Just a quick question hi sorry just wanted to know if you’re okay with people making edits of your characters cause I’d love to edit BTC Springtrap to a certain song,,, 🫣

Will of course credit and tag you! :)

AAAA I'd love to see an edit of BTC Springtrap! Yes of course :]]]

I have an anecdote about when I worked for a company and a co-worker left to work in a different state on military aircraft. He had to get a TS clearance and because we had worked for several years together he asked if I would be okay with being interviewed for his clearance. I said sure and an interviewer w the gov, arranged to come to my place of work and conduct the interview there. I was asked questions about him like how well did I know him, and whatever answer I gave led to more specific questions like if I answered a question about knowing his wife, they would ask if I thought his marriage sounded secure etc.

This memory of that experience was on my mind while I read your story and I wondered who Iceman would choose for his TS clearance interviews (and who the gov would choose for him) and what would they say? I feel like their "secret" would be uncovered in even a low level clearance (years later I had to submit names for a low level Public Trust clearance for my job) It was so embarrassing because I did not have many friends I was comfortable submitting for that as I kept my work and home life very separate.

Anyway, that is my "cool story, bro"

Thank you for such a great and well researched story!

this is indeed a cool story bro and touches on what is literally my story’s fatal flaw, which is: Yeah, a shitload of people would’ve known about it. I am going to hijack your question to talk about that, so my apologies, though i will get around to your question by the end. This is gonna be a really long post. I have a lot to say and a lot of ground to cover.

So I wanna start out by talking about the structure of this story and its core conflict, because while I’d like to say this story is rooted in an accurate depiction of the US military, obviously that’s not true; it’s rooted in the dynamic of the story that i wanted to tell, which is the story of a guy coming to realize the truth behind a Big Lie—him passing as straight. And that’s a pretty universal story, but it’s made more specific by the fact that a) the guy canonically wants to be the best in an institution that enforces the Big Lie and b) the guy canonically is so successful because he follows the rules/orders of that institution. So, for character growth, to put it simply, the guy (Ice) has to come to the conclusion that the Big Lie is a lie by himself. He can’t be told/ordered that the Big Lie is a lie, otherwise he hasn’t grown out of “just following orders.” (I’ll get to the Big Lie in a second. I made charts and story structure graphs below.)

The only other story about a Big Lie I can think of off the top of my head right now is Passing (1929) by Nella Larsen, which is about a Black woman in Chicago trying to pass as both white and straight. It’s a great book and I’ll try not to spoil it, you should really read it for yourself, but the terminology I’m going to use in this post comes from an analysis of it, so just to bring you up to speed—Clare, the woman trying to pass as white, is recognized by a friend, another Black-but-passing woman, Irene, who is shocked that Clare has abandoned her heritage (the truth of her, that is) and married a hyper-racist white man who doesn’t even know that she’s Black. So the book sets up a dynamic of the Big Lie that I’ve outlined here (hopefully it makes sense):

I built on this dynamic for my fic. Ice is both a “dupe” and a “passing figure,” in that he believes the lie that he is straight and also passes for straight—but it’s also more complicated than that because he’s not actually straight (getting to that). Mav is an “in-group clairvoyant” and can recognize Ice as passing because he is also straight-passing. The Navy are a bunch of “dupes.” But…what is Slider, for instance, or your question’s hypothetical government official who, yes, will 100% find out because people always find out?

In comes my ginormous-and-overly-wordy WWGATTAI Plot and Character Dynamic Summary Graph. You don’t really have to read it all, the only important bits for this discussion are the leftmost column (“plot”) and the green quadrant (“out-group clairvoyants”).

To summarize—people who know the truth can’t actually act on it, because for Ice’s character growth to make sense, he has to come to the truth himself. This forecloses the possibility of any outwardly homophobic action (by which I mean someone like a govt official or one of my lame OCs actually challenging him on his illegal relationship) in the plot, because for 90% of the story Ice is so fragile that he would probably just cave immediately and double down on the internalized homophobia. So, for plot purposes, everyone—including Mav, as it happens—has to sort of tiptoe around Ice’s obvious not-straightness and give him an unreasonable amount of grace so he can figure it out for himself. 

And therein lies the fatal flaw of this story. It is, like, not conceptually viable. Of course people would find out, of course the government would interrogate him about it, of course he’d have to confront the truth much sooner than TWENTY-FIVE years after he first starts messing around with Mav.  Which literally breaks my heart because I didn’t realize it was a fundamentally busted story until long after I had finished writing the base plot & couldn’t fix the overarching problems 😭 The thing is, it had to be this way, because there is at least a thirty-year gap between TG86 and TGM22, and TGM is obviously the emotional climax of the series and my story had to match that. So—fanfic and its canon constraints, everyone. 

But also… I can explain away these logical inconsistencies with story structure & character dynamic graphs to make the story make sense, sure, but it doesn’t change the truth of the matter, which is that… I hadn’t ever really thought about things like security clearances, and therefore wrote around them because I didn’t even know to consider them. And I know there are a bunch of other details in this story that betray my immaturity (anytime I talk about alcohol, for instance—I still am not legal to drink in this stupid country & have only cheap bad experiences to draw on; THE HOUSE—if i could rewrite this story from the beginning they would not have bought a fucking house together, what was I thinking???) and the lack of thought about the real-life logistics and consequences of secrecy is one of them. 

And it’s exactly what I mean when I say “I look at this story and all I see are its flaws,” which is why I wanted to write this post & get it on record. I have just enough life experience to read my own writing and know that it’s fundamentally unconvincing, and not enough life experience to know how to fix it. :(

But, to answer your original question, you’ve got me brainstorming a scene where Ice is asking Slider to be his character witness & Slider’s like “Look bro do you want me to lie to the federal government under oath for you because I will” and Ice has to be like “Legally I cannot ask that of you but”

ROEH IS HAVING A HOUSE PARTY AND U ARE ALL INVITED!!

this is technically also an art party but i mostly just wanna hang out with ppl and chill so like. definitely don’t feel like you have to be an artist to come along but if u do draw ppl please tag with #roehshouseparty so attendees can find it!!

it wont let me add alt text so here’s the address again:

Plot 16, Ward 15, Mist, Cactuar, Aether DC

TIMES FOR AMERICANS SINCE I PUT THE TIME ON THE POSTER IN AEST AND THEN REMEMBERED I NEEDED TO LIST US TIMES TOO:

EDT: 9pm, Sat 16th July

CDT: 8pm, Sat 16th July

PDT: 6pm, Sat 16th July

RULES:

dont be a dickhead or ill deactivate your almonds

dont post modded screenshots of other player characters without their permission (have had issues with this in the past at other events)

would like to keep this relatively sprout friendly so dont go yelling too many spoilers in /say or /shout

if you climb into the aquariums im not to blame if the fish bite you

u can rp here if u like but please keep erp to dms

They hate EST/EDT ppl too bc it’s not even 8am yet the space was at like 3am 😭

theyre a little crazy our sleeping schedules have been HEAVILY messed up since summer camp started 😭

Op I am desperate. Where is the vincent loving peeps. And by loving i mean *grabs him by the scruff, applies gentle persuasion* ya feel? I came into this fandom 20 yrs late, walked into highschool like the new kid confused but eager-- I just wanna deep dive into vincent content

oh anon u such a mood

*lovingly shakes the fucking coffin till he falls out of it"

a cant wait to the fiest of content i swear :(´ཀ`」 ∠): i am so sure new ppl will jump at Vince like a BEASTS at first sight all in glorious HD with cutscenes and ost hnnnnghhg (and hopefully good new va T_T) Not even gonna start abt how gameplay aspect excites me, esp with all rework that has been done w player character and bosses i am really looking to his gunplay *looks intensively at rufus' boss battle*

but yeah, its been so quiet on SE side tho chaos's ASS was a nice bone but maaaybe just maybe its a calm b4 the storm ┬┴┬┴┤( ͡° ͜ʖ├┬┴┬┴ edt also this tweet just calls me out too hard lol

hi, im merpiko :)

this is an introductory post btw, js a general overview of myself n what i wanna do on here

first thing's first, this is my first ever time actually using tumblr. i used it once when i was looking for an incorrect quote and then felt like coming back to make a lil blog or smth

i do write sometimes as a hobby, but haven't gotten into publishing fanfiction yet. i also am practicing self-taught video edting/post production and daw usage, feel free to message me for advice/tips!

i'm a huge nerd about stories and stuff, so i'll ramble a lot abt stuff like that regarding my interests, but most of them change from time to time. i'll also post casual thoughts sometimes

i like honkai impact 3rd, omniscient reader's viewpoint, the riordanverse, be more chill (the musical), link click, and global university entrance examination ! feel free to discuss abt it, i'd love to meet ppl w similar interests :D

im ok with variations of my username as nicknames! mer, piko, merp, pikopiko, etc. r all fine

read carrd if u wanna get more info (but i probably went over most of it here anyways) - https://merpiko.carrd.co/

uhh that's abt it! ill learn more abt tumblr the more i use this app lol, thanks for stopping by

hey friends reminder. final vault in like uhh. slightly over 4 hours from now. 4pm utc, noon edt, 9am pdt. thats when ppl are getting on can start whenever after then. yknow the deal. probably going to last more than 5 hours, could be shorter if they are good at video games, could have to be 2 days long if they suck. hopefully they dont suck. i'll note any s3 details and make a post i guess.

okay 👍

ppl on this site have been so pedantic about the devs using est instead of edt and I'm like. what the fuck are you people talking about I've never seen edt used before in my life

Eyo! You didn't forget about me, right?

I'll be making a Special "birthday" stream today, with a bit of Karaoke, some good art and an ✨important anouncement✨!!

make sure to come to the party ok?(⁠≧⁠▽⁠≦⁠)

Today (9/oct) at 5PM CEST (11AM EDT)

Some anouncements will be interesting for Spanish speaking ppl~

Habra cosillas sobre mi convención proximamente, quizas os interese echar un ojo~

huge day for worlds most annoying ppl, theres a new eminem album

edt its just a single but its very bad

today, Wednesday, May 29th, 2024; taken at 1:04 am edt

from the IG stories of 28 Clothing

has anyone had any luck receiving this stuff??

seems like every post is just ppl asking why are you advertising this when everything is sold out?

eeeeeee i really wanted that rose sweater

that pic of him looking so tiny in it ??? 😭!!!!

I hope you didn't think I was pointing out flaws with my question! I think your analysis and self reflection are commendable! I would not really have known much about security clearances except for the fact that I went through the process and only on a surface level.

As for the "fatal flaw" i understood it was necessary for the main conflict of the story. In much the same way that the original Top Gun uses the Top Gun trophy when none exists in real life and it would be a major problem if it did. If that was really how they were training the pilots then the cause of Goose's death would have prompted them to review the whole framework of how they teach. Even the second movie has a "fatal flaw" in the pulling of Rooster's paper's by Maverick which makes no sense (for starters, he'd have to ask someone higher up than him to do something unethical) but they needed a conflict. I agree Maverick seems OOC in TG:M

But, I'm reminded of a line in How to Make an American Quilt where one of the characters who is talking about breaking the rules in art says something like "sometimes you have to break the rules for the piece to come alive"

no anon you are so good!!! i just felt like it would be disingenuous of me to answer your question without acknowledging the elephant in the room which is the story’s incompatibility with nosy govt officials lol. And also i think I am just…idk, very disappointed with some aspects of the story that i know could be better, so i wanted to talk about it. because this fic is the first 50k+ thing ive ever finished i think it means disproportionately much to me and i am disproportionately disappointed that it’s not perfect, even though that was inevitable. it is insanely disappointing to be a “young writer” or whatever and know that your work is not capable of reaching your adult ambitions specifically because you lack the life experience to convincingly portray those adult ambitions, because that’s not something you can fix by reading more or taking a writing class etc. that gap between what I want to write (adults dealing with big adult problems) and what I’m actually capable of writing (not that because I’ve never been an adult with big adult problems) is still so disappointingly wide. like with “the house,” for instance, i literally had to ask my mom how “two friends” would go about buying a house, which should’ve been my first indication that I was about to Post Cringe On Main, but I just wasn’t thinking about what that commitment means because I didn’t have the experience to know that I SHOULD be thinking about it, if that makes sense. but by then it was too late, that was the last chapter i wrote & had already written 60k+ words where ice and mav had… “a house…” because they needed to be in the same place. It’s just disappointing to know that these are holes I dug for myself early early on because of a lack of care, a lack of forethought, a lack of maturity… etc.

But whatever, im learning from it, I’ll take these lessons & apply them to the next big project i work on & that’s how things get better. still disappointing tho. But thank you & sorry it took so long for me to answer ur first ask but it rly made me think & i love making story graphs

𝙗𝒆𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒇𝒖𝒍 𝙗𝝄𝒚 ( 2018 ) 

This girl on Facebook is trying to argue that, as a skinny person, being told to “eat a cheeseburger” is the same as being fat shamed.

Okay so you feel bad for just a sec. Then you can open a magazine and see your body type depicted as the ideal.

Meanwhile a fat person gets bodyshamed literally every second we exist. We have MORALLY FAILED bc of our size. We face systematic oppression bc of it. We’re more likely to die due to medical neglect/misdiagnosis.

I’m sorry your feelings were hurt? But grow up. It’s not the same.

do u have a list of ur favorite perfumes? i’m interested in getting into perfume and i always really enjoy reading what u have to say ab them!!

well you asked for it LOL this is probably going to be long i have a definitive top 3 i think but beyond that its like trying to choose a favorite child. im still p new to this thoigh ive only been collecting for 3-4 months so this list is obv subject to change at some point

absolute top1 favorite all time is princess by kilian. its like being hugged literally and everyone ive ever talked to loves it its photorealistic marshmallow with matcha and ginger.. so sweet but not too sweet with a hint of spiciness and so much depth and warmth i wish it was colder where i lived so i could wear it all the time!! if it really is being discontinued i will drop dead along with it and i have a 100 ml backup just in case. if you are going to try any of these this is the one

2nd fav is very new to me and im still waiting for my full bottle to come in the mail but its sci fi by ellis brooklyn..this is truly a masterpiece. its so intensely orange with green tea but its also a beautiful creamy vanilla its sort of like two ppl who are enemies but also lovers idk is that too esoteric of a description LOL but it is really beautiful it reminds me of a creamsicle. the perfect mix between a gourmand and a fresh fragrance imo

3rd right now is carolina herrera good girl supreme. listen i like the original good girl ok but this absolutely blows it out of the water. its got the rich creaminess and warmth of the original with the vanilla and tonka but there is a very prevalent red berry note that gives it some life and fun and i am not a sexy person but this perfume is so sensual and sexy it makes me feel like i am a goddess or something. lasting power is also absolutely insane it easily lasts 10+ hours. its literally so good

from there idrk the ranking but i will tell you some of my other favorites!! my top 3 are kind of heavily gourmand leaning but i really enjoy freshies as well so here are some others. this is basically every perfume i own cuz i typically have only bought stuff i absolutely love

etat libre d’orange you or someone like you is so GOOD its so green and fresh and summery and beautiful. very unisex which i dont go for usually but still so amazing. its like drinking a mojito on a sunny day with your friends its very minty but not peppermint its fresh green mint that you get muddled into a cocktail. the best eldo fragrance in my opinion

this is way different than what i usually go for but also l’interdit eau de TOILETTE by givenchy is amazing. specifically the eau de toilette cuz the parfum is way too strong for me personally but the edt is a beautiful floral tuberose fragrance that’s light and smells like delicious juicy grape candy and its lasting power is crazy. its like a spring day and i want to try l’interdit rouge as well i think i would love that cuz this is fantastic

and then of course angels share by kilian is the most incredible cinnamon apple pie fragrance i have ever come across not that theres a lot of fragrances that smell like apple pie lol…spicy and warm and still a little fresh somehow its so good. so so good bht its very expensive

for a cheapie i recommend lush twilight body spray which is to die for its warm tonka bean with lavender and its like being held by a loved one or something. so good i usually hate lavender but at this point i think id love anything with tonka in it i think its my favorite note LOL. has great lasting power for just being a body spray as well

also i wont elaborate on these cuz this is fucking long but jasmine perle de thé by fragonard is basiclaly the perfect jasmine tea and philosykos by diptyque is green fig goodness but splurge and get the edp not the edp cuz i have the edt and it does not last worth a damn unfortunately. ok thats it im sorry this is long idk how or if i can do a read more on mobile 💃🏻

Top 5 fragrances?

1. Mugler Angel (edt)

I have the comet bottle and I still haven't tried the current formulation or any edp for that matter. It's just very memorable, It was my signature for a while in my late teens. I just love how hedonistic it is, as the mother of all gourmands. Made me fall in love with patchouli. It's referenced constantly but I don't think there's anything out there that really compares.

2. Rochas Tocade

My namesake... It's very easy to approach, it's like an ambery powdered-sugar thing for me. Rose is a listed note and many compare it to turkish delight but I don't get it much, maybe something rose water-esque and green in the background. I like it because I keep noticing new things in it ever so often... It's special to me because it kind of awoke my interest in fragrances again, I wanted to get it because I remembered my mom owning a bottle during my childhood and googling it I found out it was originally brought out on my birth year. I have the 2018 version.

3. Etat Libre d'Orange Divin' Enfant

My newest favourite. I find it hard to describe but it constantly makes me go "what's that lovely smell..... WAIT, it's me". If I had to pick one fragrance to wear on the daily, atm I'd go with this one. I bought it because @fruitchouli compared it to Lush Sikkim Girls and that's one of my favourites, this one's more subtle.

4. Lush Sikkim Girls

The naming is kinda sus but the scent itself is just.... like there's this old Yardley perfume ad with the tag line: "A new way to burn incense. You're the fire." and that's LITERALLY what this smells like. Recently discontinued and I suspect they might bring it back in the more expensive perfume line.... Anyway I wanted to try it specifically because ppl said it made them smell like they were burning and I found that really fascinating. It's like a sweet smoke smell.

5. Alkemia Perfumes Fetish

So this is an indie brand on Etsy and this perfume oil is actually discontinued. They do sell custom blends, I think, so it should be possible to request the same type of scent from them. Anyway, it's the best leather perfume I've ever tried. It just smells like roses & leather which is, of course, very me. The shipping & taxes when buying from the US costs an absurd amount though.