decades ago, I was a freelance copywriter producing sales materials for Alias/Wavefront, a then-leading CGI firm that was inventing all kinds of never-seen VFX that would blow people away. One of the engineers I worked with told me something I never forgot: "Your imagination has more polygons than anything you can create with our software." He was talking about why it was critical to have some of the action happen in the shadows.
All of this is why series tend to go downhill. The first volume in any series leaves so much to the imagination. The map of the world is barely fleshed out, the characters' biographies are full of blank spots, the mechanics of the artifacts and the politics of the land are all just detailed enough that your mind automatically ascribes a level of detail to them, without knowing what that detail is.
This is the moment at which everything seems very clever, because your mind is just churning with all the different bits of elaborate lore that will fill in those lacunae and make them all fit together.
SPOILER ALERT: I'm about to give some spoilers for Furiosa.
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FURIOSA SPOILERS AHEAD!
Last night, we went to see Furiosa, the latest Mad Max movie, a prequel to 2015's Fury Road, which is one of the greatest movies ever made. Like most prequels, Furiosa functions as a lore-delivery vehicle, and as such, it's nowhere near as good as Fury Road.
Fury Road hints as so much worldbuilding. We learn about the three fortresses of the wasteland (the Citadel, the Bullet Farm, and Gastown) but we only see one (The Citadel). We learn that these three cities have a symbiotic relationship with one another, defined by a complex politics that is just barely stable. We meet Furiosa herself, and learn something of her biography – that she had been stolen from the Green Place, that she had suffered an arm amputation.
All of this is left for us to fill in, and for a decade, my hindbrain has been chewing on all of that, coming up with cool ways it could all fit together. I yearned to know the "real" explanation, but it was always unlikely that this real explanation would be as enjoyable as my own partial, ever-unfinished headcanon.
Furiosa is a great movie, but its worst parts are the canonical lore it settles. Partly, that's because some of that lore is just stupid. Why is the Bullet Farm an open-pit mine? I mean, it's visually amazing, but what does that have to do with making bullets? Sometimes, it's because the lore is banal – the solarpunk Green Place is a million times less cool than I had imagined it. Sometimes, it's because the lore is banal and stupid: the scenes where Furiosa's arm is crushed, then severed, then replaced, are both rushed and quasi-miraculous:
https://www.themarysue.com/how-does-furiosa-lose-her-arm/
But even if the lore had been good – not stupid, not banal – the best they could have hoped for was for the lore to be tidy. If it were surprising, it would seem contrived. A story whose loose ends have been tidily snipped away seems like it would be immensely satisfying, but it's not satisfying – it's just resolved. Like the band performing every encore you demand, until you no longer want to hear the band anymore – the feeling as you leave the hall isn't satisfaction, it's exhaustion.
So long as some key question remains unresolved, you're still wanting more. So long as the map has blank spots, your hindbrain will impute clever and exciting mysteries, tantalyzingly teetering on the edge of explicability, to the story.
Lore is always better as something to anticipate than it is to receive. The fans demand lore, but it should be doled out sparingly. Always leave 'em wanting more.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/27/cmon-do-it-again/#better_to_remain_silent_and_be_thought_a_fool_than_to_speak_and_remove_all_doubt
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dokidokitsuna · 3 days
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“Some of us…will always be alone”
Skipping forward a bit in this re-concept, just because I can~ (loooong post ahead)
So one of the many things I found underwhelming about Return of the Mammalians is the lack of villainous impact Mr. Grizz has on his own story.
For starters, he’s straight up absent from 80% of it. =/ Just a vaguely threatening disembodied voice that does weak comedy bits with Cap’n Cuttlefish from time to time…and that’s basically it until we face him in the final battle.
The worst thing he’s responsible for in the story (as in, a successful act we have to contend with, rather than a work-in-progress that we interrupt) is dehydrating Cuttlefish…which is very temporary and played for laughs immediately afterwards. We don’t even get the opportunity to engage with this “tragedy” by actively rescuing the Cap’n in gameplay, we just suddenly find his body during a cutscene.
Compare this to Commander Tartar manipulating the player and lying directly to their face throughout the game, attempting to kill the player during the reveal of its treachery in one of the most memorable scenes of the entire series, brainwashing a former protagonist into fighting the player, and then attempting to destroy an entire city while quietly confessing that it murdered thousands of victims just to get to this point.
I’ll let you guess which one of these antagonists feels like a genuine threat, and which one just feels like a disappointment. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Now, I don’t mind Mr. Grizz being less violent and deranged than Commander Tartar…the two have different personalities and slightly different goals, and anyway a body count isn’t really necessary to be a convincing villain. But I DO mind him being so totally uninvolved, despite being a character that we already knew and interacted with beforehand. Like, at the very least…talk to the player. o_O Care about the player. Do something to interfere with the player sometime before the last minute! The fact that Grizz just doesn’t give a damn about our existence for most of the campaign is baffling from a writer’s standpoint, and heartbreaking from a Grizz-fan’s standpoint. ;_; Notice me, Kuma-san!!
…Anyway, there’s a million ways to remedy this, because it’s such a simple and obvious problem that really shouldn’t exist. ^^; And the one I chose for #re_rise (besides having Grizz haunt the game like an ever-present specter, as explained here) is one of my old tried-and-true favorites: using the villain to parallel the protagonist.
Basically, both characters are lonely at heart. Agent 3 left home for the Splatlands in search of a “fresh beginning”, after spending most of their life feeling like they never fit in anywhere. Throughout the story, we get subtle clues that what they want most is belonging and friendship…which they’re clearly discovering through their interactions with Deep Cut and Smallfry, although it’s not until the climax of the final battle that they can truly believe in it and accept it.
And of course, Mr. Grizz lost his home and entire civilization, and even in the midst of a thriving new one (that he actively engages with through his corporation…!) he’s apparently such a massive bigot that he doesn’t consider it worthy of his company. ^^; Fish-people do not count to him, thus his loneliness is self-inflicted and intensified. He believes his only recourse is to transform the world back into something he can accept.
These parallels, plus the desire-manifesting powers of Alterna’s crystals (discussed in this post) eventually brings the two characters to an understanding of sorts. Without having to exchange words, they can see and consider the similarities of their innermost feelings.
This doesn’t have much of an effect on Grizz, outside of something he might muse about while Agent 3 ascends the launchpad (and maybe quietly internalize as proof that fish-people have feelings too, just to give his last-second change of heart at least one leg to stand on). But it weighs heavily on Agent 3, especially since they’re being physically changed by their adventure in a way that makes these parallels even more relevant…yes, I’m finally gonna talk about what I actually drew. ^^
My idea was that spending too much time around Fuzzy Ooze will affect you even if you don’t touch it (i.e. through splashes/aerosols), just to a lesser degree. And since Agent 3 was the first to actually enter the underground lab spaces and spends more time fighting there than anyone else, they’ve had an unprecedented amount of secondhand exposure to it.
Through O.R.C.A.’s files, they can understand why this mild fuzzification is happening to them, and that it may not be reversible, although they press on anyway (I’d like to imply that they’re willing to ignore it to impress Deep Cut~). But Grizz’s offhand comments make them realize that they may be unintentionally setting themselves up to be cast aside again, slowly turning into a repulsive mutant monster that no one will want to be around. The only one of their kind in the world, just like a certain Ursine Anomaly…and if they succeed in stopping Grizz’s plan, that’s all they’ll ever be. 
…On the other hand, if they were to sit back and let him fuzzify the world, then…no, they couldn’t do that. They…wouldn’t…
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heroictoonz · 9 hours
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king I've been putting off a rewatch of s15-17 for ages do u think its worth it
My instinct is so say no save yourself but like jokes aside I think that’s up to you like, I always said that they gave the RvBs a “bad ending” and that they ruined Tucker’s character post Chorus however, that was back when season 16 was literally first coming out
Flash back here but so when s16 was coming out I was just getting more and more upset with the writing of the show especially and honestly almost specifically Tucker. Somewhere near the end of s16 I stopped watching (didn’t even finish the season) and then after a bit I heard that the next season was gonna revolve around whole new characters
Now this, I only recently learned was weird miscommunication. See I’m trash ass shit at keeping up with news of shit even shit that I like so for the longest time I thought the story of this group I’ve been following since I was a teenager ended at s16 which KILLED me inside so I swore off the rest of the show and vowed to never watch it. Instead I mostly just rewatched Chorus or s1-s13 if I wanted to rewatch the “whole” show. Basically just watching till the end of Chorus and stopping. Every time I tried to go rewatch s15 to mmmaybe finish the show I kept remember how bad things got and kept running away
I’m gonna give some vague spoilers from here on out but it’s cause I do genuinely wanna talk about how I feel having literally only a few minutes ago finished s16 and s17 for the first time
I decided to finish RvB LITERALLY last night like no joke and it’s cause I saw spoilers out of context for s19 and I was like fuck it I need to see what the hell that is show is over anyways might as well finish it. So I am doing that now
I rewatched/finished s16 and fucking hated it. The good parts were Wash being cute and silly and my favorite guy ever of all time and forever. There’s also Grif and this character named Huggins they’re like on god one of my new brotps of all time damn RvB writes some good ass season specific supporting cast cause holy shit man. Also! I liked that Kai was in it! I enjoy Kai so so so so so much! I’ve always wanted more of her in the show! UNFORTUNATELY!
Tucker is so hard to watch. It’s so honest to god painful to watch. Maybe that’s what they were going for I don’t know. But, having now seen season 17 I get what they were TRYING to do I just don’t fully like how they did it.
In s17 Tucker admits to himself that the reason why in s16 he was acting so weird and gross and toxic masculinity “I have to have the biggest and most talented dong in the room at all times or I’ll kms” character ever is cause he was trying to be a leader
It’s sounds stupid and personally I think it IS stupid but now that I know what they were TRYING to write it makes these post Chorus seasons more bearable.
Basically, Tucker spent all that time in Chorus forced to be a leader. Once he finally got comfortable in the position of one Chorus no longer needed them. He wanted to keep being a leader keep feeling like a leader and it went to his head. He tried acting cool and tough and macho cause that’s what he thought a leader was and he says this! Out loud he admits all this to himself in s17! And honestly? That’s SUCH a good fucking concept it’s super fucking interesting and I really dig it plus with Tucker FAILING at being the leader it gave Donut well deserved character growth. I’ve always hated how sidelined Donut got compared to the others cause I’ve always liked him but s17 is definitely Donut’s season and to see him finally get screen time and respect and also have genuine moments of connection with the others was honestly really fucking awesome
So, do I like s16? God no. Do I recommend it watching it? Hard to say. You have to watch it if you wanna finish the show. Is finishing the show worth it? Honestly I dunno yet I haven’t seen 18 or 19 so it’s to be seen rn. But s17 where not perfect was definitely better than 16 and gave better insight on what they were trying to do. I don’t like the execution I don’t think it was as done very well but I like the ideas I like what they were attempting
S15 I admittedly do not fucking remember at all cause again it’s not a season I’ve rewatched more than maybe twice cause I kept stopping cause I just did not wanna deal with what I knew was coming. And I know me I know myself I know if I tried rewatching the show from the start or even s15 in an attempt to finish it I’d ever fucking do it so instead I just started from s16 and went forward
I don’t remember out right hating s15 but similar to the above I think there were good ideas and not all of them were perfectly done in writing. Also there’s this like really cool interesting thing that is about Tucker that then ends up being a stupid child support payment joke and that sucks so much it makes me so burningly livid I don’t even have a joke here it just makes me mad
But! It brings in the concept of other reds and blues other soldiers that were left in the rubbles of project freelancer which is super interesting again I think they coulda done more with specific parts of it and the “Tucker doesn’t pay child support for the buncha kids he fucked into existence” joke sucks especially when they CONSTANTLY SHOW HIM AS A VERY DOTING AND LOVING FATHER it’s fine I’m not mad I’m not bitter I promise
But uh yeah honestly if you like the show a lot I say watch it even if it sucks. Some of my biggest special interests are GARBAGE shows with writing so bad it makes me wanna commit actual arson. But, I love the characters I love the settings and I love what could have been maybe that’s why I always keep sticking around in stuff like this lol even if it sucks I like to imagine what could make it better cause I love it! And if I didn’t love it I wouldn’t care to put as much energy into wanting it to be better as I do! That’s the same with RvB! I wish it was better I wish SSOOOO BADLY that it was better but it’s cause I love it so fucking much not out of any sort of hate if that makes sense?
Idk tldr it’s up to you and you might suffer a bit but if you love the show I say go for it
Aaaand it’s 2am and I read ur ask wrong I thought that said “watch” not “rewatch” but? Points still stand I’m the kinda person that will rewatch even the seasons I hate to remember why I like the ones I love (I’m looking at you Ninjago season 3 you hot fucking garbage that I’ve sadly seen more times than I would like)
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derpy-thebdayclown · 10 months
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i got the frozen concept art book im going insane
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sceletaflores · 7 days
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college!pervy!patrick stealing your underwear 18+
it's pure fucking luck when it happens.
art wouldn't stop complaining about having to take his dirty laundry to the communal room on his dorm floor that housed all the washers and dryers. patrick doesn't know why the fuck he offered to take it up for him in the first place, to shut art up? to make him happy?
who gives a shit anyways cause while he's taking arts stupidly full hamper to the laundry room and following the half-assed directions given to him, he bumps right into someone as soon as he steps foot through the already open door. when he cranes his head around the edge of art's hamper he nearly jumps with fucking joy at what, or more-so who, greets him.
he knew who you were already. art wouldn't stop blowing up his phone with texts about "the hot new chick with an out of this world backhand and a killer fucking rack!". so as soon as he got off the bus in cali and stepped foot in art's cushy dorm room he obviously demanded he take him to one of your matches, and holy fucking shit.
you absolutely obliterate the poor girl on the opposite side of the net. running her up and down the court like a chicken with its head cut off while you stay calm and collected.
he could come just watching your perfect form as you hammer another excellent serve at your opponent, but something has to be said for the fucking outfit you're wearing. the tight tank of your dress does show off your, now proven, killer fucking rack but goddamn that skirt should be illegal. even the flowy pleated fabric can't hide the thick curve of your ass underneath, bouncing as you take off to chase after the ball.
he's white knuckling the edges of his seat the entire match, using every ounce of willpower in his body to not pop a boner in the middle of the fucking stands and even more willpower to not look over at the smug fucking grin plastered on art's face as he watches him. safe to say, you've been on his mind ever since.
now, you stand in front of him holding your own hamper with an apologetic smile on your face.
"shit, i'm so sorry. i didn't even see you." you say, way too chipper for 9 a.m on a sunday.
patrick is the epitome of a cocky, arrogant asshole. he has girls in nearly every state practically begging to choke on his dick without him so much as raising a finger in their direction. he's beyond smooth. he has every sleazy line known to man on the tip of his tongue at all times, yet when he goes to speak he can't manage anything besides a weak mutter of, "s'alright." he mentally punches himself in the balls for letting your bambi eyes and dick sucking lips get the better of him.
you give him a nod and one last friendly smile before stepping around him and making your way down the hallway. patrick watches in damn near agony as you go, ponytail swinging behind you in time with the sway of your hips.
patrick lets out an all suffering groan, dropping his head to his chest in defeat. "fucking dumbass.' he admonishes himself quietly, letting himself wallow in misery before making to take a step forward when suddenly he spots something out of the corner of his eye.
it takes him a few seconds to register just what he's staring at, but when it clicks he nearly has a fucking heart attack. there on the floor lays a pair of lacy white panties, your lacy white panties. it takes him all of a millisecond to drop art's hamper on the floor carelessly and practically dive to snatch them up. as soon as his fingers touch the fabric he can feel himself chubbing up in his sweats. he runs his fingertips over the hem, feeling the familiar rough texture that was snug against your body so recently makes sparks go off near the base of his spine.
when patrick hears lively conversation and footsteps heading his way he shoves the panties in his pocket and snatches art's hamper off the floor to start haphazardly shoving his clothes in the washer.
when he finally re-enters art's dorm room he's met with his best friends face staring at him suspiciously. "what the fuck took you so long?" art questions, brow raised as he watches patrick stumble over to his bed and plop down a little too roughly. patrick's reply is simple.
“got lost."
it's only later, when he's back on the train heading for his latest stop and digging into his pocket in search of his lighter that he feels it. the lacy fabric of your panties still stuffed deep into his pocket. his breath hitches in his throat and before he knows what he's doing he's up like a shot and speed walking to the back of the cart.
he's in the bathroom a mere five seconds before he's ripping his fly down and furiously stroking his hard as steel cock in a cramped train bathroom he can barely stand up fully in. it takes an embarrassingly short amount of time before he's busting in the fucking sink with your dainty white panties balled up in his fist and held against his nose as he inhales so heavily he might fucking pass out.
patrick has already found, and requested you, on facebook by the time he makes it back to his seat.
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taglist!
@yuenity @callsign-artemis @ebodebo (who each put up with me ranting about this so wonderfully love you guys mwah)
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sneeping with his legs up over his head for some reason... weird boye
#cats#love the second picture... skrungly sleepy well rested boye face...#since he's an elderly boy now sometimes when he wakes up from a nap he looks a bit scruffy and squinty eyed#Hard to beleive he's like 15 though.. he still looks like a kitten to me.. due to his giant round creature eyes and childlike demeanor#I think it's interesting that like... baby cats are babies. kittens are kittens. and you can tell a cat is like 'young adult' phase#looking from like a few months to maybe 1yr or 2yrs.. but after that they just always look the same to me#a 5 yr old cat is a 10 yr old cat is a 15 year old cat. unless the cat in question is particulalry aged or youthful#I still have so so little energy... it's been icy here this week. like not even FUN but just scary icy even thoguh i lOOOVE the cold#and its my favorite weather. I think it'd be okay actually if I had a woodburning stove/fireplace/hearth thing. literally thats my only#concern with the power going out. I genuinely don't mind stuff like having to go to the bathroom in buckets or cook over a fire or do other#less conveninet things. Its just that if eveyrhtng is electric then you have no way to cook and all of that. well.. and I literally need#background noise to go to sleep lest my ocd sprials become so loud I am slowly driven into maddness.. but a few battery packs or something#and a phone with one downloaded video I could play on repeat is fine for that. I dont need internet. ANYWAY.. so so sad that my fav#orite season ever (winter) is here. and the first cold of the winter is like... just an ice storm that you cant even walk in. I#love like 4 feet of snow where you can play in it and stuff. But just a thin flat sheet of a few inches of ice over every imaginable surfac#is not really playable. the wind speeds are so high and so many trees fall it's actually not that safe to go hang out outside anyway unless#you were in a totally clear open field. which is SAD also because i love ice and high winds. i love to stand out there and get whipped in t#he face with ice crystals and feel like I'm in some dramatic movie or something. but alas.. the threat of being attacked by a falling tree.#I did go out some but again it's like. literallyyou cant walk on it. so I just squatted and dragged myself along the ground lol#One of my stories has a whole section where the main characters are trapped in a deadly cold environment for a week and have to use magic#to survive and etc. etc. so I'm always like.. ouuu.. I should go in the ice.. it's Writing Research actually.. *foolishly gets frostbite*#THOUGH yesterday I went on a harrowing evil journey down a bunch of icy hilly roads to go check on some person's cat because the cat#had been left in the house for like 5 days at that point with nobody to check on them and nobody else seemed to want to do anything#about it (like call all of the neighbors or try to get someone out there) so I just went myself with a roommate who agreed to drive me.#It seemed acting totally normal and I gave it more food and water but.. I am still worried about it.. Apparently the person will be able#to get back to their house tomorrow but.. I dont trust them. But I couldnt take the cat with me because it's like.. a stranger's cat#basically and also no carrier + very skittish.. so I feared if I just tried to carry them bare handed they'd definitely leap from my grasp#and then it'd be like.. sliding on a sheet of ice chasing a cat and so on.. I still think they need to be watched for health issues tho >:|#ANYWAY.... many cat adventures lately... and strange weather... I wish for a normal week without always so many Things Happening.. augh
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oohbuggypie · 2 months
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special detail i noticed while watching all Soda Pop quotes + animations last night :: Soda purses his lips before he punches, and in specific he juts his bottom lip out a lot 🩷 srry this is completely irrelevant and the most miniscule detail ever but i gaf
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i know he looks super scary in these screenshots but he's sooo cutesie i love him
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sometimes i like to imagine a future where i write that (y/a or adult targeted) dragon book series i desperately want to, but i know that i wouldn't be able to do it without including art in the book. every time a new important character is introduced the next page would have to be a reference / art of them to Show What They Look Like
#i dont think id be able to handle like. publishing or whatever Without that#maybe that stems from my control issues maybe im just an artist at heart#but i would also need there to be a glossary and a detailed map and maybe footnotes or a basic bestiary-#but then sometimes i wonder if i'd want it to be like... a comic instead#manga style in a way??? i wouldnt color it. it'd be in b&w with only the occasional colored spread or somethin#but all of that If Possible or plausible is a very long way off which is okay its okay#ill get there ill get there#unless something changes and i want to do something Else but its been a goal for many years already#its only recently that ive buckled down on the worldbuilding and character crafting and genuinely considering the plot and themes#its a hot mess! but theres something in there! im determined to find it#its definitely a couple years yet of changing things and switchin stuff around and Thinking....#who knows if ill ever get there! i hope i will!#but yeah it'd be a book with a bunch of art shoved in it httyd style (kinda)#bc if im gonna Make something im gonna combine my favorite hobbies as best i can#absolutely unprompted#its an exciting but daunting prospect. writing an actual Thing#mostly the plot part of it#i can craft characters i can do worldbuilding#but the plot? oof#there's this other one ive been working on since 8th grade#and its still... barely anything lmao#its for my favorite personal characters - my very first real oc my special boy light of my life but Man.#plot has hands!!!#and then ofc there's my beloved idiot squad... i want to do something for them some day maybe....#so many ambitions so little energy... i will strive to make future me healthy enough to achieve Something we so desperately want!
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let-them-fight · 6 months
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jar jar was never annoying btw the world just couldn’t handle his unmedicated adhd swagger
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skitskatdacat63 · 1 year
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2005 - Pit crews acknowledging the camera(because I think they're really endearing)
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spearxwind · 2 years
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Been playing sea of thieves with my friends the past few days and I gotta share my fave screenshots so far because this game is so immensely pretty I adore it
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canibalistic-brownie · 5 months
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I have to keep reminding myself that none of y'all know me in real life and even if you think what I'm writing is cringe, its not for you, its for me. But h-h-h-h-holy shit is it hard to get out of that mindset of anxiously wondering what other people will think of your writing the entire time.
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kyouka-supremacy · 1 year
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I connected the dots
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shoechoe · 1 year
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the fact that a large portion of Vento Aureo fans mostly just like la squadra is kinda weird to me. it's like we're looking at the same picture but we enjoy completely different things about it
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arolesbianism · 1 month
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Yet another beautiful day to have the Maxwel tag blocked (can't see half of the posts in the Wendy tags)
#rat rambles#starve posting#maxwell posters have lost any semblance of tolerance from me ages ago Ive yet to meet a maxwell fan who's just like a normal person#and to clarify I actually do like maxwel as I am the number one just some asshole whos in too deep enjoyer#but dear god are ppl just absolutely incapable of being normal abt this man and everyone around him#and even beyond that ppl just do not get this man like please he is indeed interesting but not because of some 'retconed redemption'#like pls we can live in a world where he is not an irridemable monster and is in fact just some guy while also still being a flawed person#like the fact that he is so deeply flawed in ways that he never actually properly adressed and challenged is the interesting thing to me#like look at me. he went through horrible shit he didnt deserve. that didnt inherently make him a better or worse person#it just made him a more miserable person#and he didnt escape because of some change of heart or character development#and afterwards he teamed up with wilson because of necessity#I do think on some level he genuinely cares abt the other survivors and he does have genuine regret for how things turned out#but again those things dont inherently mean he moved past the flaws that got him here it just means he has the ability to recognize that#shit sucks and that he wish none of it happened#its why encore is one of my favorite animations from a character perspective because it shows some juicy charlie and maxwell stuff#mainly it shows both that charlie has not forgiven his ass and is manipulating him and that maxwell is still susceptible to it#which isnt a sigh of them rolling back development it's just a sign that maxwell is easy to manipulate with the right cards#which adds up considering his past and his present very well in my opinion#this is a man whos historically always ran away from his problems and is always on the hunt for a sense of control#and charlie tapped into both that and his ever present guilt#its in fact very unsurprising and not out of place for him to fall for that sort of manipulation#and it also makes for a great set up for the inevitable betrayal from charlie as maxwell is hit by the harsh reality of his situation#and that whole situation would lead to some yummy tasty parallels when charlie inevitably gets betrayed herself (I hope)#the ways charlie and maxwel are so similar yet so different facinates me deeply I love how much charlie doesnt realize shes kinda fucked#I want her to be betrayed so hard and left in the dust with no ground to stand on I want the rug pulled out from under her feet#her composition comes from her confidence in the necessity of her actions and the moral superiority she feels over maxwell#so having her sense of superiority be revoked would make for a super fascinating dynamic as she tries to justify the situation in her head#I wanna see her siral and then maybe change her pronouns idk
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wisteria-whump · 2 years
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compliant whumpee prompts
whumpee has earned their own room in whumper's house and is allowed to roam the house as they please (i love when this shows up in stories i think it's so fun)
whumpee is allowed to leave whumper's house as long as they follow rules like a curfew, whumper has to drive them everywhere, etc
whumpee feels lucky to be able to have the amount of freedom that they do and they almost convince themselves that whumper isn't that bad despite the fact that they're still terrified of whumper
whumpee A is compliant and allowed to have more freedom and privileges, and whumpee B is defiant and sees whumpee A as a traitor for going along with what whumper tells them to do.
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