#meaning it's one person's interpretation of what's happening and logging what they see
Note
What are the rules for power upgrades in ML? (Not that the writers will remember after three episodes, but I'm curious)
Based off how Ladybug starts making Anti-Akuma charms by the power of just "I Do What I Want", and Shadowmoth overcoming those same charms immediately through the "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better", I just made a sort of vague rule that if the holder is ever desperate enough, and focused enough, a power could possibly manifest to fulfill that desperation.
I imagine there'd be some blocks, like you can't manifest a power that will completely replace another kwami's power, and if you use the Miraculous for evil, it'll take more than just desperation to make a new power manifest and for evil holders it may only manifest one time. But these caveats probably won't come up since I only have a few episodes left to write.
#season 4 explained that the grimoire is more like a personal diary than a tome of rules#meaning it's one person's interpretation of what's happening and logging what they see#so not everything in the book should be taken as 100% facts#sl ask#sl miraculous level ups
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okay well, i logged back in, obviously, because there are clearly some things that need to be addressed and have been taken out of context. just because i’m leaving doesn’t mean i should sit here and let my name be smeared.
to preface this, anantaru and i had a discussion where we came to a congenial understanding of what happened, there's been an acknowledgment on both sides of misunderstanding and believing distorted rumors and people that we probably should not have, but i’m still going to give a full explanation as to the background of everything so you all can understand and come to your own opinions. plus, if there's going to be a call-out post directed majorly at me made, i want an official address of it.
please do NOT send any hate their way, we have ended this discussion on good terms and have worked out what exactly was stirring this discourse between us. (spoiler alert: there was a third-party shit-stirrer that we both considered a decent friend at the time!)
i don’t really need a reason to block someone, and i shouldn’t have to explain it, but i did and i will again but more explicitly this time: @/anantaru made a post that i did not like. it’s as simple as that. it was a post about genshin characters and sex icks and one of the lines were “venti: too drunk.” i’m not anti-dc, but there are topics that i am sensitive about because i was sa’d in my freshman year of college—that is something i have talked about on this blog before, many of you who've been around since my tr era are aware of it. i acknowledged, and tee acknowledged, that this was probably a joke and was not meant to be taken the way i took it, but the aloof/casual way it was mentioned without any TW of implied dubcon, and without acknowledging that it was at least dubcon and could border on noncon in certain interpretations made me uncomfortable. i don’t mind seeing it as long as i’m warned. if it was tagged properly, i would have moved on without much care, but it wasn’t, so i was scrolling through the post snorting and was hit with that and i was made uncomfortable because i didn't like how it was just being passed off as an ick, and i blocked. there was no reason for it to go beyond what it did, yet we are here. anantaru mentioned that if you frequent their blog, you would know that they often write about venti and reader being drunk—i don’t frequent their blog, in fact this was my first encounter with them being reblogged onto my dash by shared mutuals, so it rubbed me wrong. thats the end of it.
i’m not sure the exact timing, but i believe it was two(?) weeks after this, when i reblogged an unpopular opinion’s post with an opinion that i thought was fairly harmless. sure, looking back on it i could have phrased it better, i’m not going to deny that, but pinpointing my one opinion out of the hundreds of others that were objectively far more controversial than mine and crucifying me for it is uncalled for. you guys know very well that i do not have the time or energy to sift through random people’s blogs to look for minors. every once in a while i glance at the notes of shit posts that happen to be on my dash and i’d be a bit startled at finding a minor in them because i still do think you should at least try to catch minors who interact with shit posts because that’s the easiest way to find them. but i was working at a medium sized firm for a year and a half at the time of the post and i am currently in law school, i do not have the time to be psychotic about people’s likes and interaction, and even if i did have the time?? i’ve always gotten incredible interaction from y’all lmfao, imposing the idea that i’m jealous is entirely inane. i do still stand by the fact that my words were twisted, i was made out, more than once and by more than one person after the next bullet point's events, to have been some psycho that stalks peoples’ posts for excuses as to why they get interaction when that is simply not the case.
regardless, after this incident, anantaru made a vague post that was almost directly quoting my tags from the reblog and was thus sent to me because many shared mutuals put together that it was about my tags. this was upsetting for multiple reasons 1) i had blocked anantaru by this point so i felt a bit violated that i was being vagued for something by someone that i blocked. 2) i started getting hate anons en masse after it, some of which were very unnecessarily explicit. needless to say, i was very upset and made a subpost on my main account after noticing i’ve been blocked on ao3 because 1) i was already upset and i didn’t even know why anantaru seemed to have it out for me much less go to the point of blocking on ao3 which leads into my next point and 2) i thought it was a bit ridiculous because the only thing blocking on ao3 stops is people from commenting on posts and i clearly was not going to comment on a post of someone who i was not on good terms with. reasoning aside, anantaru can block who they want and i was out of line for making comments about that in particular. i’ll admit that, and apologize for it.
a screenshot was taken from my personal—not a good moment for me, obviously, but anantaru claimed in their post that it was about them with no evidence. i dmed them about this in particular because i was genuinely confused, we spoke about it, i offered them proof that it was not them because i had a discussion about this post with a close friend at the time of posting it and they believed me. i will attach screenshots below (cropped because there's no reason to attach the whole conversation) because i feel as if this accusation was rather extreme and i wish it would’ve been removed because it was obviously not my best moment. an explanation for the post itself, i was upset over plagiarism accusations regarding something i put my heart and soul into and then seeing the same person that made them consistently on my dash just straight up triggered me, for lack of a better word lol, so i made a vent on my personal. how it got misconstrued as to be anything about anantaru is baffling to me but i suppose that's a question for the subject of our next bullet point. i don’t want to go into detail about the accusations in themselves because i don’t want people to send the actual person who it’s about hate. regardless, that post was not about anantaru, i have never called them a cunt nor have i ever called them a gatekeepy cunt, though i’m beginning to think i should probably remove the word from my vocabulary atp, i use it far too flippantly. anyway, i do not know them well enough to formulate any sort of opinion like that. aside from that, in our discussion we came to an understanding over it and i wish that would have been cleared on their blog as wel. so i'll attach here (i crossed some out because i don't want to breach any boundaries regarding what anantaru might be comfortable sharing but i do think it's fair for me to want this particular point fully cleared as it was a bold accusation remaining up):
5. in our discussion, we came to realize that we have/had a shared mutual who was fostering discourse between the two of us. many of you will recognize her as audri aka alucrds, who has supposedly left tumblr by this point—i suspected this and anantaru has confirmed it while we were talking. audri was sending anantaru my posts claiming that they were about anantaru, but i will stress that the only actual discussions i ever had with anyone about anantaru was with tee and eris about that initial joke because it had upset me at the time, it never extended beyond that and it certainly was never with audri. my only conversation with audri that mentioned anantaru at all was probably around a week or so after i made the post in point 3, when audri asked me about ao3 blocking in casual conversation and i offhandedly mentioned that anantaru had blocked me on there—audri was a close friend at that point and iirc, she had actually told me right after that that anantaru had her blocked on tumblr, i had no idea that they'd been mutuals at all but either way, it was an offhanded comment that led to nowhere (or so i thought LOL). looking back on it, it was clearly her baiting me into giving her information about the post i made a week or so prior because after talking with anantaru, they explained that they got an anonymous message claiming that i was shit talking them for blocking them on ao3 and the only person that could have put together that the vent post from point 3 was about anantaru was audri herself. audri continued to evidently cherry-pick random vent posts of mine to show anantaru and claim that they were about them. why? i wish i could tell you. i considered audri a decent enough friend, and though she had her fair share of issues with mutuals and other friends of mine, i never really thought she’d stoop to this with me. but i guess there’s really no explaining people who thrive in discourse.
6. my comment in my most recent post about being harassed on ao3 and in comments and in asks was not about them at all. i thought it was very clearly about heliotropes (my dottore series) and pressure to update from certain readers, but i'm clarifying that now.
7. i never intended on directly addressing this, which is why i did not directly name anantaru in my post, if i’d known at the time that tee was going to end up addressing all of this, i would’ve just been straight up with all of it.
anyway, i think that’s all, hopefully this will be the last post for real as i am tired mentally and now i am also physically sleep deprived. i've been up since three so forgive me for typos and grammar errors. this all has gone on for over a year. sorry for all the discourse on y'all's dash, wish i could have left with a bit more grace than this. rumors have been blown out of proportions and blindly believed, things have been taken out of context, such is life. i made my fair share of mistakes on my personal blog with my vents, others have admitted and owned up to their own mistakes, some will never admit to their mistakes. such is life. it moves on, always does. i know all of y'all are smart enough to come to your own opinions.
over and out, sorry again, and logged out (hopefully for real this time),
cat
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In response
((OOC
i checked this blog today to make sure it hadnt been deleted and saw a few things in the inbox. i want to clear up a couple of things. if this is the last post to ever hit this blog, so be it, but heres the endcase:
no, i decided not to make the end comic. i wrote this story nine years ago with someone i loved very much. it sort of became a net for my feelings about my loss and addiction. it was messy and weird and put a lot of my perspectives on display. ive been clean for two years now and i think its okay not to tie up this story with a neat end. like stan and kyle, i graduated and i got older and i have a career. thats all it would have been. i would have tried to ascribe some deeper meaning to making a dumb thing in high school, and i would have tried really hard to make it feel like the way things were back then were okay. i dont really feel like revisiting it. comics are hard. it took me a very long time to write and create something that can be read in maybe an afternoon. maybe you just had to be there. by following stan and kyle for as long as it took, you followed me and my coming to grips with being a person. really, this was just longform vent art about whatever dumb bullshit occurs to a high school junior. but i know it helped some people and entertained some other people so, i will be leaving it up. i just dont think ill ever slap a neat bow on it. my story wont have a neat end and neither will stan and kyles.
no, i wont end the craig blog either. i havent logged into that one in a while and i think if tumblr wants to wash it away thats okay. it was a way for me to reclaim some control over a narrative and maybe explore some deeper feelings (surprise, my birth father Also went missing, who knew) but it ultimately didnt amount to much. whatever happened to craig is up to you. my interpretation wasnt liked much anyway, and to have an askblog, you need people to be curious about the premise. i didnt connect as much with it and the frustration associated with running a project like that outweighed whatever i got out of it. i still dont know what that was.
anyway. i moved onto writing dnd campaigns and i am still alive. i still make art sometimes. i still get anxious when i see the inbox notifs, but these days, 9 times out of 10 its spam. i hope you guys all liked the south park post-pandemic aged up specials. i didnt, but im nitpicky and kind of bitter about the idea altogether. i havent seen an active askblog since 2017 but hey. be nice to people who make things. if you feel so inclined, maybe go make something for yourself. id like to thank the people who were curious and had fun here. id like to thank sekrit, neggy, rachel, five, ozzy and nadia. id like to thank everyone who let me tell my story. its just not over yet.
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Okay so there’s a lot of DHMIS fans out there who try to rank or analyze the Teachers and which ones are worse and which are better, and I thought I might as well throw my own proverbial hat in the proverbial ring and give my own take on the matter.
I’m going to go over all of the (central) Teachers in the DHMIS Web Show + DHMIS TV Show and give my own read of how ‘bad’ they are. I’ll be looking primarily at their focus episode where they actually act as teachers. I know a lot of the Webshow teachers came back in a much more chill and friendly role in the TV Show, but for me the things they did while they were acting as teachers is more important than how they act on their ‘off hours’ (if those even count as the same people in the same continuity)
And obviously, this is going to be a very personal sort of reading, very much based on my interpretation of DHMIS and its themes.
So let’s start with the Teacher who started it all!
Sketchbook!
So I am gonna… try and start with the pros. So, before Sketchbook comes into the scene, our Trio was just sitting very, very still around the breakfast table. As per the creators’ own word, this is meant to show that our trio lacks creativity. So, learning how to Get Creative is a lesson that, in general terms, our trio could use to learn. Plus, not all of her lessons are that bad. Like, imagining silly faces on oranges, seeing images in clouds, using hair to express oneself - that’s all… alright I guess. And she can sometimes be entertaining and engaging to our trio, even including the not-easily-impressed Red Guy!
Sketchbook: Now, when you stare at the clouds in the sky, don't you find it exciting?
Red, Duck, and Yellow Guy: No.
Sketchbook: Come on, take another look!
Yellow Guy: Oh wait!
Together: I can see a hat! I can see a cat! I can see a man with a baseball bat!
Together: I can see a dog! I can see a frog! I can see a ladder leaning on a log!
But, as we all know, the devil’s in the details. Alongside her kinda-alright lessons in creative thinking, she hides a pretty strong overcontrolling tendencies.
She has no way to engage her students when they go ‘off-script’ by not being immediately impressed with her lesson - outside of just vaguely telling them they’re ‘not thinking right’ -
Duck Guy: I don't see what you mean.
Sketchbook: 'Cause you're not thinking creatively!
Or just ignoring their words entirely.
Sketchbook: I use my hair to express myself!
Red Guy: That sounds really boring.
Sketchbook: I use my hair to express myself!
And she clearly has a pretty strong idea of what is ‘good’ or ‘correct’ creativity. Making her shut Yellow Guy’s creative expressions down if he’s ‘doing it wrong’ according to her inexplicable restrictive standards.
And, well, this seems to be the Point where my opinion diverges quite a bit from that of the majority of the fandom… But, I’ve seen people say that the Sketchbook’s ‘never be creative again’ line proves that she might not be that evil, cause, well, look at all the horrifying shit the trio did while they were Creative! Not wanting this to happen is a perfectly understandable and moral position! And shows that she can actually be a responsible and moral teacher!
Well…that’s not my interpretation.
Yeah, the Creative scene is creepy and gross. But… I dunno if it represents something truly harmful and evil going on. Yeah they were using organs as decorations and baked that awful meat cake but… but while that gore is Gross, there’s not really the implication that they killed or harmed something to get it, you know?
I think the Creative scene is not just our characters ‘going CRAAAZY’, I think it’s more like… both literally and metaphorically, the characters are being Creative in those kinda weird and off-beat ways. Expressing their creativity and feelings in messy and odd ways found in art pieces much like… well, Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared itself.
That awful gore cake is almost a perfect metaphor for DHMIS, actually. A pleasant childish facade revealing an inner layer of gore and horror.
They’re just making art that’s maybe a little gross. And maybe a little scary. And maybe a little too raw and visceral for themselves to handle. But that’s not inherently a bad thing. You know, even if it is pretty messy and they are kinda emotionally rattled from their own creative expressions, that might be something they would need a guiding hand in channeling in healthy and better ways…
But certainly not just “well, don’t you ever do this again”.
Now let's all agree to never be creative again.
For me this is just an extension of pouring oil all over Yellow’s Clown Painting. The Trio is still Doing Creativity Wrong by the Sketchbook’s standards - and she has decided they are doing it so Wrong that they shouldn’t be Creative ever again. It’s basically equivalent to some sort of hypothetical art teacher who watches DHMIS and goes “this is so creepy! I don’t think the people who made this should make art ever again!”. I think it’s clear why this kind of person would be a bad teacher when it comes to teaching art or anything to do with creativity!
Well, look at the time, looks like we should move on to...
Tony the Talking Clock!
Okay, so I think… Pretty much all of the pros I was giving the Sketchbook are lessened with Tony. It certainly feels like there is an escalation with the Badness of the teachers going on. While one can argue that the trio needed to learn about the basics of Creativity - just not from a person like the Sketchbook - I think it’s harder to make the same argument about Tony’s very basic Time lesson. Like, before he shows up Red Guy and Duck just make a super-generic comment about time -
Red Guy: Come on, guys, stop mucking around. We only have five minutes until our show is on.
Duck Guy: It's not enough time!
And if you just compare the way the trio participate in Tony’s song versus Sketchbook’s song….
Sketchbook: I see a silly face!
Yellow Guy: Wow!
Sketchbook: Walking along and smiling at me!
Duck Guy: I don't see what you mean.
Sketchbook: 'Cause you're not thinking creatively!
Yellow Guy: This tree that is old, has circles inside!
Tony: This tree that is older has shriveled and died.
Duck Guy: The apple that's fresh is ripe to the core!
They don’t really appear confused by the concept of time or surprised by Tony’s explanation of time. Red Guy asks one question (“And then what happened after the olden days?”) but that just might be out of politeness. It all seems to be stuff that they already understand about time. And he was doing this while the trio had other things planned.
But we don't really want to, we're going to miss our show.
And he just whisked them away on a musical adventure repeating ideas they already knew. So even if he didn’t do all of the Bad Shit that he did, he’d still be wasting their time.
But of course, we can’t forget about all the Bad Shit he does!
First and foremost, he’s got the same Issues as Sketchbook with his students going ‘off-script’, but he is even less patient. Almost immediately resorting to name-calling and violence.
Don't be STUPID, friends!
There's a time and a place for mucking around!
And in addition to just being a very simplistic view of Time, his lesson also contains some stuff that’s closer to straight-up inaccuracies. Namely his overly-romanticized presentation of both the past and the future.
And once they start actually questioning the lesson, and asking questions more advanced than he was prepared too, at first he deflects in a similar manner to the Sketchbook -
Duck Guy: But when did it start?
Yellow Guy: And when will it stop?
Tony: Time is important and I am a clock.
But then he quickly resorts to shutting them down with his loud beeping, until their ears bleed. Just a more indirect form of violence. It’s clear that his idea of ‘teaching’ is not one that encourages actual curiosity about the world, it’s just about following and repeating his points. And while the Sketchbook had a similar worldview, she never seemed to have more than Words and Oil to shut her students down, Tony has Time on his hands.
Namely the infamous final scene of the episode, where the group withers away and dies.
Here, there is no doubt that what is happening is harmful and is causing them suffering, and while Tony denies it, the Trio seems to believe that he is responsible for it. Considering the amount of seeming-reality-warping he was capable of during the rest of his musical number, it’s not that implausible.
It’s unclear WHY he did that, I think it’s most likely yet another way to punish them for not respecting him and his lesson, and for asking questions they shouldn’t. It’s also possible he just has a sadistic streak and tormenting them was always his goal, but considering how much his Control Freak aspect was emphasized during the rest of the episode, I am kinda leaning towards the former option.
Also in general “teacher bad because they are a control freak who ties too much of their ego into being smarter than their students” is more compelling to me than “teacher bad because they love cruelty”
Oh! did I just mention... LOVE?
And now, Shrignold (and the rest of the Love Cult!)
Okay, so let’s cut to the chase here. The thing about Shrignold is that he’s literally a cult recruiter. And that fact invariably corrupts any sort of ‘positive’ I could possibly say about him.
Like, yeah, Yellow Guy was very emotionally distressed and in need of a pick-me-up and Shrignold’s lesson seems to be comforting him - at least at first. But that’s less of a matter of his Lesson having some useful elements as it is a matter of Shrignold finding an emotionally vulnerable and isolated person to prey on - because he’s a cult recruiter.
And yeah, some of Shringnold’s initial explanations of love weren’t all bad and they only turned restrictive and Weird later. But that’s because his whole strategy is to sell Yellow Guy on Love as a general concept representing happiness and togetherness -
But you know it doesn't have to be; I hate you, you hate me.
Cause even though we're different, it doesn't make a difference
and we can live in harmony.
I know you don't know who I am, but maybe I can hold your hand
and together we can understand about love!
Shrignold: To love each other is to care, to be kind…
Flower: …and to share!
Rabbit: I love my friend, so I give them a hug!
Purple Guy: I made this for you cause I love you so much!
Beaver: I love my pet cause he's a crab.
And once he is committed to the idea that he needs Love to be happy, that is when Shrignold starts to conflate that general concept of Love with a more restrictive one and start shoving Heteronormativity down the child’s throat. Because he’s a cult recruiter.
Shrignold: No, no, no, that's not how it's done.
You must save your love for your special one!
Yellow Guy: My special one?
Unicorn: Everyone has a special one.
Beaver: He's made for her…
Unicorn: …and she's made for him!
Rabbit: And that's the way it's always been.
Beaver: And it's perfect.
Purple Guy: And it's pure.
Shrignold: And it's protected with a ring.
Tree: That's the way that old love goes.
Unicorn: Like a flower it grows and grows!
Purple Guy: And it's forever.
Flower: And forever.
And yeah, Shrignold is one of the only teachers who never loses his temper with the students, even when they’re doing something that is ‘wrong’ in his eyes. But that’s because he is trying to Lovebomb Yellow Guy in every meaning of the word. Because he’s a cult recruiter.
There’s a level where I’m, like, ‘well does that make him that textually different from all the other Teachers in the show?” I mean, you can very well argue that Sketchbook didn’t have a ‘few decent points in her lesson before it turned sinister’ - she was just trying to make them follow her ideas of creativity by getting them excited about the idea of being Creative in general and then narrowing the focus into just the creative expressions that she liked.
Buuut… this is still more obviously textually what’s going on when it comes to Shrignold. And the fact that he seems to be intentionally trying to isolate Yellow Guy from his friends and preying on him when he’s especially emotionally vulnerable, trying to manipulate his emotions and decide for him what's he feeling and why
Yellow Guy: But what is love, is it in the sky?
Cloud: No it's a feeling, deep inside.
Yellow Guy: Because I'm hungry?
Shrignold: No, you're lonely. I can see it in your eyes.
Just gives him that extra edge of Sinister. Tony might be more obviously violent, but something about Shrignold and his friends’ passive-aggressive manipulation of Yellow Guy that feels even more dangerous.
So yeah, Shrignold’s lesson was self-contradictory and nonsensical, he keeps reinforcing obviously wrong falsehoods about relationships and emotions, he condescends to his student when he’s just trying to apply his lesson. But most importantly, he’s a cult recruiter.
And also probably homophobic.
I don't have a clever segway this time but anyway, here's...
Colin the Computer!
So while ‘Creativity’ and ‘Love’ featured the characters arguably needing to learn the Lesson (just not specifically from these terrible teachers) and ‘Time’ featured the characters just kinda minding their own business before being pulled into a totally unnecessary lesson - ‘Computers’ add a new wrinkle in the situation. In this episode, the characters are explicitly unquestionably interested in learning - just not about the subject the teacher has come to teach.
If you wanna talk about DHMIS as a metaphor for an education system that forces children to conform and recite information mindlessly while punishing their genuine curiosity - you really can’t find a better example. The Trio was practically seeking a lesson this time, but their will was overridden because that is not what they were supposed to learn.
And with the fact that they were robbed from learning about the world in favor of computers could be a metaphor for people isolating themselves from the ‘real world’ by focusing on technology. Or, to go more in line with the themes of DHMIS and how I interpret them - a metaphor for the internet and digital culture spreading misinformation and thus distorting one’s understanding of the world.
And not only is Colin taking the Trio away from a topic they actually sincerely want to learn about - his lesson is about as uselessly overly-simplistic as Tony’s. Like Red Guy said, they already have a computer - and it actually seems a bit more advanced than Colin is.
So it’s probable that they actually know all about the Wonders of Computers. The vibe I get from Colin’s song is that Duck and Yellow Guy are kinda dazzled by Colin’s bells and whistles, but Red Guy’s bored reaction is the correct one - there really is nothing new to learn here.
If anything, Colin is limiting their information of the digital world by shoving them into this infinite feedback loop of doing the same three things over and over again. Rather than the countless other things you could do in the digital world (including, you know, learning more about the world).
Colin also tends to ignore questions that are Inconvenient for him to acknowledge, constantly talks over his students…
Red Guy: Oh, maybe you could help us answer this question. "What is the biggest thing--"
Colin: Clever!
I'm very clevery guy.
Yellow Guy: Wow!
…and there is his infamous freakout.
The notable thing for me is that just before that moment he himself already got all up in the personal space of his students. He’s a hypocrite, he thinks that he’s allowed to do whatever he wants to the Trio but they should respect him. Just another variation of that egotistical prideful streak that Tony also showed.
Also, I feel like a lot of people tend to kinda gloss over his bombardment of questions just before that freakout.
Colin: Great! Great news! Now before we begin our journey, I need to get some information from you! What's your name? Where do you live? What do you like to eat?
But to me this is clearly, like, a reference to websites collecting data from their users to sell to advertisers and suchlike. Colin is trying to pull the trio into using him more and more so he could spy on them and sell their data or whatever is the DHMISverse equivalent of that is.
But his big episode climax breakdown by the end is… a bit complicated. Like I said, I think the climax of ‘Creativity’ is both caused by our protagonists and is mostly benign - while the climaxes of Eps 2 + 3 are under the control of the teachers (Tony sped up time to punish his Students, Shrignold is a cult recruiter). But with ‘Computers’… I think what’s going on is Colin’s fault but not necessarily under Colin’s control.
Like, what’s happening here is that the digital world is getting overloaded due to Colin’s endless and repetitive lesson, right? He wanted to keep them in his digital world as much as possible, and when keeping their attention constantly focused on his digital wonders became too much for him - he started to glitch. It’s his fault, since it’s driven by his own ego and control-freak nature (and desire to harvest their data), and I don’t know if he’s necessarily feeling bad about that - but it is distinctive from Tony actively and knowingly punishing them.
(Also I know some people say that he intentionally caused Red Guy’s head to explode somehow and killed him at the end but considering he is unscathed in the next two episodes I am choosing to read it as Red Guy simply having his mind metaphorically blown)
So while Colin (at least Webshow Continuity Colin) is absolutely a Bastard, this is the first case where it is hard for me to say there is an escalation in the Terribleness of the teachers?? Maybe it’s just my personal biases talking? like, is spreading misinformation to manipulate you to join a cult better or worse than spreading misinformation to manipulate you into spending all your time on social media so he can monitor, harvest and sell your data? I can at least see the argument that the latter is worse?
And I do think the intention is to continue the escalation, considering that up next is…
Lamb Chop and the Rest of the Healthy Band!
Okay, so, I think it’s pretty clear by now that I’m doing this list with an attempt to prioritize actually evaluating the Teachers as teachers. You know, how bad their lessons are, how mean they are to the students, who much their behavior discourages actual curiousity or creative thinking… But, well, with these guys - there’s kind of a big elephant in the room about it.
Like, yes, their lesson is basically self-contradictory nonsense, they do nothing but ignore and override their students’ words and desire, and they don’t even seem particularly good at the ‘entertainment’ part of ‘edutainment’ - their song does nothing but annoy and distress the puppets for the most part. I mean, the circumstances around the song are probably a bigger factor but it certainly doesn’t help it’s so disjointed and chaotic.
But all of this feels kinda small potatoes (small potatoes make your teeth go gray!) against the fact they had one of their students killed and force-fed to another!
And unlike the thing with Tony, this doesn’t seem like a punishment for misbehaving (at least not on their specific lesson), it seems like Duck was doomed to die since the episode began.
It feels more like the Healthy Band was sent here to distract the puppets from Red’s disappearance and Duck’s oncoming demise over any attempt in education, even a very misinformed and misguided one.
But also, yeah, their level of education is quite bad and the way they treat their students even when they’re not killing them is very shitty. It's just kinda the culmination of all of the badness we already seen so I don't really have anything new to say about that.
Don’t murder your own students. That’s bad.
Anyways!
Lamp!
Lamp might be a bit harder to judge, because despite ‘officially’ being the main Teacher in Ep 6, he basically has like, a total of a scene-and-a-half to really show off his lesson. But… even in this scene-and-a-half he really demonstrates that he is a terrible teacher.
Much like the Healthy Band, he totally ignores and overrides his students… urn, student’s adamant refusal to join in on his lesson. Which is espacially obvious this time as Yellow is just TERRIFIED through the whole lesson.
And similar to Tony, he punishes Yellow for ‘misbehaving’ in a terribly cruel manner.
And there’s one more thing unique to him, and that is that the subject of his lesson is even more ludicrous than normal.
How can you be sleepy if you don't know how to have dreams?
It’s not something like ‘what are dreams’, but specifically ‘how to have dreams’. There were already a few lessons in DHMIS that seemed to teach the students stuff they already knew (or at the very least, stuff that they knew more/as much about as the teachers did) but now we’re really moving into the territory of things no one needs to learn. Just another way to demonstrate the continued degradation of the teachers even with Lamp's limited screentime and also this time no one gets murdered.
And now, let’s pull the plug on the Webshow Teachers…
And start up the TV Teachers with…
Briefcase!
Again, I will start with whatever pros I can find… I think you can argue the Trio at least needed some sort of lesson about jobs? In the sense that Duck at least wanted to do something with his time - and also Yellow thought his welch was a ‘Job’. So I think that the Trio could probably use a lesson about what jobs are, just you know… not from this asshole.
Because while Briefcase isn’t as actively punishing or hostile as some of the DHMIS Web Teachers, he is incredibly misleading - first presenting an idealized version of the working world…
you can be anything you want to do
It's totally up to you
Presenting work as a wonderland of infinite choices, including artistic pursuits…
But also publicly shaming his own brother for trying to chase his own career aspirations because they’re not successful at the moment.
And then trapping our Three of Us in a drab, unrewarding and utterly superfluous job.
He might not be as big of a jerk as some of the Webshow Teachers but he’s certainly pretty condescending - and he adds a new wrinkle into the wide tapestry of Teacher Awfulness: he is intentionally misleading.
Like, okay. This is kind of up for interpretation. But to me it feels like most of the teachers we’ve seen so far are true believers in their bullshit. Maybe not the Healthy Band or Lamp due to just how incoherent their lessons are and how much they’re seemingly motivated to just distract/punish their students. But even with them I’m not sure, the forces behind them might be more actively malicious, but the Teachers themselves could be just warped enough that they believe they make sense.
But this isn’t the vibe I get from Briefcase. I mean, there’s his blatant broad-daylight hypocrisy with Unemployed Brendon. And… he seems to be fully aware that he’s trapping them in Peterson's and Sons and Friends Bits & Parts Limited - doing the exact opposite of what his song says by forcing them into one of the least desirable workplaces he has access to. I feel like he must know that his song is just a way to entice suckers to give their life to the Capitalism Machine.
Like, y’know, maybe in his mind it was “it’s for their own good, they need to have jobs! Any jobs! And that’s the only one they’re good for!” but he certainly doesn’t believe ‘you can be anything you want to be’.
Especially when all that’s needed to get them back home is for him to finish his song, and yet he instead watches over quietly in disguise until Duck accidentally uncovers him. So while he might not be directly responsible for everything that happened to the trio over the factor, he’s at the very least complicit in it.
Was he planning to wait until they all retire before finishing his song? Was he planning to have them all die from old age at Petersons? Did he pull them out due to Yellow’s workplace accident or just because Duck ruined his cover?
Not to mention the way he pulled them into and back from that Time Hole proves his general emotional callousness, especially when you consider the effect this whole thing had on Yellow Guy.
My hand... My child...
Nor does it seem like he cares about his pound being lodged in Duck’s eye, which reinforces the idea he would’ve just let Yellow Guy bleed out and die in his retirement party if Duck hadn’t forced him out.
Speaking of Death…
Coffin
So Coffin’s the guy who really starts the trend of DHMIS TV Teachers being… different from their Webshow Equivalents. Both in the sense that they tend to be less actively and obviously malicious and in the sense that they tend to suffer some sort of Terrible Fate - this, combined with the main trio themselves proving they are capable of some Fucked Up Shit, make them more sympathetic to the audience. For a lot of people, folks like Coffin are actually pretty decent teachers.
My opinion is… a bit more complicated. Now, it is true that he showed up offering an important and necessary service to the trio - he’s basically a funeral director who got summoned because someone died. While he can be a bit of a jerk and that’s Bad-
This level of jerkiness is, like, the maximum he reaches when even Duck pees inside him. Compared to basically every other teacher and even our protagonists, that makes him remarkably even-tempered. Even the more seemingly-fucked-up stuff he did - like removing Duck’s organs and y’know, sealing him underground forever while he’s still conscious - seem to be pretty normal for Dead people in this bizarre world.
So yeah, I do generally agree that Coffin is not nearly as bad the teachers we’ve had before and he certainly did not deserve to get pissed in and then die, but…
The important thing to remember, from my perspective, is that Coffin isn’t just a Funeral Director. He’s still supposed to be a teacher, who teaches the trio about death. And judging him from this metric, he did an abysmal job. Literally all of the troubles in this episode; from Red and Yellow’s emotional anguish, their shitty treatment of Stain Edwards to, again, poor Coffin himself getting pissed in and smashed to bits - those all stem from the same root cause. Which is that our Main Trio just doesn’t know shit about dealing with Death.
Out of the Three of Them, Red Guy seems to be the only one who’s mostly aware of what Death even means and even then only from the perspective of the deceased - he had absolutely no idea how to deal with the grief of losing Duck. TEACHING the Trio about Death IS supposed to be Coffin's responsibility. And instead of making sure they actually understand what is going on, he pretty much immediately roped them into the excitement of preparing for the Big Day, Big Day - leading to pretty much every conflict in the episode.
Plus, the funeral he arranged (the part of his job he seemed to actually put effort into), had a bunch of inaccuracies (most notably the David Blunder)... And he might be the one responsible for sending the mourners to the house with the Make a New Friend Kit. All of these - seeing Duck being memorialized inaccurately, and having all of these super-performative grief forced on him, and then being pushed to explicitly move on and replace Duck as quickly as possible… Although it seems they were done with some good intentions, all of these pretty much exacerbated Yellow Guy’s Issues with dealing with his grief - in addition to never really having the permanence of Death explained to him before the event.
I mean, you have to make some consideration towards the fact that the Puppets themselves were not really able to admit that they didn’t really understand Death - so it’s not like Coffin was willfully ignoring requests for knowledge from his students. He didn’t know that they didn’t know! But I also feel like it is his responsibility as their teacher to take the initiative and make sure they understand the material he is teaching. (and of course, the Puppets not taking the initiative to ask questions themselves is pretty understandable when their educational environment has a history of punishing questions).
Coffin is a pretty interesting anomaly in the continuum of DHMIS Teachers. Because a lot of the time the Teachers are, implicitly or explicitly, redundant at best. Telling the Trio about things they already know in a way that is condescending, or overly simplistic, or just filled with inaccuracies even the Trio can spot. Coffin, however, is here to teach the Trio about something they legitimately don’t know and should probably know about - but he just fails to divulge that basic information that our main characters need. I think you can read it as, like, a statement about the way our society stigmatizes the discussion about Death. Especially with all the performative inaccurate mourning and then the quick push to move on (in this case by literally replacing Duck).
But whatever he was motivated by a desire to avoid actually discussing the ramifications of Death, or it was literally just a goofy misunderstanding and he thought the Trio knew what they were getting themselves into - I still feel like it was his responsibility and his failure that caused all of the troubles. I mean, it still puts him pretty high in the ranking as far as DHMIS Teacher Quality goes just cause the bar is so low - and it still doesn’t mean he deserved the Duck Piss. But this is why I don’t feel 100% comfortable with calling him a ‘Good Teacher’.
Lily and Todney!
Now with these two, the Terribleness is a lot more clear-cut. Lily and Todney are a pretty classic example of what I was talking about just before in the Coffin entry. The Trio already had a pretty good understanding of the ACTUAL concept of Family at the start of the episode.
Sure, we're not technically a family, but we live together and we have the same lawyer and it works for us.
They didn’t need a lesson about that. And Lily and Todney were less ‘teaching’ them as much as trying to ingrain in them arbitrary nuclear standards for ‘Family’ in their heads. ‘Your idea of ‘Family’ is Wrong, we are here to teach you how Wrong you are’ is their thing, basically.
They are also pretty condescending to the puppets, put them in many uncomfortable situations, and do the Classic DHMIS Teacher Move of being deflective and avoidant when one of their students calls them out on their bullshit.
Faulbchdt... That's not a word!
That's right, isn't it, Lily? Family is much more than just a word!
They punish their students for failing to follow rules they have not actually properly established to them before they ‘broke’ them (see: the Mother's Piece debacle).
They also, like, ate a fellow Teacher???
All of these are pretty standard practice for DHMIS Teachers by now (I guess not the Teacher-Cannibalism), the thing that makes Lily and Todney notable is the way they try and exploit our puppets. Their main motivation is explictly not just to 'educate' the trio/make them think the 'right' things.
The reason why they try to reinforce the idea that the trio is doing family Wrong and only the twins can teach them how to do it Right is because they have something to gain out of it. On the micro-scale you can see it in the Family Tree sequence. Where Lily and Todney’s, um, roommate (relative?) is literally sustained by the blood of Red Guy - which was given willingly because Red Guy bought into L&T’s constant insinuations that he needs to be with his ‘real’ biological family in order to belong.
But more obviously, there’s the whole scheme of turning Yellow Guy into their new mother. In fact, if you watch the episode closely, it’s pretty clear they had their eyes on him from very early on.
So this whole ‘lesson’, with all of its nonsense arbitrary morals and rules, was nothing but a ploy to get the Trio into their house and isolate Yellow Guy from his friends.
But the interesting thing for me is the motivation. On some level, Lily and Todney might be the most sympathetic Teachers we’ve had - because we actually know for certain what motivates them. And that’s desperation.
Lily and Todney are HUNGRY. It’s implied that it’s not actually an uncommon occurrence in that family, since it's also mentioned in the home movie that they made before Mother was gone.
Despite having a bigger house than the Trio, it seems like this family is really financially struggling to keep themselves fed. And the Grolton Chicken Family Discount seems to be the only affordable food option they have. I mean, it doesn’t justify, y’know, driving the trio apart with their nonsense or drinking Red Guy’s blood or kidnapping Yellow Guy. They would definitely be a lot more sympathetic if they just stole food from the trio’s kitchen or something. But it gives them some sort of non-abstract material reason to do what they do where most teachers seem to do the same or worse purely out of a sense of ego, or a warped ideology, or just plain sadism.
Plus, there is the factor of the terms and conditions of the Family Discount themselves. Where, like, either Grolton’s Chicken refuses to give a Family Discount to any Group of People that is not a “Real Family” as defined by having a ‘dad’ and a ‘mom - or Lily and Todney are simply under the false impression that the Family Discount require that they’ll be a ‘Real Family’. So either there is a restaurant out there reinforcing this restrictive idea of family through financial discrimination. Or Lily and Todney have this concept of ‘family’ so deeply ingrained in them that they can see no other way.
Even with their ulterior motive to get the trio to listen to them, they probably actually believe only Real Families can open Family Packs. A lot of teachers seem to be True Believers in the nonsense they enforce, but Lily and Todney are our first example where the implication is that this ideology harms them just as much as it does the puppets. Either BECAUSE of that deluded belief or because there's a more influential organization that is also enforcing it. It’s a much bigger social system, and Lily and Todney are just cogs bringing it along to the next victim.
I mean, at the end of the day, I am trying to judge their value as teachers to the Puppets. And while this aspect makes them maybe a bit more sympathetic, it doesn’t make them any better as Teachers. This is just a new interesting flavor of Teacher-Badness - where they are directly harmed by the values they try to enforce and harm our trio with. Just one more link in a chain of harm, kinda reminds me of the way our trio treated Stain, actually. A new Wrinkle to consider when thinking of the teachers’ awfulness, I suppose.
And speaking on things that are Wrinkly, it is time for…
Warren the Eagle!
So the thing about Warren is, the lesson he has to teach our Trio was actually a necessary one. While all Three of Them care about each other, their friendship is also really dysfunctional for a variety of reasons - as you can see in this very episode’s ending.
So yeah, a lesson about how to ‘be better best friends’ would be something they needed, and especially on that day when they were so mean to Yellow Guy! And most of the lessons he has to teach them make good points! It’s just that Warren is the worst person who could deliver them. Like, leaving aside he’s a negative hole of charisma and talent the trio just does not want to listen to. He’s also a huge-ass hypocrite!
The lessons he says are actually good friendship advice (presumably just parroted verbatim from the ‘Okay Stop! learning materials) - but he himself fails to follow them even on the most basic level. For him, these are lessons he needs to Teach others, not anything he needs to learn from himself. He only interacts with them when they can be an Excuse for his own shitiness. They’re just slogans to repeat without actually understanding them himself. (Which is extra sad cause Warren IS primarily motivated by his lonliness. If HE could learn how to be a Better Best Friend, that would benfit him more than anything!)
Much like many other Teachers on DHMIS, this also feels like a reflection of problems in Real Life Early Childhood Education. How often are children taught basic concepts such as friendship, honesty, respect or kindness by parents, teachers and other authority figures - who utterly fail to actually follow these same ‘basic childhood lessons’ themselves and especially towards their own students? How many children are taught 'kindness' by the unkind?
So while Warren being an obnoxious and toxic person who shows no remorse as he destroys Yellow Guy’s mind for the sake of his own ego and self-satisfaction and, y’know, turned into a giant monster is bad enough if he was simply the puppets’ peer - the fact that he is also supposed to be ‘teaching’ an actually important lesson to them, kinda makes it worse? Because now they all know that Warren sucks, it’s also a lot easier for them to just ignore everything he told them. To just process them as empty slogans like Warren himself did, and therefore…
Anyways!
Choo-Choo!
This one’s another kinda Complicated one, and much like Lily and Todney, a rare case where we might need to consider Outside Factors when evaluating the character - so let’s take this one at a time.
First, while there is not much Wrong in his lesson - it’s unclear how necessary it is. While the puppets didn’t know much about, like, travel and driving a car - all of those are things that Red Guy taught himself on his own while Choo-Choo was kinda MIA. Choo-Choo’s own lesson was mainly just about listing various kinds of vehicles and transportations methods and I think the Trio are at least aware of what a bicycle is. So it’s probably yet another case of a Teacher giving them a lesson so simplistic and condescending it’s totally unnecessary.
Yeah, he came as a reaction to a Need one of the Puppets had, but in the sense he seems to be here as a way to try and passively placate Red Guy’s dreams of escape by offering him a faux ‘trip to the outside’ that actually never leaves their living room. It’s kinda like the Healthy Band maybe, although at least Choo-Choo isn’t distracting them from anything terrible well at least not anything more terrible than the general background terribleness of their existence.
And while he’s certainly not the worst Teacher we’ve had so far, he’s got a rather short temper, he tends to hit his students, even if it seems to be mostly by accident, but not always… And he often fails to engage with the actual questions his students ask of him…
Now, that’s the whole thing of Outside Factors. Because all of these issues with Choo-Choo’s teaching methods aren’t really Flaws In His Personality, as much as it is just… him being old and not-in-very-good-health. He’s not really ignoring or dismissing his students’ questions, he just legit has a problem hearing them properly. And he seems to be straining himself very much to the point of pain and death just to give them that lesson - which makes him easier to read as genuinely, if misguidedly, invested in Educating the Youth.
Plus, while he’s got a bit of a temper, it never really gets beyond ‘exasperated gruffness’ - not even when the trio hijack his own body to go on their little escape plan and drink all of his oil and force-fed him raisins and cigarettes -which would certainly be a justified point for someone to get angry!
And then there is the fact that he’s yet another Teacher who ends up dead due to the Actions of of the Students, so a lot like Coffin, that automatically makes him more sympathetic. (I think the Students actually killed Choo-Choo like three different times in that episode). I can totally see why he’s considered, at least, one of the ‘least evil’ teachers.
But… Well, while he might be one of the better-intentioned and least villainous teachers out there - he’s still not very good at his job? If you want to talk about how good the Teachers function as actual Edutainment for their students… yeah, Choo-Choo is not very good. We’ve certainly seen worse teachers, but his interactions with the students are generally unpleasant, the contents of his lesson are probably entirely redundant, he can't really engage with the students, and - you know- he DIED mid-lesson. Which is generally considered a downside.
I mean, Choo-Choo can’t help but be Sick and Old, I don’t want to blame him for that… There are people who can manage to be good teachers while being Sick and/or Old. The important factor here is that… while on some level it might seem admirable that he’s pushing himself despite his health - that just kinda made things worse both for everyone involved! If Choo-Choo toned things down a bit to make the lesson plan more accommodating to his own health problems (as in, take Duck's advice and Stop Morphing), that would’ve led to a more pleasant experience for both his students and himself (as in: he wouldn't have died!)
The question, I guess, is why did he feel the need to physically push himself like that? I know for a lot of people, Choo-Choo’s whole vibe reminded them of elderly and/or sick people who are forced to work and unable to retire due to financial pressures or other kinda crappy job conditions. I noticed the parallels too and it’s possible Choo-Choo is going through the anthropomorphic puppet train equivalent of this dire situation. On the other hand, part of Choo-Choo jerkish behavior is constant denial and insecurity about his own health problems. Being super-defensive about them even when his students bring them up with genuine concern.
Yellow Guy: Is that supposed to…?
Choo Choo: Doesn't matter.
Duck: Can you stop morphing?
Yellow Guy: Yeah! Stop morphing!
Choo Choo: I'm not morphing, you're morphing!
Which of course, reminds me of the General Vibe of insecurity and condescension coming from a lot of the DHMIS teachers - clearly having their ego harmed by being outsmarted by their students or even just being asked questions they are not sure about. You know, it’s this mindset of ‘I’m the teacher and you’re the students, therefore you must Respect everything that I say because I’m always right and if you disagree with me you are Wrong’. And I think Choo-Choo’s defensiveness might come from that same source? That it is embarrassing if you have to admit your students are actually right about something, even when this thing is literally threatening your life and health.
It might be a balance of both of these. Maybe Choo-Choo has been forced into Teaching by, like, Lesley’s lackluster pension fund for her inanimate-object-nightmare-puppet-teachers or something but ALSO he feels too proud to admit any of this in front of his students or even ‘tone down’ the physical intensity of his lesson-plan once called out on his health problems by his students of all people!
Much like Coffin, Choo-Choo is sympathetic because his flaws cause mostly problems (and death) for himself. I think more so in Choo-Choo’s case since he didn’t even cause a lot of anguish for other people. His sense of pride over his students only harmed himself - in the worst possible way.
Farther complicating the issue is the fact that Red Guy was literally encouraging all of this! While Yellow Guy and Duck were clearly worried about Choo-Choo's health, Red Guy was goading him to keep going!
Yellow Guy: Maybe you should have a sit-down.
Red Guy: No, don't sit down.
I dunno if that makes Choo-Choo's death Red Guy's fault (I mean this FIRST death after the song, the other two are absolutely Red Guy's fault) - I think it's likely things would've gone just the same with Choo-Choo's personal pride even if Red Guy was on Team Stop Morphing. But this moment seems so intentful and calculated (I mean, even YELLOW GUY noticed that Choo-Choo is not doing well) - that it feels even harsher than Yellow Guy smashing Coffin in his grief. Maybe Red Guy was just that hopeful that the song will eventually actually take them Elsewhere that he was willing to risk that guy's health. Maybe he was already considering hijacking his corpse?
And unlike with Coffin's death, I can't say this was caused by the problems in Choo-Choo's lesson. So it's not even a teacher's flaws coming back at him. I mean, I GUESS that was caused by the fact this supposed song about Transport wasn't actually going anywhere which was agitating Red Guy - but REALLY, Red Guy is more motivated by larger-scale wider issues about how he's trapped within the Format and thus he is THAT desperate to have a chance to escape, not anything to do with Choo-Choo individually.
I guess that's actually something you can connect with Choo-Choo's 'old teacher unable to retire' coding. Both Choo-Choo's problems as a teacher and the way Red Guy treated him are caused by wider-scale and more powerful systemic issues inflicted on them, which then reflect back on the way the act during the lesson.
Electracey
So good ol’ Electracey the Meter is generally regarded as one of the best Teachers in the whole show and that is… a pretty accurate assessment. But it’s also kinda grading on a curve, y’know? Being the Best Teacher on DHMIS is a pretty low bar to clear. So I am going to go over her problems - because I think they are often overlooked - but I do want to emphasize that, yes, while she is far from perfect, she is also the Best One we’ve had so far!
First things first, her lesson is entirely necessary and important. The Trio legit did not know what Electricity was and why it was important before she showed up.
Duck: I always assumed it was some kind of natural phenomenon, some sort of weather or something.
Electracey: No, what about the lamps, and the lights, and the plug-in blanket?
Red Guy: Uh… magic? Some kind… Like a spell?
And she obviously excels in the Entertainment Part of Education.
And just genuinely seem nice and cordial towards her students, which is a welcome change of pace!
She’s not even very angry when Duck steals her batteries and leaves her almost to die.
But while all of these are true, it is important to remember that she still has some Issues. For a starter, she seems to not have a Full Grasp of the Mortality of Organic Beings.
AND, like a lot of other teachers, she kinda Struggles when her students go off-screen:
"Now tell me, could you make a phone call on a phone that was just made out of rocks and soil?"
"No, probably not"
"Go on, try it!"
"N- Why?"
"Try it!"
Which honestly kinda reminds me, of, well
"I use my hair to express myself!"
And the most important thing is… there is another Point to her Lesson outside of ‘electricity is useful and you should pay your bills’. Electracey doesn’t just believe Electric Devices are cool, she believes they are superior to non-electric-devices.
"Soon everything in the home will be plugged-in and part of the electric family!"
Which is a pretty Dubious message to send to the impressionable puppets.
Now, Electracey’s saving grace is what happens when the students actually start following her lesson - as a combination of their newfound excitement for electricity and trying to distract themselves from Yellow Guy being Smart now, Red Guy and Duck do indeed start making sure everything in the house is ‘plugged in and part of the electric family'. Filling it with useless and gimmicky Smart Gadgets.
And Electracey, through her low-power shitty-battery gaze does actually try and warn them this is not a good idea.
(And it was not a good idea, obviously)
So while some of her lines are a bit ominous, maybe she at least didn’t want them to go that far, and that’s something, at least. Or maybe it was only a problem specifically because it was overloading the power on herself and the house?
Like I said, definitely the Best Teacher we’ve had so far, but she’s still far from flawless…
The big thing I am thinking about is the general fandom assessment that the TV Show had Better Teachers in general compared to the Web Show. It is true, but I think it’s important to consider why it is like this.
First and foremost, it’s because the Webshow had a clear element of escalation in the awfulness that the TV Show does not have. The difference in quality between the two Teacher Groups would’ve been a lot less clear cut if we had to compare all the TV Teachers just with Notebook, for example.
In addition , I think part of the reason the Badness of the TV Teachers is a lot more subdued has less to do with a change in tone and more to do with a change in the format. The longer, more character-driven narrative of the show allows for a more subtle and complex exploration of what makes the Teachers terrible - as well as having to explore a more diverse range of motivations and reasons for their terribleness.
Again, this is a very personal look at DHMIS Teachers, I would be happy to hear your perspectives on the matter assuming anyone made it this far into the post.
#don't hug me#i'm scared#don't hug me i'm scared#dhmis#dhmis analysis#dont hug me im scared#dhmis teachers#dhmis notepad#dhmis notebook#tony dhmis#dhmis tony#tony the talking clock#tony the clock#Shrignold#shrignold the butterfly#dhmis shrignold#colin the computer#dhmis colin#dhmis clock#dhmis computer#colin dhmis#health band#dhmis healthy band#lamp#lamp dhmis#dhmis lamp#dhmis love cult#dhmis briefcase#coffin dhmis#dhmis coffin
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idk who wants to read this but here's some word salad explanation of the lore in passageways (warning: its long)
okay so there are 3 distinct groups in this
the original expedition team
the extraction team (whose logs you read)
you, the player
So the original expedition are your typical Marleybonian colonizers. They find this new world and build a settlement there. In doing so, they anger the spirit/will of the world and it begins to take its revenge on them. It gets rid of the colonizers and takes over the original settlement, warping it into a hostile and maze-like living compound.
This world is unique in that it is kind of "alive". Think kinda like that god world in Guardians of the Galaxy 2 (i think. its been a while since i've seen that movie). You know, like a world so powerful it gains consciousness. That kinda thing.
So back in Marleybone, the leadership there obviously is like, hey, why did our boys just disappear? So they hire the extraction team to find them and also to figure out what happened and prevent it from happening again.
The extraction team is a crew of 7, made up of half pirates, half wizards, and half miscellaneous Marleybonians. Don't check my math here.
The pirates are the Captain, the First Mate, and the Navigator. (I didn't actually assign them any p101 classes bc uh honestly I don't know enough about them and it wasn't really relevant, but if any classes seem to fit feel free to headcanon)
The wizards are the Mercenary (necromancer) and the Medic (theurgist).
The miscellaneous Marleybonians are the Engineer and the Chronicler.
In order of log appearance, they are
Captain (low education and distrustful of magic)
Engineer (tasked w/ restoring communication w/ Marleybone)
Navigator (tasked w/ tracking down lost colonizers, first to be taken)
Mercenary (necromancer, realizes something's wrong here and it ain't regular magic)
First Mate (reliable and level-headed)
Medic (theurgist, recent Ravenwood grad)
Chronicler (last left alive, very british)
So this crew hops into the world via Spiral Key and they go looking for the lost colonizers. Obvi they slowly realize that something Ain't Right Here. As they journey onward, the same thing happens to them as what happened to the original team. This time, one last person is spared, the Chronicler, and they escape to Wizard City.
Eventually either the Chronicler dies or just decides to have a garage sale or something but you, young wizard, buy an old key from an estate sale that turns out to be the Spiral Key to the spooky world. And that's where the game picks up.
You go through. Find the logs. Spooky things happen. At the end, the world is fed up with your intrusion and you are chased back to a world door. You barely escape with your life, but in your rush to escape you leave the Wizard City Spiral Key in the door which allows the entity chasing you to pass through. The ending is intentionally open ended. What happens after the door opens is up to you.
Some Q's and A's
What's the timeline?
So if you pay attention to the medic's log, you'll see that they mention Professor Drake. Given that they're a theurgist, they mean Professor Sylvia Drake, as opposed to Cyrus or Malistaire. I took this line out of the original log to cut some length, but in the Captain's log, they mention that this is the Medic's first mission. So, from this, you can conclude that the extraction mission happened before the events of Arc 1 when Sylvia Drake was still alive. The events of the original colonizers then happened slightly before that. The timing of when you the player come in is up to individual interpretation though. It could happen at any time after. It could still be before Arc 1, meaning you are not the Scion young wizard but another wizard entirely. Or it could be after the events of the main game. Really up to whatever you headcanon.
Whats up with the wooden constructs?
So the in-game explanation is that they're the transformed bodies of the previous expeditions being puppeteered by the will of the world. The out-of-game explanation is that I already had them modeled and rigged from that other wiz fan game I was working on. When I was making this game, I was like, "hmm. what's a spooky motif in the horror genre I could put in here? ah. mannequins." And I remembered I had the constructs so I put them in.
So what the heck is chasing us at the end? Why can't I see a spooky monster? I wanna see a spooky monster :(
So there's not really one monster or something that you're running from. The world CAN manifest itself through physical means via 'possession' of a sort, but it can also just. Take you. And spirit you away. Like it did to the navigator. So I guess you could say the world itself is chasing you at the end. Presumably, if you were to stay there you would eventually suffer the same fate as the previous groups. Maybe if I decided to add a patch to the game I would add an alternate ending where this happens, but. Not likely lol. The other answer is that your imagination is capable of creating much scarier monsters than I can, so I intentionally stayed away from having a physical thing to be scared of. The other Other answer is that I simply did not want to design, model, rig, and animate a monster. :)
#wizard101#pirate101#becoming my OWN hack game theorist because no one else will#also i apologize in advance for the bad writing both in this post and the game#i am very much NOT a creative writer#which is why i enlisted an actual writer savethespiral to save my butt#AND EVEN THEN#anyway if you have any questions feel free to send me an ask
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CPN : interpreting xiao laoshi’s oasis photos 📷
here we go again clowns. thank you to xiao ge for sharing photos from his personal collection. 🤍 same disclaimers applies, it’s all speculation. If you don’t like bjyx or cpns, then don’t read. It’s that easy.
1. Yibo is at it again, at this point it’s already funny and beyond coincidence. When XZ posts, his interaction points goes up. How many times does this need to happen before we accept that this guy logs in and checks his Oasis only when his man posts? GG posts at 22:15. Yibo is at 0 on 22:18 then it goes up 22:21! It’s okay Bobo, we know you check his posts and interact with it. 😌
2. The usual photo of the Moon, which is a BJYX symbolism. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, I initially made a post about it here. However the uniq thing in these shots? There seems to be a Green Hue to it. and who loves Green? Bobo. The cpn thought is he found that it looks green and thought of Yibo so he sent it to him.
3. The first two photos are actually from a Korean Drama. Hahahahaha! He is watching something new again and lowkey recommending it to us. People are saying it’s like he is going through dramas with 9 douban score and above lol.
Drama Name : Extraordinary Attorney Woo
Synopsis : Extraordinary Attorney Woo tells the story of Woo Young-woo (Park Eun-bin), a lawyer with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), working at a large law firm. She has a high IQ of 164, outstanding memory, and a creative way of thinking, however she has low emotional intelligence and poor social skills.
It sounds very interesting! ✌🏼
and what a nice moment in this drama, LGBT theme right here 🏳️🌈 WATCH IT!!!!
Though I don’t think he watched it because of this episode, I feel like it’s a sign that he is not a homophobic shit like some people desperately want him to be. He is not clueless. If he really is anti queer content, then he would not recommend this. This is episode 2, so people will be able to watch it as soon as they try this drama. He knows his audience— a lot of people will try what he recommends. So for him to go out of his way and make a post out of it, or including it says something. I’m really proud of him.
4. People are also sharing the meaning of whale when it comes to love.
Whales in love symbolize courage, because whales are in short supply. I want to stay at the bottom of the sea even in the presence of oxygen.
The whale is very figurative in love. Dependence and perseverance at the bottom, so as to reflect the courage of love. Straight forward and not afraid of any interfering factors.
Also this quote from a Hongkong writer, Huang Biyun.
"I love you, like a whale to the sea, like a bird to the forest, it is inevitable.”
EDIT : The character in the drama also likes whales 🐳
Here is a quote from Ep 4:
"for whales, aquarium is a prison. its slavery where you're locked up in a tank, only eat frozen fish and have a show all year around without a rest. they must be stressed because of it."
This is a scene on Ep 10 where he shows a photo of a Whale that made her cry, but she really wants to see one IRL.
That’s all for now. I might update this main post or maybe just make a new one if something comes up. ✌🏼
sources:
https://m.weibo.cn/detail/4790540031492155
https://m.weibo.cn/status/4790533819471943
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I think both Home and Wally Darling are the victims of whatever has happened to them.
These are just speculations, so feel free to take these with a grain of salt.
Let’s start with one of the secret images. The famous “So Below.”
“So Below” references to how a witch would end their spell: As above, so below. It’s a means of binding what you intend to make real.
(deleted the image for partcoffin)
I’ve already explained this in one of my reblogs, but I will repeat it here.
My first speculation is, whatever happened to Wally and Home, someone had done a spell.
Something or Someone is Trapped as Home
The eye of Home in “So Below” is twitching or looking around. Fidgety. This is just my interpretation, but it seems panicked. Unstable, confused, or scared.
It reminds me of someone who wakes up disoriented and bewildered because they don’t know where they are.
In the audio recording of Wally singing “Beautiful Dreamer,” Home responds to him with the sound of banging walls. It makes me think that something or someone is trapped behind its walls.
Wally is Trapped inside Home
In “beautiful dreamer” and the phone recordings of Wally, there is always that sound in the background, like you’re listening inside a shell. Maybe it’s not important, but it does confirm that Wally is inside an enclosed area, which is Home.
There is also something the website has mentioned about Wally:
“Love is clear in the messages of Wally Darling...his eagerness to understand the world around him ”
It speaks true of Wally trying to understand Home and communicate with them.
In the “So Below” image, Wally can be seen kneeling before Home’s eye window and reaching out. In the audio where he sang “Beautiful Dreamer,” he sang for Home and even asked them if they liked it.
The song is calming, and I think Wally is trying to comfort Home because he knows Home is distressed.
What messed me up more is that the song is about someone asleep -in a state of consciousness where they are unaware. Someone who is Home.
Theory Time of What Happened: Someone tried to transfer themself as Wally and someone else’s soul as Home.
It sounds crazy, but hear me out.
Let’s call the person who tried to transfer themself as Wally as Person A.
Then let’s call the person who tried to transfer someone else’s soul into Home as Person B.
Here’s my theory: Person B died or was dying or was leaving Person A’s life in some manner.
Person A cannot let go.
Person A strongly connects with the Welcome Home show and identifies themself and Person B as Wally and Home.
So Person A tried to use a spell where they and Person B could live forever... together.
But two things went wrong. First, Person B never agreed to the soul transfer (similar to what happened to Caroline becoming Glados in Portal 2). Second, Person A failed to fully become Wally.
It either wiped his memories, or Wally became self-aware.
And we know that Wally is self-aware: no_apuppet_.png on page 5 of the Guestbook.
And the strangest thing is that he has no memory with the other characters even if he knows them: nomemory_.png on page 6.
Whoever was Person A, they see Person B as home that they could not bear for them to leave. To the point that they literally made them as a house.
I think the theme of life, death and rebirth is also strong in the show, which is what spirals symbolize in many cultures. (from left to right, page 1-2-5)
But then again, it’s probably hypnosis. The smallest one has filename “helloneighbor.png,” the second one is “soyouwillknowiamlookingatyouneighbor_iamtalkingtoyou.png” and the last one is scribbled over a guest log expressing sadness that the show ended abruptly.
Bonus: If Wally’s “eagerness to understand the world around him” comes into play...
How does Wally make sense of his situation?
1. He’s knows isolated with Home: “icantreachthem_imsorry_.png” on page 6 (despite other filenames saying that he would tell others what the guests have written about them)
2. And he’s well-aware that he’s alone. Wherever he is, he gets upset when someone implies they are trapped in the same situation: whyareyoufibbing_youarenothere_idontseeyou_pleasedonotlietome_.png on page 6
3. He doesn’t like that his show has ended and covers it with crayon spirals: page 5 of guestbook (doodle is covering the words, “This site has reawakened so many childhood memories! Thank you for starting this restoration project. It’s a true shame what happened to the show.”
4. Even when he tries to talk to Home, he cannot fully understand them because Home only talks by sounds a house can make. Back in the audio of “Beautiful Dreamer,” Wally asked Home if they liked his song. The response was banging on the walls. Wally then said, “That’s good... I think.”
So what can we get from these?
Wally is trapped inside Home, isolated from his puppet friends and anyone else who knows about the show. He tries to reach out to Home but cannot fully understand them, or Home is too unstable to talk to them.
So what do trapped, isolated people do in their situation?
Wally is Trying to Reach Out... or Get Out
Because he’s isolated, he’s trying to reach out. The Welcome Home world and our world are still connected by the existence of the artifacts left of the Welcome Home show.
Another theory again he was able to extend his will to the people that opened the envelopes and thus started the restoration project. Not enough to control, but enough to influence.
If we base it on the spell theory, what is will but intent that can be used as magic?
And Wally’s desire to connect is apparent. He interacts with the undercurrent of the website, and the filenames can get a little intense whenever he responds:
thenanswerme_.png of page 5
Scratchharder_.png from page 6
Whatever outcome Wally wants, he’s biding his time: Itsnottimeyet_imlooking_.png of page 6
Checking the filename for the clock doodle, what is he looking for?
The answer? I think it’s you: youwill_.png of page 5
Conclusion:
For whatever reason, Wally wants you in the Welcome Home world. But you already know that.
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I think that sometimes, especially with binge-culture surrounding shows and media in general, people get under the impression that a new season of something has completely changed how the characters act. I consume content very slowly because otherwise I get all de-realization messy in my head so for a long time I could never see what they saw. Shows that have huge in-universe time gaps between seasons (such as every season of Stranger Things and the gap between S1 and S2 of The Umbrella Academy) have it worst of all, I think.
My hypothesis is that a lot of people begin to consume content all at once and then immediately log onto a fandom so that they can continue to get content even if they consumed all of the canon. This means that slowly, over time, their ideas of who the characters are begins to warp and change. When they log back onto the show after the new season releases they believe that the writers/actors/producers have completely changed how the characters acted in the first place because they’ve grown overly attached to the idea that their favorite blorbo was one way when in reality he was another.
I bring this up because I saw someone claiming that the S3 cast of Umbrella Academy had people acting out of character when in all reality, I think they just went through massive amounts of character development in the time that they were stuck in Dallas (with the exception of Five, who got no time off, and Viktor who had his character development happen on screen with his transition). Luther has always been kind of an adorable himbo who’s super in love, going back to watch his interactions with Allison in S1 prove that even if he is blinded by his loyalty to Reginald and struggling to adjust to life around people again. Diego has always been headstrong and a little arrogant, he’s just also trying to juggle a kid with that. Klaus has always been an utter wildcard and his character has big ups and big downs. Allison has always been self-centered and believed that her life is the most tragic thing to have ever happened (I give her a pass in S2 because, y’know, racism and segregation allows any person of color to act however they want to their white oppressors). Viktor acts pretty much the same in late S1 as he does throughout the rest of the series.
Stranger Things is also a fandom that warps the characters pretty significantly. Eddie especially since he became the fandom darling. When you look at what we were given in the show and then what the steddie people turned him into (I love that interpretation of him, don’t get me wrong) they’re nothing alike.
I don’t think that the writers of the show are warping characters or turning them into someone else, I think that binge-culture has made us associate a specific type of character to our first impressions of them when we watched the beginning part of their media and how we felt when we watched it. Characters go through growth and changes, just as we do as people, which makes them feel almost completely different than they did when we first started. The binge model around media has ruined character development because we can’t process it when we’re consuming so much content that quickly.
There’s no conclusion to this, I think. It was just something I felt like pointing out after seeing a couple of posts about it! Feel free to discuss this with me either on this post, my DMs, or my inbox if you want (I will be deleting/ignoring people that just want to yell or be mean).
#sissy writes too much#tua#st#the umbrella academy#stranger things#binge model media#media#ananlysis#essay#mini essay#my thoughts are thoughts#I haven't read through this again so I apologize for any spelling errors#or repeated messages#just had thoughts and had to get them out of my head
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DevLog 2
We are at log 2 and real life has already got in the way. As I don't got a lot to show off I'll post some non-spoilery asset stuff and hide the rambling under read more.
While I did get a good chunk of the script done, there is still plenty of dialogue I need to get to. As a result, I didn't get any maps done. I'm trying to make this game with RPG Paper Maker's strengths in mind, but every once in awhile I'll realize I made an assumption of what the engine can do and the script has to be put on pause because of it. For example, a lot of this game I had already planned out having pictures on screen for more cinematic scenes. Literally two days ago I realized I don't actually know how to do that in the engine. Thankfully there is a Discord for RPGPM and the people there have been a huge help.
To supplement my question I had drawn a reference of what I meant; it's nothing significant I just think it looks funny.
I'm probably not going to show off the script itself because words on a doc isn't terribly interesting. Here are talk sprites in the mean time.
In order they are Holly, Jim, and Micheal. I might talk more about them next month.
Grant herself I debating making a talk sprite for, I probably will in the end but I'm wondering if how she reacts in those sections should be left up to the player to interpret. I'm thinking about how you see Phoenix clearly while in a courtroom because of the more cinematic approach to that section of the game, but when talking to other characters you don't see his face; instead the characters are talking directly to you because it's more personal. That (and a stupid amount of over analyzing the portraits of FE13-16 because FETH criticism is fucking weird) contributed to the npcs in this game looking directly at you. Also because horror game, things are supposed to be a bit unnerving. If Grant had a sprite she wouldn't look at the player because you are playing as he;, she should reflect the fact that you are looking at the npcs.
While this is the first game I've taken really seriously as a personal project, it's development cycle still throws me off because of what I've done beforehand for school.
It's weird, normally when making a game I'd focus on gameplay first and story last. I've done a handful of small scale projects at school, and the number one thing teachers drill into your head is to have the gameplay and the narrative play off each other. Most students go in with this epic idea for a story and only really want to make it a game because games are cool, not that they think they can have the gameplay enhance the plot. This combined with a lot of demos we made were based on popular genres (FPS for example) meant our development cycle looked a lot like gameplay first then story built to compliment that. My other game ideas either looked like that or smth more equally balanced, I think of a story element and a gameplay element I thought of happens to compliment that, but I've never had to come up with the majority of the plot first then the gameplay afterwards. Part of it was trying to discourage students from doing that, because they tend to have far too ambitious plotlines in mind. The other part was like fucking hell they are teaching us that weird niche visual novel shit because we are being trained to work for some company's Toronto division pumping out sequels.
But ultimately I've just never had an idea like this one before. Half my game ideas are fighting games and the rest are platformers, puzzle games, etc. I have thought of two -ish TRPG's, and briefly came up with a couple of other visual novel ideas, but they never stuck with me as long as the likes of Red Spikey Hair Guy Needs To Let Out Some Anger The Platformer (WIP name). If that title is any indication, the plot isn't my main concern for that game yet. That's because I want to figure out the gameplay more before I further flesh the story out because I want it to blend together. And then it gets put on hold because I forget how to program. Anyways, with Riverside there is very minimal gameplay. The reason why it is still a game and not just a comic or smth is because I think it is very important that you are put in the shoes of a patient at a nursing home, because you can't really get the same empathy with any other medium. Or hell, you don't get that same experience in real life until it's too late.
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wait what has actually happened with the fob/mcr feud stuff my whole dash is just vague references to something happening
i’m putting this below a read more bc it’s going to get long and i don’t really want to recap all this but i’d rather do it myself than have more people totally misrepresent the situation, so.
okay so mcrblr has been for some reason passing around a bunch of polls about how comparatively good the members of mcr are at different kinds of sex.
aside number one: my personal stance on this is that i think it’s weird to speculate about the guys’ sex lives, even as a joke, but given that none of them will see it, it’s whatever. i’ll scroll past it and move on. if pressed i do think that kind of joking should probably be kept to a closed discord server where everyone is in on the joke, because doing it on here means it will inevitably break containment, but again. not my circus, not my monkeys.
anyways. a mcr blogger is like “this sex discussion is so funny, what if it was expanded to include more of bandom” and then used patrick stump as an example. from what i can tell they were trying to satirize the way mcr fans were talking about the guys’ sex lives. they said some stuff in a now deleted post that included things like “patrick would light candles and play marvin gaye during sex [subtext: in a lame way]” and “he looks like a mouse” (note that this is something mcr fans very commonly say about gerard)
that post broke containment and fob fans interpreted it as suggesting that patrick is bad at sex and thus is fatphobic, based on the fatphobic idea that fat people are sexually unappealing
aside number two: fatphobia in bandom is a real issue and nothing i have said has meant to trivialize that. it is absolutely something that has contributed to the way people have treated and talked about both patrick and gerard. but it is not what i see to be the true crux of the situation i’ve been observing here.
okay now let’s go back in time a bit. last year mcr toured again for the first time in a decade. mcr fans understandably went crazy. at some point along the way, i started seeing posts from fob bloggers complaining about specifically mcr fans talking shit about fob and praising mcr at fob’s expense
aside number three: i am a fan of both fob and mcr. i was a fan of fob first. i saw them last week and cried. i do not think either band is better than the other, but if pressed, i would say i personally like mcr more, because i identify more heavily with them/their storytelling. i follow people who like both, people who like mcr and not fob, and people who like fob and not mcr. i myself have never actually seen a mcr fan hating on fob specifically. from my perspective, most mcr fans either like fob or don’t really talk about them. i did see a few posts claiming that mcr was doing things no other band had done or could do (objectively untrue, but understandable hyperbole from big fans) but as far as i could tell fob was never namedropped.
so yeah every now and then i would see some vagueposts about mcr fans from fob bloggers. once polls became a thing the “feud” would come up whenever a bandom poll would get passed around, people would complain about the results, etc
back to the present. op of the post doubles down. a mcr blogger says something like “patrick is a normal size for a 40 something man” which they clearly meant to mean “being fat is within the range of normal bodies” but was interpreted as “i can’t be fatphobic bc patrick isn’t fat. he’s normal and fat people aren’t normal”
i’m too tired to keep typing and it’s 1 am and in 7 hours i am getting on a plane for a one day round trip to see my grandfather before he dies so i’m logging off now. sorry i didn’t finish explaining but i feel like this is probably enough that you can bridge the gap to where we are now. if you have more questions you can dm me or send another ask. i do have more analysis of the situation i just really can’t deal with trying to distill it right now. most of my posts about the issue have been meant to encompass the entire months in the making feud that i believe has lead us to this point, not the specific post
if you’re going to be like why are you involving yourself in bandom drama when your family member is dying it’s because i can’t do anything about it and i was TRYING to use tumblr as a distraction. also like i said the feud has been months in the making and as someone who likes both bands i was really sick of ppl acting like we were enemies
#answered#oh yeah also someone who i literally talked to yesterday broke mutuals with me after 6 years bc of this#shrug emoji i guess
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Thanks for ur posts about Izzy, I'm as white as my wall, but also gay and genderqueer as fuck, so logging onto ao3 and seeing how commonplace charitable interpretations of Izzy are gives me psychic damage. Like, I often stan villains, but normally I have to find myself a little niche of other people who are as crazy as I am to do that. (I'm a Badminton fan btw, hope they kill another one off in Season 2)
I'll tell you a secret, I'm also white. I don't really consider it a wall. It does make me a little dumber I guess because I don't experience racism that's directed at me. But like I've had multiple black and brown people that are important to me in my life ever since I was little, so I guess if I'm out with my little sister(who's Chinese) and I see racism directed at her I'm going to pick up on that too and have to navigate that situation. White people are racial beings and we live in a racialized society it's just that we have the privilege of pretending that's not the case if we want to. You should always be listening to people who do experience racism about racism because they have had to be the recipient of it but that doesn't mean that racism is an unknowable mystery of the universe to you. It's something your friends and neighbors and coworkers have to navigate daily. The goal of listening to marginalized people is to better support them and one of the ways we do that is calling out other white people when they fuck up. They're not gonna listen to us for the most part, one thing I've learned being publicly vocally in support of people of color both in my real life and online is that there's no fuckin solidarity in the in group, but they are more likely to listen to you than they are to listen to poc (especially white queer people if you are yourself queer because there is actually some solidarity there as well as a leverage point). The more we as white people who care about PoC are afraid to talk about race issues the more PoC have to go it alone. I remember was in 8th grade when Michael Brown was killed, and I live in a predominantly white area, and for some fucking reason my social studies teacher decided to bring up what was happening in a class of roughly 30 white kids, one Asian girl, and one black girl and I stood up for him when the entire class was doing the whole "if he didn't want to get shot he shouldn't have been doing x y z" thing. And I remember that my black classmate didn't speak up until I had been defending him for like half the period and was getting visibly frustrated, and I kind of don't think that she would have said anything if no one had been on her side, because why would you take that risk. I was insulated partially because of my whiteness and partially because I was already being bullied so if I made a stink about something in class it couldn't get much worse for my gay goth autistic ass. The point of that anecdote is that if you rely on people of color around you to do the work of antiracism not only does that make things harder for them, but it also leaves the door open that that work won't get done because the person of color that you're afraid of speaking over will probably decide to prioritize their own safety. That's not to say you should speak over anyone either, but 90% of being an adult is figuring out how to navigate complex social situations and this is one of those.
Now of course I know that defending Michael Brown from racists is more serious than defending Ed Ourflagmeansdeath from racists because Michael Brown was a real person who died tragically and Ed is just my blorbo. But either way I'm in a proverbial room full of my chud peers and I've never been the kind of person to not say what I think, and in both situations I am kinda insulated from consequences. There's a reason @chuplayswithfire has had to turn off her anons and I haven't. Part of it might be follower count but I'm not enough of an idiot to think that's all it is.
I guess I kinda got off subject but you're on my blog, so cheers.
But yeah, as a certified villain fucker I would love it if the loudest and most prolific members of our community would just cool it on the racism(/misogyny if we leave the ofmd fandom). I don't even have that much of a problem with apologia in theory. In practice I've even dabbled in apologia myself for my man CJ. But villain fans have kinda always been like this. There's been us baddies who enjoy fucked up guys(gender neutral) and then there's the Snape wives and the Kylo Ren stans and the Jokercels who can't care about fans of color or women to save their life.
Also re: Badminton I too am a great fan of watching Rory Kinnear in period costumes die in stupid ways. As an actor I've thought Badminton would be an incredibly fun role to play since episode 2. Standing on a rock in the background and just fucking around while things happen in the foreground would be the time ever tbh.
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So something else I noticed is this:
*major endgame spoilers*
I found it very interesting that as soon as another NPC said that Aloy shouldn't try to save the world on her own Kotallo and Beta appear on screen right after. Yes I know that couldn't happen with Alva for example bcs we were with almost the full gang at the base, but all the others but them both just kinda happened. So this foreshadowing here can't go unnoticed. (Not to mention how crucial they were at the Zenith base, Aloy trusted him to blow the regulator so Beta could inject HEPHAESTUS into the printer matrix and unleash an army of machines to fight the specter drones).
Though I believe this inclines to how important they could be for Aloy, Beta is now her sister practically and Kotallo pledged his life for her, not that the others like Zo, Erend and Alva didn't, but maybe his connection with Aloy could deepen in the next game (not implying, much less affirming, that this is strictly to romantic connections. This is open to interpretation, I'm just displaying the canonical facts and analysing them with my perspective). However, the amount of similarities they both share plus how Aloy contributed for his new perception of himself and self-worth after being maimed. And with Beta how she mentions on a log that Aloy was her shelter and she would risk it all again to be by her side. We are used to seeing Aloy's influence on other people's lives, but specially with Beta and Kotallo seems more profound than the others. And I would love to see them having the same influence on Aloy for once, the endgame pointed us at that direction at least, with her quote "They've always knew what I just started to understand [...] And for the first time in my life. I feel like I'm not alone"
This post is mostly me just noticing this and how curious it is to introduce Kotallo and Beta this way and going "mmmh what does that mean whatcha got going on right there guerrilla?" (also how insufferable they were the first time they met like lmao Kotallo angry and salty practically growling, Beta pessimistic talking to Aloy like she's stupid and/or incompetent lol they were just hitting nerves there)
*side note: If you talk to Erend at Barren Light before the Embassy, when Aloy takes her leave he says "You sure about this? Saving the world you know, seems a lot for just one person" and Varl arrive a few long moments after. I chose not to include for 3 reasons: 1)The dialogue with him was only optional. 2) Erend was more offering his help than giving her a advice, he correct later "What I'm trying to say is, if you ever need me..." 3) Varl takes too long to appear, you talk to Lawan, then Nozar and Vuadis, this if you even decide to move forward, so it's just too much that can get lost (Yet, we know how Varl was literally the backbone for the gang and none of this wouldn't be accomplished without him)
#wow now im depressed#beta and kotallo are so important#i imagine them on the next game#if you follow the course of the game and get aether first#you get kotallo and immediately beta right after#aloy#kotallo#beta#hfw#hfw spoilers#horizon forbidden west
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Hi, Can you do a session analysis of a:
Heir of Space
Seer of Breath
Mage of Life
Thief of Mind
Witch of Time
Heir of Blood
Knight of Doom
Rogue of Light
Ooh, hello! Big cast you've got there, it'd be a shame if anything terrible and tormentous happened to them.
(Apologies for the length of time this took, I'm repeating myself like a broken cymbal monkey to my entire ask log but I had a bunch of stuff happen and then a spine injury.)
Let's play in this space, big character sheet anon.
Dramatis Personae
☆ Heir of Space
☆ Seer of Breath
☆ Mage of Life
☆ Thief of Mind
☆ Witch of Time
☆ Heir of Blood
☆ Knight of Doom
☆ Rogue of Light
What Does This Mean For The Session
Looking at the spread here, we can make some suppositions about these good folks' collective problems already.
For starters, let's have a peek at Space and Time --
Space has an Heir (altruistic aspect manipulation class) and Time a Witch (active, slightly more personal aspect change class).
When John's session had an Heir of Breath, there was a wealth of Breath (agency, room to mess around, direction, momentum) in the game. The aspect existed, abounded (no one's parental situations substantially interfered with anything really), and seemed to have a vested interest in giving to/acting through him particularly.
In our case, refreshingly, the Heir of Space is an indicator species for the same type of collective lassitude and happiness. There's a lot of physical space separating your characters, but they also all seem to benefit from this one having more space and room to grow than even most of them, and some non-Breath amount of power over the agency they experience. Maybe the Heir can't actually give people more opportunities, but they help it feel like there are a lot more of them, or create the conditions -- the Space -- for others to grow into their roles in different ways.
The Witch of Time is a good sign too -- whatever the situation actually is with the workings of time for the team, the Witch has the ability to change the conventions of and affect the world through time, rhythm, tradition, cycles and endings. Everyone has room to breathe, and someone in their corner has the ability to refuse the end on their behalf.
You're being nicer to your little guys than a lot of people! I'd give you an award for being decent to your blorbos if I had anything like that to give.
Now, let's examine the two most important aspects for anything to get done, Blood and Breath.
Breath (agency, freedom, will) has a Seer, and Blood (bonds) has... wow, would you look at that, another Heir.
On the surface this looks really good: someone can see the optimal paths to take to preserve agency and follow the narrative, which is a core concern to the session, and someone else inherits, understands and changes for others their close connections and covenants.
BUT WAIT: blood as bonds theory is just one facet of the horrible diamond I'm about to painstakingly show you more of the facets of. And having someone dispensing wise seerly advice about the very topic of your own agency is not as fun as people think. At some point you may want to grab a Breath Seer by the lapels and ask, whose story even is this, dipshit?
Let's briefly digress.
So, the reason people say that blood represents bonds and responsibility ("blood of the covenant" etc) is that for Karkat, his personal arc is about that, it's about taking responsibility for his friends and doing what's right no matter what he has to sacrifice. I think Meenah and Vriska have the same basic journey, but interpreted through their own personal and aspect lenses (and therefore even worse for everyone).
And obviously this holds water, I mean, it does, that's the case. But let's consider something else.
Do you remember how much ... gore there is in that comic? It's mostly technicolor, so as a red-bleeding animal you intellectualize that this is blood but don't feel the same social-animal horror about it. But it's blood. Homestuck is up to the gills in gore (and so is the troll political system, starting from castes, which after all are based on blood and seem to cause tremendous suffering and loss of blood in human societies, and moving further to their war crimes and institutionalized infant cannibalism).
At this point many people hold up Kankri (or Kankri's adult, mangled corpse) like he's Simba and say, aha! Blood is about suffering despite effort! Blood is about sacrifice and futility! Blood is about obligation and the suffering inherent in interdependence!
And this too is true. But not exclusively.
What about all of the biohorror in Homestuck -- Blood as heredity, as genes -- as mutation, as cancer, as eugenics, as suffering therefrom, as the thing that locks you into your destiny? Blood as inevitability, then? Blood as that which is uncertain and feared? Blood as something always under scrutiny, as something vital and struggling? Blood as what is spilled? Blood as something that flows, that changes? Blood as omen on doorframe, both for harm and help?
As a foil and complement not just for Breath (which is in no small part about getting to do what you want, all of this be damned) but also for Doom (law, inevitability) and Time (tradition, rhythm, flow) and Life (the way of things, the struggle)?
Oho! Now we are cooking with the rocket fuel.
Heir of Blood, then... inheritor of and abounder in connections, but also in structural and personal suffering and struggle.
Things are beginning to look a little grimmer.
Well what about the Seer then, why is this a bad thing?
A Seer of Breath sees the optimal course to take about the aspect that doesn't have one, by definition. In a conflict between the nature of the force of existence itself and its representative, obviously the force wins; this Seer then sees possibilities and productive configurations, but they're at least initially flexing authority they don't have a solid basis for, telling everyone how best to be free to make their decisions. Doesn't that sound absurd and restrictive? Isn't this Seer really easy to invert to Doom? Or Rage?
The point of Breath is at least in part the multiplicity of paths; the point of a Seer is to pick one and stick to it. Unfortunately combining the most Rage behaviour with the literal antithesis of the aspect (on the axis of Rage's desperation) produces a guy who applies a very personal type of knowledge to something that approach is wrong for.
Annoying hyperonline friend who keeps trying to get you into discourse, basically, in the same pot as an intersectionally complicated and personally tormented real literal actual flesh and blood person. Ethereal online Thinker(tm) competing with someone Problematic who has nonetheless suffered more than them and has more of a concrete understanding of the things they beef about. Guy who bloviates about ideals because they got robbed by incredibly obvious cops on the way to a protest, in the same place as the organizer.
These people are tugging this game back and forth, Balkanizing the rest of the team; they probably do not get along. Tragically, they had to be doing that yesterday, and now it's everyone's problem.
We're beginning to see the complications.
Surely Life and Doom are set up in a way that hurts and bothers no one here!
Maybe. Mage of Life -- so, motherfucker who doesn't know anything about Life (flourishing, survival, mutation and struggle) and has to learn as they go -- and Knight of Doom, because somebody has to lay down the damn law in here, particularly since the existing people who should do that are too busy writing callout posts about one another and posting them in the group memo to make any decisions.
It's encouraging that at least one pair of these friends has each other.
But are Thief of Mind and Rogue of Light just sitting around on their hands then?
The Thief of Mind finds all this funny and derives fuel for their own thoughts and choices from fucking it up for other people. The Rogue of Light is supernaturally lucky and on the ball and wants to share that with everyone else. I think they're not really even in conflict, though -- I think the Thief is an annoying hanger-on from outside and the Rogue is these people's actual friend, and they undo each other's efforts , but at least they both want to survive and win!
All together now:
Examining all this we can see a narrative taking shape. Two people aren't friends but have mutual friends in common, and rope them into a game together. The group immediately balkanizes under the first available stress, along the lines of what people prefer in a leader. Dealer's choice: Facts and Logic (tm) about extremely personal choices, or decisionmaking by a horribly tormented and jaded person who has no idea how bad anyone else really has it but pontificates about it anyway.
Someone suggests making the game competitive, a bad time is had by all, the Mage and Knight have their own dyadic thing going on, the Heir of Space mitigates all this (or makes it worse, they're too out of touch to tell), and the Witch of Time is ferociously combing through universes to find a normal one to escape into, or maybe at least acknowledges they can't realistically win with the time they have and works behind the scenes to keep it all together. The Knight of Doom helps.
The drama, anon! The power! The presence! If you write this I would actually love to see it.
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Idea 1: Vanessa quits her job
This idea is based on my interpretation that the Vanessa we see in Security Breach isn't really her; it's Vanny controlling her. Vanessa's consciousness is there, but all that she can do is just watch, like viewing your own life through an old television.
So after the 3-star ending, Vanessa would be left with a job that requires skills that "she" technically never had. She can't just pull up Vannys memories (which i have her being able to do because extra pain :D) because there are no memories of how to do that job, a final "f*ck you :D" to Vanessa from Vanny before she left.
(I feel this needs a bit more of an explanation. Vanny had an instinctive knowledge of how to use any electronic device, courtesy of Glitchtrap/Afton. This meant that she never had to read any instructions for any of the surveilance equipment that she used on the job. She also never looked down at keyboards when she typed the passwords needed to access the security computers sinceVanny had all the passwords to herself. All this means is that when Vanessa looks back at these memories, they are effectively useless.)
So now all Vanessa has left are her own memories of watching herself push random buttons that do random things. It would be like trying to learn how to fly a plane solely by watching someone else do it.
Vanessa also realizes that she'd have to still assist lost children after hours, a thought that truly scares her. It's not because she doesn't like children, no. In fact, I believe Vanessa used to work really well with children due to her former position as a video game tester/coder. This might not make much sense, but is elaborated upon in idea 2.
It is also stated in the game in one of the logs that you can find that she was not recommended for a position as a security guard, so it just makes sense for her to leave afer being freed.
So she would put in her 2 weeks notice, but not before working out some special deal with the plex that allows her and Greg the gremlin of chaos to visit the pizzaplex whenever they want and for any length of time.
As for what job she would try to go back to? It would be her old job of beta testing and coding. She was evidently very good at it based on those cut AR emails. It might sound like tempting fate, but I think that Vanessa would be a heck of a lot more careful this time if she was put back on the VR project. That assumes that the project is still even active.
That way she can make sure that what happened to her, never happens to anyone again.
Hmmm... That is an interesting idea.
I haven't talked about AR!Vanessa much here, but she's not an evil person either.
It's interesting that you talk about her memories and Vanny's to be separate. I imagined that she doesn't remember much after Vanny takes control and she only gets image glimpses of what happened as Vanny. And being a good person, she's not at all into killing people, so she's quite horrified by this.
But I agree with you, she would not want to keep the job and go back to working on video games. I wouldn't think she'll go back immediately onto VR games since she was practically traumatized the first time around. But yeah, I have plans for her after the main Afton's Return story. Not exactly keeping her at the Pizzaplex (since, well, you might know what will happen when Michael Afton is around ;) ), but yeah.
Oh also! Surprising fact, in this AU Vanessa is of Irish decent, so she has a strong Irish accent when she speaks 😌
#carog speaks#five nights at freddy's#fnaf security breach#fnaf sb#fnaf#fnaf au#fnaf sb au#fnaf vanessa#fnaf vanny#ar!vanessa
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i love rook the most but he also deserves everything bad that happens to him thus i would never defend him HOWEVER the way people misinterpret the relationship between rook and vil has me galloping straight to heaven like. my lips are trembling my eyes are watering the very image of both rook and vil are evaporating before my eyes.
the one thing i see people primarily take issue with is rook commenting on vil's weight gain in one of their lab vignettes. now, i've never personally read through it so i dont know the log line for line. but i do have a basic gist of what happened.
like.... you've got to stop interpreting the meaning of this line with such shallow knowledge. though im sure for many people this is an extremely insensitive statement to make, you have to keep in mind who it is said to, why it is said, and who says it.
sure, if rook made this statement to literally any other student, rook could be rightfully criticized for it. but do you not remember rook's role as vil's vice housewarden and right hand man? rook is known to never mince his words, despite their flowery and ostentatious quality-- much more so when he's speaking to vil of all people, who prefers upfront and straight to the point critique.
rook, for all his intrusions onto people's boundaries (see; rook commenting about ruggies fur being used in an fur based item), is also very purposeful about what he says. he's very purposeful about everything. in most cases, you can likely categorize the intent behind his words as either to gauge someone's reaction (whether for personal satisfaction or other means) or to provide advice.
so when he says things like this, it's not because he seemingly cannot grasp the concept of boundaries. he very much does. he's incredibly observant and the thing that he does not know, and thus seeks out, is how people react to the possibility of their boundary being tested. not the actuality of it.
the point is that he also very much understand vil's boundaries. he understands what makes him tick, what gains his approval, what he needs, what he wants, what his approach would be.... etc etc. that is because they've been extremely close friends for the past 3 years. rook would not say these things to anyone else but vil-- just like how you'd bully your close friends, but not acquaintances, because there are different rules of what is socially acceptable between these different relationships. in all these years rook has known vil, rook has come to understand that because of vil's current status in the entertainment industry, he needs to mirror vil's standards with himself if he wants to genuinely help vil.
it's why he's called vil's mirror-- because he's observed him closely the most, so he can provide an accurate and objective judgement on vil. that's the point. it's what vil needs and what rook provides; accurate, without bias nor filter. if rook wants to see vil thrive, he has to help him keep in shape and maintain vil's standard of perfection when vil cannot because he knows vil would appreciate having a likewise, external aide.
vil keeps rook by his side because of rook's extremely eccentric honesty. rook doesn't care much for what would be conventional behavior but he is sensible enough that vil can entrust certain duties to him. one of them includes being the one to check vil over. use his watchful eye to never let vil falter in a way vil would despise.
you also have to consider vil's reaction to what was said about his weight gain; he did not object, he did not rouse in anger, he did not argue. why? because vil considers the seemingly harsh criticism and assesses it's verity and how he could use it as improvement. i don't remember what happens in there, but it's likely he accepts it.
vil isn't a pushover. he would probably fucking beat rook to death if he so much so made an out of line comment about vil's looks-- something he takes deep pride in. he's capable of it. the thing is that this isn't out of line in the context of vil's career and rook's responsibility. they're quite literally in pomefiore regardless of vil's career, where the housewarden should be the shining example of diligence in looks and strength. rook has mentioned the reason he takes such a backseat isn't only because it's in his nature to most often simply observe rather than actively contribute, but because vil is so strong willed that anything else other than verbal suggestions, constructive criticism or praise would be struck down. he'd have been met by his 13 cm heels and rook finds no issue in that. he has to say things in moderation in order for vil to accept them in face of his tenacious nature and he knows that. vil is heavy on improvement and rook is a surefire way to gain insight on his next step towards it.
regardless, as much as i love rook, i also understand why people would be off put by his hypocritical tendencies, his less than conventional moral code, and his other eccentric traits. however, the weight gain statement very much lacks any real reason to be used as criticism against rook when you consider that it's being said to his best friend of 3 years and the housewarden with big dick energy vil schoenheit. i need people to STOP thinking vil lacks a spine in this situation when his spine could literally be used as a baseball bat. besides, rook met vil by spouting his head off about vil's performance. if vil was hurt or off put by rook's nature, he would not have talked with him for hours, even as it snowed.
IM SO INSANE ABOUT THEM YOY DONT KNOW!!!! i want to deep fry rook and use vil as a surfboard i love them so much. i love vil because his development is so beautiful and yes seeing him finally realise he can be plain old vil schoenheit in chapter 6 is gold and seeing him be so excited to see epel GRGGARSGSRAHDT IM RIPPING MY HAIR OUT I LOVE THE POMEFIORE FAMILY!!!! funny story i actually used to HATE vil schoenheit and look where i am now. thank you for being insane with me did you know your swag is so of considerable size. love you tumblr user!
ohhh this is also so true. i had to go back and read the vignette (its vil's labwear one if anybody wants to check) and like, yeah, as a fat woman and as someone who has body issues, if someone said that to me, i would want to take off my shoe and start hitting them with it! and indeed vil goes later "wow, that was so fucking rude of him, who does he think he is?" which is imo entirely deserved. that IS a rude thing to say and had he said it to anybody else they would be very entitled to hit him with their shoes and also whatever other objects were close at hand but he DIDN'T say it to anybody he said it to vil. vil is a world class supermodel- much as that industry infuriates me it does mean that part of vil's job is to, well, be skinny. do i like it no do i think its healthy no but unfortunately that is the reality of the situation. it's not something ordinary people like you (assumedly lol) and i would say to our friends, but vil and rook aren't really normal teens. he's not even really mad about rook saying it; he complains to trey later that rook is rude (and he and trey have a nice conversation about sweets and being a vice housewarden in a way that contrasts vil and rook and riddle and trey) but all in all he does appreciate rook pointing it out so he can figure out what caused it.
and you're so right if vil had a problem with him saying this He Would Tell Him. he would just say it. vil is not the kind of person to keep his thoughts to himself! he would just tell him to shut up if he didn't want rook saying that to him!
i really genuinely do not think pomefiore is fatphobic like...vil is not gonna make you lose weight he would just be like "ok cool but are you meeting your own personal goals for yourself" that feels much more in character for him. rook too he finds beauty in literally everything you can't tell me he'd be intentionally fatphobic
and you're also right about rook being purposeful about everything he says and it can at times make him such a menacing character which is so !!! like him saying he'd like to try hunting leona in his labwear vignette or trying to get information on malleus and lilia in lilia's pe vignette like. he Knows how he comes off! he's doing that shit on purpose! it really fits with his huntsman character i love it. its also so funny that he met vil by popping out of a tree to be like "damn this script sucks" to his face i wish i had the audacity tbh! i dunk on him for his awful haircut and being a little weirdo but honestly he's such an intriguing character. gotta put him in the soup pot as well
AND I LOVE YOU ANON its always so fun when people come into my inbox to be absolutely insane about their favorite characters! i love doing analysis but i always have to be prompted to do it so getting these asks is like throwing a meat stuffed pumpkin into my enclosure
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Idea 1: Vanessa quits her job
This idea is based on my interpretation that the Vanessa we see in Security Breach isn't really her; it's Vanny controlling her. Vanessa's consciousness is there, but all that she can do is just watch, like viewing your own life through an old television.
So after the 3-star ending, Vanessa would be left with a job that requires skills that "she" technically never had. She can't just pull up Vannys memories (which i have her being able to do because extra pain :D) because there are no memories of how to do that job, a final "f*ck you :D" to Vanessa from Vanny before she left.
(I feel this needs a bit more of an explanation. Vanny had an instinctive knowledge of how to use any electronic device, courtesy of Glitchtrap/Afton. This meant that she never had to read any instructions for any of the surveilance equipment that she used on the job. She also never looked down at keyboards when she typed the passwords needed to access the security computers sinceVanny had all the passwords to herself. All this means is that when Vanessa looks back at these memories, they are effectively useless.)
So now all Vanessa has left are her own memories of watching herself push random buttons that do random things. It would be like trying to learn how to fly a plane solely by watching someone else do it.
Vanessa also realizes that she'd have to still assist lost children after hours, a thought that truly scares her. It's not because she doesn't like children, no. In fact, I believe Vanessa used to work really well with children due to her former position as a video game tester/coder. This might not make much sense, but is elaborated upon in idea 2.
It is also stated in the game in one of the logs that you can find that she was not recommended for a position as a security guard, so it just makes sense for her to leave afer being freed.
So she would put in her 2 weeks notice, but not before working out some special deal with the plex that allows her and Greg the gremlin of chaos to visit the pizzaplex whenever they want and for any length of time.
As for what job she would try to go back to? It would be her old job of beta testing and coding. She was evidently very good at it based on those cut AR emails. It might sound like tempting fate, but I think that Vanessa would be a heck of a lot more careful this time if she was put back on the VR project. That assumes that the project is still even active.
That way she can make sure that what happened to her, never happens to anyone again.
Yeah that tracks, but the reason why Vanny is so good with electronics is because she's a beta tester/programmer (Remember, Vanny was the one who was testing and working on the game in Help Wanted. While Glitchtrap definitely helped after the fact, her skillset was pretty legit even before that point)
At the same time, that kinda blows a hole in the whole Vanessa/Vanny thing too since if theyre the same person, Vanessa's memories would still be Vanny's memories, its just her time as an Afton puppet would be the stuff she isnt in control in, which is a head scratcher all in its own
but all in all, I like it!
9.3/10
#im sorry if i take forever to go through these#work is rough#:)#but here i am!#fnaf#fnaf security breach#security breach#five nights at freddy's#shoucan says#shoot the shit with shoucan
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