As someone from a more average family, I’ve always been fascinated by your anecdotes about your upbringing. What’s it like to have parents so deeply immersed in fandom, and when did you realize that most kids’ parents have zero familiarity with fandom stuff?
as soon as I brought up renfaires and D&D and filk songs and cthulhu carols at school and got bullied about it :/ made it pretty obvious nobody knew or cared what I was talking about
But it was nice! Being raised in fandom, a thing built entirely from open enthusiasm for things you love, taught me to pursue things not because they were popular or What Was Expected Of Me, but because I loved them. I think it laid some major foundations in my worldview that helped me avoid a lot of normative expectations that wouldn't have worked for me, just by teaching me from minute one that things that are weird and unpopular can be perfect for you, and things that seem to work for everyone else can not work for you, and that's okay.
Once you've internalized "this seems to be something everyone does/likes/wants, but the thing I want seems to be almost unheard of - and yet I still want it" it may be easier to apply this to things like recognizing one's orientation (in my case "this all seems boring and weird and extremely limiting, but everyone acts like it's normal and great, so I think I'm just gonna… not do it"), pursuing unorthodox careers, and just… trying the weird things and seeing what works.
Identifying the things you love doing is already a difficult exercise, and it's made much more difficult by artificial filters like "these things are Cool And Sexy while these other things are Cringe And Weird and Should Not Be Liked." Being able to decouple your brain from the high school popularity contest makes the search for your passions that much easier, and I think I started with a serious leg up thanks to the guidance and unconditional support of two absolute nerds.
Beckett is an overextending little nob.
Imagine being part of the West India Co. and this smug tyke shows up with more naval power than any governor in the area, taking not only control of the government but also the economy.
East the long way around my backside.
pirates of the caribbean really introduced an eldritch octopus man who kills indiscriminately and torments the dead as their poster villain and then you watch the movies and it's like, "oh no, actually the worst villain in this series is a small white british man who functions as the herald of capitalism" and that was very very brave of them
I'm going to do it, I'll out all the brilliant, profound notes on my half-assed, tired and pretentious ramble.
But first, a much-needed bit of context. I was vaguely aware of some of these, and I am guilty of focusing more on the voices myself. This is because I can do a bad drawing of an aspect of an amorphous bird man and it looks a lot better than if I mess up drawing a woman. I don't draw humans well.
Everestgale's tags:
Some extra things in other reblogs, I can see them all and others should too, these perspectives have shaped my own:
By the way, I like the Shifting Mound more than any other character in the game. Have done for a while, I hadn't considered misogyny being a problem before this post.
Oh, for sure. That route is why I assign colours to the voices in my art. It's fun to imagine them with unique designs.
I shan't say directly what I think they'd look like properly, though, because I want to imply it.
Absolutely bizarre to me that the Princess doesn't get more love; she's amazing and charming in pretty much every iteration, and I wish I could shut those voices up half the time because they make things worse or take ages.
Do you guys think the reason so much fanart exists for the voices is not because of them being great characters (all the characters in STP are), but instead because we spend more time in our own heads than we ever will with a version of the princess?
I get it. They're inherently relatable because they reflect our previous actions through any route and set the tone of each chapter. They bicker with us and are able to see every option we take.
But, maybe the princesses are underrated. As in, she's always an outsider. How quickly would she be more beloved if the voices would shut up and let us do our stuff, or if they were seperate from us?
How then would we judge the impulsive contrarian, the weak-willed hero or the depressed cold? Would we appreciate paranoid were he more than a life support?
Ask yourself that, and ponder it awhile. Don't say it to anyone. Just an hour of your independent thoughts, clear of little voices.
I'm a little late but I've been thinking about the Ides of March and how it could be commemorated IRL, in a "remember that politicians are just humans" way. I was wondering if anyone had similar ideas.
Personally, I'd commemorate with a sort of game. You gather a bunch of people and one of them, typically one with the most authority, is elected as Caesar. You can have props like the laurel crown, or just a random crown and staff or something.
Caesar then gets to give each other player a dare to do, and if the players can't or refuse to do it, they get a slap or a spank. But then, once everyone was dared, Caesar receives a dare from each other player.
Tally up how many times Caesar refused or failed a dare, then add the number of times someone else did and got slapped. That's how many times Caesar gets slapped or spanked by the players.
Of course, this is supposed to be in good fun so there should be no dangerous dares and no slapping too hard. Instead of slapping you could also bonk the person with something like a foam noodle or a cardboard tube, or stab them with one of those prop knives that retract into the blade.
I guess one could also make a kinky version, I won't judge.
Anyway, that's how I would celebrate the Ides of March! I was wondering if anyone else had ideas!
*Trumpet sounds
Hey!
Indie number one!
Hey!
Indie Number one!
Now listen closely:
You're on a path in the woods,
we are... number one????
It's beautiful.
Work in progress
This is peak 2005 Dr Who.
finally watching this stupid show
So cool to see this on my dash.
‘The Grey Havens’ by Alan Lee
the Fantasy High webtoon is so much fun it almost makes up for the psychic damage I took wrangling the webtoons UI
Amazing analysis.
I think the voice of the cold intrests me as a character so much because he's such a real and visceral response to their circumstances. Which is true for all the voices and each is intriguing to dig into in a different way, but this post is about cold the others will get their turn (probably)
Imagine with me, for a second, you've only just learned what it means to exist and you've already been discarded.
You've done everything you were told without question. This is your purposes and you were promised Good at the end of it and you do it and you do it well. Your guide, and authority figure you should be able to trust who is seemingly so much more experienced in this world than you even seems happy with you. You must be doing it right
Then you're abandoned. The only Good for you is an eternity of nothing. The only way you can be Good is to hurt others and to not exist at all.
Wouldn't that leave you empty? Hurt, clawing for something, anything to fill that void. You had Purpose and it turned out to mean nothing, you had a vague promise of Good and it turned out to be nothing.
You can't be Good, can't fulfil that Purpose when all of it means nothing, when you've been lied to and led to be locked in a box for the rest of time. And rather than feel that hurt, you claw it out of yourself with your own two hands, and the same implement you'd used to fulfil your Purpose.
All he wants is that Good he was promised, and to him that's the opposite of that box. It's the opposite of Nothing. It doesn't matter if it hurts him, if it hurts somebody else, if it feels good or feels bad, he just craves something that will make him feel. That will make everything worth it in the end, that will free him from the monotony and inherent stagnation of the situation he's in. What use does he have for morality in pursuit of this? What use is morality in this situation anyway? Where everything is being presented with such grand consequences, where everything is both right and wrong, where these consequences never seem to quite stick for him regardless? So he simply encourages action, in whatever form that may take.
Because it's so much more intresting if it's an active choice. Something is always better than that empty cabin surrounded by nothingness all around he's subconsciously running from. Because cold is most aware of their godly nature, and so is most aware of whats always missing no matter what they do. Who tries to fill that emptiness, first with Purpose then with Action.
For a voice that claims to feel nothing at all a lot of his drive is purely emotional. He wants to be intrested, he wants to be engaged, he wants to feel something even if it hurts. He wants to feel connection to this body the same way the other voices do, and yet criticises them for feeling in that way.
At the core of it all, he wants back what he's lost. And by his very nature he cannot have it.
I'd probably say something dumb like, "It killed more than one of my kind and, as I have killed many of yours, I suppose it's a fair cop if you end my life. Just one question, have you killed two or more humans? I want to know in case," this is where I get up with a groan, picking up my pole arm and shield, "I have the chance to defend myself."
You're a dragon slayer—but only kill dragons that attack humans. One day, a black dragon corners you and angrily asks, "Why did you kill my brother?"