Jes(ter) [Joke In Human Form}

The Girl With The Names

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

Hello hi howdy!

My name is Jess, I go by the She/Hers, and this is my new personal blog, BeaLilyAliceinMarch!

Info and stuff:

About me:

I'm a student working at my degree of Mass Communications: Public Relations full time. Reluctantly, tbh but it lets me do a lot of creative writing classes. I like writing original stories and coming up with ideas for fanfic I'll never write cuz I haven't found a way to write fanfic I found fun. I want to make video games but haven't gotten around to it yet. I also think about media alot.

Media I Like:

Star Trek. Just all of it, I've seen every episode and movie.

Stargate

Final Fantasies Vii Remake Project and XV

Alice Isn't Dead

Jet Lag The Game

Game Changer

Many musics, but particularly Nine Inch Nails, Poppy, and NateWantsToBattle

The Zooliminalogy Project

Undertale Yellow

Blue Prince

Anything NSFW will be tagged with that as a hashtag. (#NSFW)

And...

Thanks for visiting my blog! I hope you have a wonderful day! -Jess

[unamccormack]

I've been thinking about head-hopping in narrative prose. First let me say that my first and pretty much only rule of writing is that anything goes, as long as it's a considered technical choice and serves the narrative. So if you want to head-hop in your fiction, go ahead. But imho you'll need serious writing chops if you want to take a reader along with you.

Head-hopping generally happens in third person limited, i.e. a narrative filtered (we use the term focalised) through the perspective of a specific character. So using third person (he, she, it, or they if you're punchy) and keeping the perspective tightly focused on (limited to) what that person knows. It's the most commonly used perspective in contemporary fiction.

Head-hopping is when the narrative shifts from being focalised through one character to another character in quick succession, by which I mean between paragraphs or even sentences. It's the most common technical issue I see in narrative prose. NB I'm not talking about having multiple povs within an extended piece, where individual scenes or chapters have a new pov. I'm talking about rapid shifts, sometimes back-and-forth, within continuous scenes.

Why does this matter? Well, as I say, if you've got the chops, go ahead and polyphonically knock my socks off. But it's not easy. I did write a piece once that did this, to prove to a friend that it could be done - yes, proving someone else wrong is a great reason to write a piece of fiction. It was very tricky, and the pov only shifted a handful of times, after each character had had a few paragraphs to establish their perspective. The story, which was called "The Lost" (thematic link to form) was about two people bringing their understanding of each other closer and closer together (content linked to form). My friend didn't notice until I pointed it out. And then she was furious with me. Yay friendship!

But this isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about those sudden shifts, where the reader is left uncertain whose perspective they're following, and is thrown out of the text. It generally happens in scenes where two or more characters are in conversation with each other. I think it occurs for two reasons, both of which ultimately come down to control over point of view.

The author is visualising the scene as if it's a film or piece of TV happening in front of them. This means that they are not themselves anchored in the perspective of one of the characters. They've not decided through whom the scene is focalised.

This means that they're not fully immersed in the experience of the pov character - which means in turn that they're not fully immersed in the reality of the scene.

Basically I'm saying that the scene is not yet fully imagined. What's most likely happening in this stage of writing is that the author is establishing the dramatic parameters of the scene, i.e. what are the beats in the conversation; how is power shifting around; what individual character trajectories are being followed, and so on. Because the scene is in the process of being imagined, the pov shifts around to help with this work.

The solution is to realise that the scene is effectively still in draft. You need to be clear on whom this scene needs to be focalised through; fully immerse in their perspective; and rewrite the scene filtered through that consciousness. (This doesn't usually involve much rewriting. It does mean more thinking, and more craft.)

I nearly wrote "filtered through that lens" there, because it's a good way to get the message across. But I consciously decided against. Because head-hopping often arises when the writer is operating a camera on the scene. And narrative prose is not primarily a visual medium. The recording device you're operating when you write narrative prose is not simply visual. It is a means to record consciousness, which implies all that a character experiences, not just what can be seen (and excludes what a character does not or cannot experience, hence suspense, irony, etc.).

Your task, as a writer, is to come as close to that consciousness as possible. This is why, as I wrote the other day, so much of the actual work of writing takes place in the thinking. Once you're solid on that ground, then you need to understand that the medium by which you represent this experience in narrative prose is language. Not paint or film or colour or light, but the sounds and rhythms and structures and syntax and intertextualities and all the rest of it that language offers. (I'm leaving aside experimental narration here; as I say, in the end, anything goes. Flick through Ulysses to see what happens when the visual elements of prose - the materiality of the book - are exploited for narrative effect. But then Joyce did love the cinema.)

Third person limited, particularly when it becomes close to free indirect discourse, is one of the most effective tools we have to do this. So my advice is to be aware of hopping between heads. Observe the head-hopping, ask yourself what this means for your immersion in your story-world, and, if necessary, push that further into the character's pov. The more you are immersed, the more the reader will be immersed.

And the more you are immersed, the more your technical choices are guided by that immersion. It's a true delight when the words seem to be coming from the made-up person in your head, rather than from your own clumsy brain. Sometimes you find yourself using words you weren't entirely sure were within your vocabulary. That's fun!

And when you're on top of this, go and write a head-hopping story where nobody notices what you've done, congratulate yourself on your technical accomplishment, and tell everyone you can about it.

[mundanemisfortune]

This camera-operator problem is such a struggle when writing fanfiction for TV shows specifically. I don't head-hop, but I'm used to seeing and hearing the story from outside the characters, so when thinking up a new story I'm primarily focused on the voices (and not necessarily in the writing sense but the actual actors' voices) and facial expressions. I manage better when a character is alone but when there are two or more in a room I'm fully stuck in tight-closeup-on-faces land. Any tips for how to get out from behind the camera?

[unamccormack]

Yes, great question! Try this:

Act out a short scene from your character's perspective. Choose one that involves another character. (You can do this in your head or get up and block it out if it helps.) In other words, don't have the camera up front, have the camera on your character's shoulder. Then, try to ease yourself away from using the imaginative metaphor of the camera. Experience the scene not only in terms of what your character sees, but what they feel, sense, think, know, and so on. Think of it as a consciousness recording device, if that helps. You're trying to embody the experience of this character in this moment. How does it feel to move like them, react like them, be in the world like them? In this moment?

Write this up in first-person. This should pull you more closely into the consciousness of the character, making you expand the field of language by which you represent them on the page (and what's available from on screen). Your focus could be on what they are thinking and experiencing about the other character: their doubts, their certainties, their conscious and unconscious desires from this interaction. When you've got a good chunk, take a look through this and try to work out what's idiomatic about their language: look at sentence structure, sentence fragments, tone, style, etc.

Technical stretch: try translating that into third person limited or FID. You might find yourself retooling or recrafting linguistic choice that you made in first person to capture the character's voice and/or consciousness.

[unamccormack]

One other point: being stuck behind the camera (great way of phrasing it) can lead to all kinds of other headaches arising from trying to have a scene unfold in real time. How do I move a character from here to here? How do I capture their movements faithfully? What do I do when a character has needed to spend some time internally reflecting and the other one has been standing around like a puppet?

(I see that one all the time. Character B asks question. Character A reflects on that question and the options available to them as answers. Character B prompts Character A to respond. Reader ("U") thinks: Aha, the real-time issue... Because we think much more quickly than we write or read. So in fact, all those thoughts will have happened in a split-second, rather than the time it's taken you to write them or me to read them. So don't sweat it, unless the time taken to respond is making Character B feel something, and Character A is registering this.)

Shifting away from thinking you're a camera operator to a prose writer helps solve a lot of problems with time management within scenes. You don't, in fact, have to faithfully represent visually everything that happened. You can just crack on with the narration. Say a character's getting out of a car. Yes, you can faithfully describe this and the time it takes. Or you can say. "He got out of the car." Job done, on with the story. Time's bendy in prose, because time is bendy in our heads. You'll be surprised at what you can cut, and how much more effective it makes your prose.

Think about all those reactions you write to give dialogue the verisimilitude of a conversation unfolding in real-time: She nodded... She ran a hand through her hair... She frowned... She took a deep breath... Try cutting them, unless they're something the POV character is registering. Because then it has meaning. Explore that meaning instead. Are they suppressing showing something? Are they observing a reaction in someone else? Why do they notice particular things? Why do they miss other things?

[veryidiotic]

prior to chapter 5, i don't think i thought of kris and noelle's relationship that much beyond what we were shown, nor did i read any analyses of them, but after ch 5 i'm definitely wondering more about what exactly is their relationship

more specific spoilers about chapter 5 below:

something that's interesting to me that showed up in chapter 5 too is noelle's tendency to downplay her relationship with kris when around susie. when kris and noelle are together alone in ch 2, noelle reminisces about their shared past, thinking that kris is the only one who knows how weird she is, and generally just kind of seems to be having fun with them and wanting to reconnect with them.

but then in ch 4, while susie and noelle are talking to eachother, noelle says them going on the ferris wheel together as kids was kind of forced and they were mostly friends because they were neighbours. and in ch 5, susie talks to noelle about how kris plays the piano and asks if she knows that, and noelle pretends like she doesn't know even though she definitely does ("it felt like a concert just for me.")

besides that, noelle also kind of treats kris as an afterthought when susie's there. i recall specific instances from ch 2, ch 4 and ch 5 where she's basically like "oh right... kris is here too..."

in chapter 5 specifically, suselle is made much more explicit and i'd say it's pretty much confirmed that kris has a crush on susie too, and also considering the themes of love and jealousy in this chapter, you can see a sort of tension between noelle and kris. like when susie talks about how it was nice to have one on one time with kris in the diner and noelle seems somewhat thrown off

on kris' side, you can see how in ch 5, kris doesn't think about what could be going on between suselle in the ferris wheel too hard and mumbles, which is what they tend to do if they don't want to say something, if you pick "you and noelle will work out" when talking to susie, then seems to just stare at where susie left when susie tells them the dark worlds can't just be "their thing" anymore and they need to involve noelle too. and if you look at old photos of previous festivals, when the page of noelle and kris' photos come on, kris immediately shuts the photobook.

essentially, there is jealous tension between both sides when it comes to susie.

i mean... obviously, susie is noelle's romantic crush and they were on a date during the festival whereas kris is her estranged childhood friend. similarly, susie is kris' best friend and current crush while noelle is their estranged best friend, so it makes sense for their behaviour towards eachother to be different

but at the same time... there is this scene in chapter 5, when the characters are voting for who should be the festival's king and queen, if you choose to vote kris and noelle, noelle will reminisce about how she convinced kris to vote for themselves and noelle as king and queen when they were kids, then cried when they didn't win, and in the present time she decides to vote for kris and herself like when they were kids.

if you do this and make noelle and kris ride on the ferris wheel later, noelle will reminisce about that memory again and if you choose to stay silent as kris, will say that it must've just been her imagination and kris didn't care about the voting as much as she did back then, they only went through with it because she told them to.

also, she's the only one who seems to notice something has changed with kris after the soul has started controlling them, which all essentially makes it clear that noelle still values kris a lot, misses them and knows them quite well. you can also obviously see that kris still cares about noelle very much by how hard they try to protect her in the weird route

so there is some tension between them and they've definitely grown distant, which might make you think they harbour some resentment for eachother now, and some parts of ch 5 do kind of make me assume that, but i think it's clear both of them care about the other a lot.

honestly, you know what this all makes me think? that kris and noelle both had little crushes on eachother when they were kids (kris fitting the stereotype of a kid pulling on the pigtails of the girl they have a crush on, and noelle often reminiscing about the memories she and kris shared, her as a kid voting for the two of them as king and queen, that one memory of how while they were at the festival as kids, iirc toriel pulled on asgore's ear and carol on rudy's, then noelle imitated the couples around them by pulling on kris' ear), but they grew distant over the years after dess' disappearance, and were never sure whether the other would want to reconnect and both were dealing with their own trauma, so they never really reached out to eachother and now they're trying to focus on their present (susie) while trying to brush aside their past, even if in reality they constantly are reminded of everything they used to share, which makes their feelings towards eachother complicated

although... ever since ch 5 came out, i've been seeing an uptick of people theorizing that perhaps it wasn't just kris who sometimes played annoying pranks on noelle when they were kids, but maybe noelle did some things to kris too considering the "you can't even say stop like you used to" line in the weird route, so their relationship wasn't actually as good as some people may believe. take this post for example. i'm... not sure how much i agree, but it is something interesting to consider

[ineeda-napp]

plz tell me others thought this too

(spoiler under cut)

[coconutbun37]

new gremlin just dropped

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

I think I bought the last stock NIN's store had of The Fragile: Deviations 1 lol? I'd been eyeing it since it came out in 2017 and only a week or two ago bought it, went to their store page to window show at other vinyl and it says it's sold out. Crazy

It sounds fire btw lol

[jennelikejennay]

I was looking at my old blog posts and dug up this one that I wrote immediately after seeing the teaser for "Four and a Half Vulcans."

Spock, the network, and the autistic Trekkie

In 1967, the diagnosis of autism was 24 years old, and the idea of a broad spectrum that could include various ability levels and types was

I just have so many questions about that line. Did they forget that Spock hates this? Did they lose the ability to prioritize Spock’s feelings just because they appear emotionless? (Remember that Vulcans do have emotions, they suppress them, but it’s possible the show writers forgot or never knew this.) And—where’s the logic? Let’s assume they’re completely emotionless and say only the most logical thing. Where’s the logic in harping on somebody’s heritage? What does it help? Is that going to help them complete their mission? Is that what a logical mind would choose to focus on, in the face of an entirely new body and an important upcoming mission? No, it isn’t, so at first this seemed inexplicable. Saying irrelevant, pedantic, hurtful things isn’t logical at all. It is, however, a stereotype of what autistic people do.

After seeing the show, I think I was pretty much correct on all counts. Talking about it now, I have been focusing on the bioessentialism and racism, which I think might be the bigger and more problematic theme. But I wasn't wrong that the episode would feel like a parody of autistic people.

Each "Vulcan" character represents a different autism stereotype. Pike nitpicks, Chapel hyperfocuses and neglects her relationships with others, Uhura tries to control others. (La'an, having turned Romulan for some reason, is just uncomplicatedly evil.)

The only good Vulcan is the one who tries to be as human as he can: Doug. See? It's not that we hate autistic people! It's that we believe if they tried they could be like us and then we wouldn't hate them!

The worst thing is, I don't know if the writers even know they're doing it. This is just the way Vulcans have always been written! And so you see fans saying, "Well, they're not wrong. Vulcans are jerks. They always have been. I know people like that and they're so insufferable."

Autistic people do attract dislike because of traits like those I mentioned, as well as just an inability to perform socially the way others do. So it's not surprising that autistic traits and asshole traits got put on the same characters, or that many fans love to hate them. It just doesn't feel great for me.

I would really love to see, much more often, an alien character who is deeply unlike humans, does not perform socially as humans do, and yet is clearly good and beloved by their friends. That would make me feel seen and loved. We do get that from time to time, but it just astounds me that Star Trek has a premade opportunity to write characters like this and instead nearly always writes them either as racists or as the butt of a joke or both.

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

Four and a Half Vulkans is my breaking point.

I've been a Star Trek fan for awhile now. I got into it around 2016-2017-ish I think, where I binged every episode in production order up until what was out of New Trek. Since then I have been a fairly avid Trekkie and have followed everything as it released. I've also engaged with a lot of the political aspects of Trek since the beginning, and have admired it a lot for it's progressive, diverse, and radically empathetic ideals. It helped me during the early stages of my transition to accept myself for who I am. I owe it a lot and care about it a lot.

Since 2023, I've been feeling a slipping of those ideals that I think for me has culminated in this new Strange New Worlds season, and this episode especially.

The first slip was Picard Season 2, though I count this less. This feels like it started with good intentions but fumbled in the execution, and isn't consistent with the rest of the examples. Say what you will about the quality, the intention behind this season is to comment directly on the politics of modern day, and what it's trying to say are things like "Ice is fucked up." It just doesn't commit to it's storyline enough due to trying to do too much in 10 episodes, a consistent Kurtzman Trek issue.

Picard Season 3 is the first real slip. The whole season is already against what Picard as a show wanted to be in the first place, it was never suppose to just be TNG seasons 8 or movie 5, it wanted to be something else. Bringing back the whole TNG crew is already an unfortunate, nostalgia bait pull, but the overall plot is even more so. Jack Crusher as a character is stolen directly from Star Trek II and III, which Kirk's son and his and Kirk's relationship. Already annoying, but his position in the story, as Picard's son that he has to recon with, is already filled by Picard characters from seasons 1 and 2, Elnor and Soji. Why do we need blood family here when we already have found family?

Jack isn't the core of my issue with this season, though he does tie in. He has this queer coding to him that I, for most of the season is fine. We still didn't need him for that, we have explicit queer representation (that is broken apart OFF SCREEN) with Seven and Raffi (more sidelining of S1 Picard characters grrr) but whatever. What's problematic is how this ties in to the wider plot.

I liked this season up until the finale, I want to stress. As much as it repeatedly pissed me off with it's sidelining and active antagonism towards previous seasons (reminding me alot of Rise of Skywalker) seeing the changelings done with modern CG was super cool, and made for alot of great tension. The scene with Seven and Tuvok is still burned into my memory, in a good way. the finale however fucks up everything when it sidelines the changelings and folds in the Borg. The plot becomes: We, the Borg, are infecting your children with our mind virus, which doesn't effect older people because reasons. Also, your son is a Borg that's what the Queer coding is. It is up to you, the boomers, to stop us.

So, a completely valid reading of this season after the finale is: The WOKE mind virus is taking our children and it is up to the boomers to stop it.

So. Yikes. Not great, but I moved on. Sorta read it as, they wrote most of the season and got a studio mandate near the end that the changelings weren't a profitable enough villain for the final Picard season, make it the Borg, and that fucked everything up. I don't know if I believe that now.

Next was Strange New Worlds season 2. This season is fine, has some incredible stuff like Ad Astra per Aspera. However, you can see the seeds of the issues with season 3 in certain episodes, most blatantly in the final song of Subspace Rhapsody, with the repeated line "We know our purpose is (We know our purpose is) : To protect the mission : Our Prime Directive" which is just… No. That's not and has never been the purpose of being in Starfleet. At the very least, Spock does disagree with this settlement during the song but the seed is there. The issue is more pertinent to Four and a Half Vulcans in Charades, where the weird conflation of genetics and culture I thought we left behind like 50 years ago comes in. But more on that later.

Another slide was Very Short Treks, which is a series of shorts some of which are entirely focused on conservative comedy. I only thought of this retroactively, because it seems so small, but it's also so blatantly conservative it now feels like an omen.

Section 31 is the way it is because of wider issues with modern Trek that stem from before it, but at least Section 31 we're still depicted as the bad guys in Discovery, even if the writers misread which three letter U.S, agency they were suppose to be a critique of. This movie however, seems to want to say that Section 31 are a necessary evil, which flies in the face of what Deep Space Nine was trying to say with them in it's episodes. Section 31 are not the good guys, we don't need organizations like them, and positioning them in this way sucks.

Now, for full transparency I haven’t watched everything in season 3 of Strange New Worlds, I haven’t even watched the episode Four and a Half Vulkans, which has caused this reaction in the first place. I didn't want to watch this season when the teaser for this episode was released a year ago. I was so grossed out that they had quite literally doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down on the weird biological essentialism of Charades. However, I was having a really bad day around the time mental health wise, saw they basically made a Q episode with Wedding Bell Blues, and gave in. I skipped episode 3, apparently missing the start of Pike's character assassination this season with his flagrant disregard for Betel's medical bodily autonomy, but watched episodes 4-6 as they released. After those three I was feeling okay with the season, a bit over lukewarm, but I decided to watch reviews of episode 7 before watching and kinda tapped out. I had watched Doctor Who's Interstellar Song Contest earlier this year, and while I enjoyed it for it's visual aspects, and didn't mind the episode's plot at first watch just out of pure ignorance on Eurovision and it's current politics, after learning about Eurovision's shit I soured on it greatly, so when I watched reviews and saw people likening episode 7 to that I didn't have any interest.

I think it should maybe be obvious with my tone, but for clarity, Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people, and I am wholeheartedly against that. That's not to say I'm not against Hamas, my opinions on terrorism are actually pretty complicated (which is good, not every opinion has to be simple enough to fit in a headline) but they boil down to: it is always bad to harm civilians and children in conflict. It was bad that Hamas targeted civilians instead of going straight for the Israeli government, their actual long term enemy, just as it is bad that Israel is trying to wipe out all Palestinian civilians and children in the Gaza Strip, and beyond once they have proven they can without proper resistance. Both are bad, but if you claim to care about the Hamas terrorist attack that started this current offensive by Israel, but support or are indifferent to what Israel is doing, your principles are clearly not consistent, and you need to figure out what about Palestinian civilians and children makes you value them less than Israeli civilians and children.

Anyway, tangent on current political issues episode 7 bends over backwards to not comment on, and therefor in the end says nothing of value and betrays Star Trek as a concept (because commenting on current events has always been the point of Star Trek) aside, episode 8, Four and a Half Vulkans came out. I had forgotten about it, so when Jessie Gender's review popped up in my recommendations I got hit with a deep anxiety and dread. Then, after watching the review, I was left with one question: How was it worse than I expected?

From what I can tell, this episode not only doubles, triples, and quadruples down on the biological essentialism, with the idea that Vulkans (and Romulans I guess) cultures' are somehow baked into their DNA, it quintuples on this idea by saying that La'an's reaction to the serum making her more Romulan than Vulkan comes from her heritage being linked to Khan. And this is said by fucking SPOCK.

Seriously, this scene makes me deeply angry.

✂️ What the FUCK

13 seconds · Clipped by HopeBFull · Original video "Star Trek Strange New Worlds 3.08 "Four and Half Vulcans" REVIEW" by Jessie Gender After

This idea is not in isolation, this is how they have been talking about the Gorn this whole fucking show, as the fundamentally evil creatures. The Rhetoric is clear: La'an is biologically evil, which is apparently a thing we now believe you can be. It's sickening, depersoning, bullshit and has no place in Star Trek.

IF this were just an isolated indecent, one bad episode, this may not have broken me. TNG had Code of Honor, I still watched more Star Trek, Deep Space Nine had Profit and Lace, I still watched more Star Trek, I watched Star Trek Nemisis and kept going. This though, has shaken my trust in the whole brand, because it's not a bad episode in a sea of good, or a bad movie that I know has already had it's comeuppance given it killed the brand for awhile, this is the flagship show, at some of it's highest rating because people are too absorbed in the nostalgia bait see what is right in-front of them. This is being rewarded, and I don't doubt Skydance will dig in.

I'm not planning on finishing this season. I'm not planning on watching Starfleet Academy anymore even with how fucking exited I was for it. I can't trust Star Trek to not, with alarming consistency, hit me with stories fundamentally opposed to mine and it's own ideals. I cannot trust it not to make the world worse, make people worse. And that makes me very sad.

Anyway, sorry. I needed to vent about this and hopefully make one or two people reconsider buying into this brand anymore. I hope I can do just a tiny bit of good by pointing out how systemic this seems to be.

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

I really like Jax's character in Amazing Digital Circus Episode 6. He's so interestingly written!!!

Specifically, I like his little arc he goes down in this episode that starts in the archetypes scene.

In this scene Jax reveals to Pomni his interpretation of what life in the Circus actually is. Though, it's pretty clear to me its something he came up with as a coping mechanism to deal with the trauma of living in the circus and losing the frog guy for whatever reason. (I'm not a theory girl, I'll tune into someone else's psychoanalysis of that once we know for certain what happened there.) I also believe this is the first time he's shared this with anyone, at least this blatantly. Most anyone else would have mentioned it, accept maybe Kinger who could have forgotten. The only other person who may know is Ragatha, given her "failing Jax" line later on, but I don't think she got the whole schpiel, just the aftermath if him closing himself off in this specific way in real time. To me, this is him opening up to Pomni, and letting someone in on this idea about the circus he has for the first time.

(Also want to note this framework he has put up explains his aversion to talking about himself pre-circus very well. He doesn't think that matters.)

In this scene, Pomni, before he even gets to explain what he means about the archetypes thing, throws out the line: "What's your archetype then, the villain?" Jax seems to brush past this in the moment, but this plants a seed. Again, I think he's not had this conversation before, this was just his private idea of his purpose. So I think this is the first time someone has called him a villain within the context of his own mental framework.

In the scene with Ragatha, where she confronts him with her idea that he's trying to corrupt Pomni, he's confused at first. But that line from Ragatha, combined with the suprise of losing a life (weakness, vulnerability), sprouts the seed Pomni planted a little bit. I think when he's having his near panic attack after shooting Ragatha a bunch, it's because he's just been indirectly called a villain again, and doesn't like it.

This scene is obviously really dense, as most of his arc happens here, plus the secondary arc and motivations tied to him pushing people away (secondary because i think thats more his season long arc, while what im gushing about is mostly localized to this episode.) When Pomni excitedly hugs him, he pushes her away. Afterwards though, he looks down at his hand, deeply in thought, in my interpretation because thats not what the funny one would do. Then when Pomni "betrays" him, he shifts back into the funny one persona and does what he thinks that archetype would do in this scenario, make the scene into a joke. But Pomni's not actually evil and only wants to do that as part of the mutual role-playing, but Jax insists, at first because its funny, but it quickly turns into wanting an out from the conversation, as he uses it as a potential out to the conversation multiple times.

But slowly in this scene, as a defense mechanism, he starts folding on the villain archetype into his persona. At first with the "we were never friends line," then the "I'd move on, and probably forget about you" while smiling, until Pomni pushes him into an emotional corner and he snaps. In an effort to not let his main coping mechanism, the idea he's just an archetypal cartoon character and not an actual person anymore, crack under the pressure Pomni is applying, he clings onto that seed from before and embraces himself as the villain of the circus.

He has this panic attack for a few reasons, but I think the one I most care about is that he clearly never wanted to be the villain. He chose this archetypes thing and when he did he chose to be the funny one. He pushed his one true friend away, and turned himself into a characature he never wanted to be. With his coping mechanism inverted, projecting back in, he breaks.

Anyway I just find this really interesting. It's all messy in a good way. Pomni accidentally causes the downward spiral Jax is now on, one that could make him act more antagonistic to everyone in coming episodes and also may lead him to abstract. It's really sad, in a good way.

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

I made an art

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

I have put so much Homestuck music on my pink iPod Nano Gen 2 4gb edition. Like, 95 tracks. I don't rly know if I like most of it yet, I never finished Homestuck and have not listened to much. I added stuff based on like 15 second samplings.

[hopebfull]

I have decided to go a lot further into this for the sake of procrastinating.

Here is the list of music I have on my iPod Nano, most of it sourced from my Bandcamp catalog. Because it only has 3.68~GB there are quite of few size based compromises.

Categories (sources):

Geometric Lullaby

Death's Dynamic Shroud NUWRLD Mixtape Club

Homestuck Volumes

Live Bootlegs

Others

Geometric Lullaby

The record label Geometric Lullaby specializes in plunderphonics, vaporwave, and other similar music types. I bought its entire catalog a few years back for 5 dollars, a thing you can do. The catch is that you only get what is out now, and it doesn't update, but you still get like 100 albums to fill your Bandcamp with. A great way to start a non-spotify digital music collection. I wanted more b e g o t t e n 自杀 but alas...

ستاره دار by دل

愛情のある関係 by ░░disease▒▒

슈​퍼​마​켓​Yes! We​’​re Open (2021 Remaster) by 식료품groceries

3S: Some Surreal Stuff… by Ursula's Cartridges

ムーンライズ by 世界は80年代に終了しました

Zeldawave // 近藤 浩治 // OOT by Polygon Dream

Spirit Realm by Mac Bandit

(forgive and forget) - 原谅和忘记 by b e g o t t e n 自杀

Death's Dynamic Shroud NUWRLD Mixtape Club

I discovered DDS (Death's Dynamic Shroud) through Geometric Lullaby, before they left. The NUWRLD Mixtape Club is a subscription you pay to the band through Bandcamp. You get everything in their catalog, permanently, the subscription is just to keep getting the new monthly Mixtape and to keep supporting the band. The Mixtapes are delineated very differently from their actual album output, and are fully inaccessible outside of this subscription, so I will mark them. Of their whole, very large, catalog, my iPod has:

Before The Killing Spree (.wmv)

Blue Ocean (.wmv)

Darklife

Everything Is Easy! (.wmv)

Faith In Persona

Heavy Black Heart

You Like Music

Homestuck

Okay, this section is a little different. I have not finished Homestuck nor listened to Homestuck music much at all. So, I decided to use this as an opportunity, since I own the soundtracks from when I was trying to get into Homestuck, to skim the soundtracks and find a bunch of music to listen to. I would actually like some feedback on what songs I missed that I should add, and what songs I can axe. To that end, here is every song I added.

Vol. 1-4 - Sburban Jungle | Black

Vol. 5-6 - Homestuck Anthem | Savior of the Waking World | Welcome to the New Extreme | Crystalanthemums | Skaia (Incipisphere Mix) | Sunslammer | Planet Healer | Ruins (With Strings) | Crystamanthequins | Clockwork Contrivance | Light | Descend | Homestuck | Umbral Ultimatum | MeGaLoVania | Gaia Queen | Crystalanthology | Swing of the Clock | Rhapsody in Green | English | Variations

Vol. 7-8 - Black Rose - Green Sun | At The Price of Oblivion | Terezi Owns | Awakening | Sburban Reversal | Davesprite | Terraform | Homefree | Temporary | Drift into the Sun | Cascade | Black Hole - Green Sun | Power Fantasy | Stellarum Salve | Carne Vale | Red Sucker | Constant Confinement | Constant Conquest

Vol. 9-10 - Crystalmethequins | Trepidation | Ugly Betty | Pumpkin Party in Sea Hitler's Water Apocalypse | Another Jungle | GameGrl (Original 1993 Mix) | A Little Fight Mewsic | Austin, Atlantis | Miasmajesty | Jane Dargason | Before the Beginning and After the End | Cumulating Dreams | Busting Makes Me Feel Good | Everything is Something to Somebody | I'm a Member of the Midnight Crew (Post-Punk Version) | Three in the Morning (Aftermath) | Requited | Princess of Helium | Moonsetter | Battle Against an Unfathomable Enemy | Noirscape | Creata | Of Gods and Witches | Beatup | You Killed My Father (Prepare To Die) | Sound Judgement | Aggrievocation | Stride | Freefall | Moonsweater | Beatdown DX | Solar Voyage | Feel (Alive) | Breeze | Starfall | Ascend | Lilith In Starlight | Thanks for Playing | Renewed Return | Conclude | Oppa Toby Style | Eternity, Served Cold (Canon Edit) | Heir of Grief | Overture (Canon Edit)

Live Bootleg

I have two Philadelphia shows from Nine Inch Nails' 2022 tour in full courtesy of the NINLive archive. I also have Live In Adelaide '19 and Live In Melbourne by King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard that I bought a long time ago. These are only partially on my iPod.

In specific, with Live In Adelaide I have left out: Evil Star, Inner Cell, Loyalty and Horology. On Live In Melbourne I have left out Fury, K.G.L.W. (1), Oddlife, Doom City, Ontology, East West Link, All Is Known, Straws In The Wind, Billabong Valley and Sleep Drifter.

Others

I have a selection of highly rated songs by Joy Division. I want to get into them but previously haven't and am using this as an excuse. Specifically: Atrocity Exhibition, Twenty Four Hours, The Eternal and Decades from Closer, Disorder, Day Of the Lords, New Dawn Fades and Shadowplay from Unknown Pleasures, and Digital.

An empty bliss beyond this World by the Caretaker

Enemies & Immigrants and Pearls to Pigs by Modwheelmood

GOBLIN HOURS by bilmuri

Inscryption Original Soundtrack

Khaler assorted works. Khaler is a personal friend of mine. I own most of her released music, and have added them to my library.

Cinderella by Model/Actriz

Post Human: NeX GEn by Bring Me The Horizon

I may update this over time, I may not. Just thought this would be fun to write out, and it was :3

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

I accidentally posted this on my reblog account and I don't have the mental capacity to fix that lol

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

I have put so much Homestuck music on my pink iPod Nano Gen 2 4gb edition. Like, 95 tracks. I don't rly know if I like most of it yet, I never finished Homestuck and have not listened to much. I added stuff based on like 15 second samplings.

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

This post is about video games i swear.

2025 has been a really bad year.

I mean, obviously, I'm trans and autistic and live in America, I cried when Trump got reelected for a reason, I knew it meant all the futures I had ever dreamed for myself had been, by popular vote, disintegrated. It meant that whatever bigger picture stuff I had thought I had wanted for myself, some sort of financial stability, the possibility of physical transition, etc, was all gone because the American people wanted, genuinely wanted, a holocaust for illegal immigrants, autistic people, and trans people. And so, those goals would have to be shifted to future generations, I would have to fight to my death for a future I would never see even the barest minimum of.

So yeah. All of that. Beyond that, however, this year has sucked in alot of other ways for me.

In what has been the worst possible timing, all of my closest friends, all for legitimate (capitalism mostly) reasons, have been incredibly difficult to contact and connect with, so I have felt deeply alone. My sense of community is frayed. The two senses of community I have left, a local queer organization and a local friend group, literally hate each other and it makes me want to pull my skin off. So, my plans, very very basic plans of: getting a job over summer, working a part time during my last semester, and then working a full time after to hopefully move out to a shitty apartment with at least one other person, seem increasingly out of reach, both from the political state of things, and the social isolation. I also figured out that i hate my major! And have now pivoted to a different concentration to hopefully make my final semester feel not horrid. In summary, everything in my life, related or otherwise, has fallen apart.

With this all in mind, I've had to find something to keep me sane. If only because I know a conservative will masterbate on my grave if I succumb to everything. So I've turned to something I really didn't want to have to, because it signifies another section of my life where I felt incredibly isolated and alone: video games. I've gotten into other media as well, but, videos games have been something that has made the last month in specific bearable. So, I wanna talk about some of the games I've been into and why I think they are neat, and also spotlight some games that I'm particularly excited for.

Pre-2025 Games:

Deltarune

My previous post is about my wierd relationship to Undertale and it's related media, but i have done the self reflection necessary for me to like this game. It rules. Chapter 1 not as much as chapter 2 but still.

Terraria

I started to get back into it when I thought I was going to be able to play with my best friends. That hope has very much died but I'm still at a point where I'm playing it again.

2025

Wanderstop

I have talked to my therapist about this game. It really has redefined my relationship to work, and given me license to take breaks and not destroy myself under the weight of my own expectations. The world is already trying to crush me, why should I be doing the same? Obviously, i have to work, and am applying for summer jobs right now, but it's still brought alot of good perspective. It's also just very well written, with characters I'm not soon to let out of my heart. I wish more people were talking about it, but I think alot of people were dissapointed that it was so different from the writer's prior work and so intentionally unresolving.

April 2025

I barely play games upon release, so it has been a truly novel experience to, through the magic of my dad's gamepass, play two of the greatest games I've ever played as they have come out.

Blue Prince

This is a puzzle game. Take the room card mechanics from the board game Betrayal, slap em on a Rogue-Like, and put in puzzles to rival Myst? You get absolute fire is what you get. This game consumed me for a good while, and it was a super novel experience. I haven't been playing it "right," I've been looking up solutions and things when the solution is "through RNG, get the magnifying glass, get this specific room, find this specific picture frame, profit," or I've just been really stuck, but this game is so new I've yet to ruin literally anything for myself by doing this because all the guides has been so deeply barebones. Hell, the chess puzzle guide i pulled up was just wrong, and I had to act check it before doing the puzzle. Still, I've had a blast and only slowed down playing it when I thought I broke the game. (If you know what "room repellent" is high five.) I'm still not done with it yet, but I'm excited to keep plunging deeper into the manor's secrets.

Clair Obscure: Expedition 33

I have been deeply excited for this game since the trailer that showed it was a fucking turn based RPG. In a world where you can seemingly only make those in pixel art or anime style, this looked like such a breath of fresh air. (No shade on jrpgs, P5R literally in my top 5 of all time, but I don't like role-playing as a high schooler at this point in my life.) And holy shit, has it yet to dissapoint. It is so French. I LOVE HOW FRENCH IT IS. I'm in a mime costume with a baguette on my back and I am living. The combat is a super cool mix of turned based and action, kinda the opposite way that FF7 Remake Trilogy is, and it's made every encounter consistently fun and exciting. The systems are super deep, I love the characters, gaahhh. A small thing that is specific to me: I've never played an older Final Fantasy game long enough to get to the world map. The active time battle system of those games just kinda... doesn't do it for me. So, this is my first time experiencing a game with this kind of world and... WHY DID THIS GO AWAY?! It's super fun I enjoy it alot.

Future Games 2025

Now i want to talk about some games I'm excited about that are coming this year and will hopefully augment my sanity.

Demon Tides

This is the sequel thing to Demon Turf, a 3D platformer i like alot but never finished because it was a little too frustrating at times. I honestly wasn't super excited by the reveal trailer of this, because i felt it was removing one of the strongest aspects of Demon Turf: it's Paper Mario-esque artsyle (don't know what it's called.) But after playing the demo- the expanded moveset and the way they have used the new artsyle have sold me. It still has a TON of character, and seems super fun.

Mewgenics

I'm a big Binding of Isaac head. I watched Northernlion nearly daily for three years of high school. I've done my time. Obviously, I'm excited for the new game. Every trailer that comes out adds an asterisk to that excitement, because I find the eugenics we do to domesticated animals really icky and this game leans pretty heavy into that, but I'm reasonably sure that this will be a like Isaac where it isn't condoning eugenics (like Isaac isn't condoning religious trauma) but that theme can dissappear under the gameplay loop at times. This is skewing negative, I'm quite excited. I'm not a big tactics RPG gal, but given how deeply into Isaac i got I'm sure Edmund can pull me in. Also the music slaps.

Deltarune

What can I even say.

Games without posted release dates

Don't Stop, Girlypop!

This seems like my kind of cringe. I got super into Doom 2016 like 5 years ago and always thought it had a criminally low amount of female centric y2k nostalgia.

Pony Island 2

Inscryption is one of my favorite games.

Dreamsettler

Hypnospace Outlaw is one of my favorite games.

Project C

This has writing credits from Michael Lutz, a creative at really respect. My favorite works of his are his podcast (along with Cameron Kunzelman) Homestuck Made This World (i swear it's great even for not Homestuck fans,) and all of the works i have discovered through his website correlatedcontents.com like Patrick and 'scrow. Him having a writing credit is enough for me to be excited.

So, that's it. The sparks that light up the dark world i live in right now. This year Is truly a great year for video games, which is wild given its sucks for everything else. I hope yall have found your little joys as well, and if you haven't... maybe one of these can be that for you.

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

I just finished* chapter 1 for the first time!!! (I still need to do Jevil and everything after the dark world, but I've beat the King and such)

I thought it was pretty good, but also VERY flawed. Especially the Card Castle section which I feel is, visually, kinda bad. There's a room in card castle where a birthday is happening that was genuinely, notably, poorly crafted, and that made me kinda sad. I'm still excited to finish the chapters that are out and play chapters 3-4 when they come out, because I'm assuming every time I have an issue with the visuals or storytelling Toby and the crew will do better next time. I'm generally lukewarm on chapter 1, though. It has fun character moments, has a decent foundation for the story to come, and has alot to think about (my favorite section was the prison breakout section because if you pay attention to the POV it's incredibly wierd. Why does Ralsei know you can see past the wall?! Why can I they pkayer control what I have to assume is Susie's soul?! And many other thoughts of confusion.)

Anyway I hope this is somewhat coherent!

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

Undertale Yellow and a nebulous "something" harming my Deltarune experience.

This is a mostly stream of thought essay of me breaking down, for myself, why Deltarune isn't grabbing me as much as I want it to, so that hopefully i can move past this roadblock and get more invested.

To set up my predicament, I need to communicate my, I believe, novel experience with these games. It starts out pretty normal, Game Theory. Yes, my first exposure to Undertale is Sans is Ness. After getting a taste of Undertale through that video I watched a lot of Let's Plays. Jacksepticeye, Steam Train, etc. I kept watching content about Undertale for years, but never actually played the game, thinking the difficulty of persuading my parents to buy the game outweighed the necessity of actually playing it due to the previously mentioned content consumption.

Fast forward many years, I hear about Undertale Yellow coming out. I had never heard of it before, but I got the animated release trailer in my youtube recommendations. It looks really cool, and I decide, because it's free, to play it.

It takes over my psyche. It has "The Sauce". I refuse to overright my Pacifist save because I don't want to ruin the lives of the characters. I'm invested.

A few months later I try to play Undertale... and it doesn't work. I'm too intimately familiar with Ruins and Snowden to get anything out of it. But above that is something else. A small, near imperceptible pit in my stomach as I play. Undertale has "The Sauce", I know it does, it has to, it's Undertale. Yet, I can't feel it.

Recently, within a week of writing this, I have started Deltarune. The announcement of the chapters 3-4 release date has been enough motivation to galvanize me towards catching up. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. It has "The Sauce", this time within a crack of a stump¹. But a weight has been hanging over me so far. That same pit in my stomach. "The Sauce" is missing an ingredient.

Undertale Yellow's only real objective improvement² over Undertale and Deltarune is that it looks "better." The how of this is a bit nebulous and I'm not a visual artist so I could never figure it out exactly, though I have some idea. My best guesses are the combination of: the pixel artists for Yellow are more skilled than Toby and his chosen Deltarune collabators³, Yellow has a nebulous "esthetic cohesion" Toby didn't think important due to Homestuck's influence, Yellow's animations are smoother. I think it's all of those and more. The effect of playing Yellow before anything else, therefore, is leaving me wanting for that visual polish and finesse.

Immersion. That's the word I'm looking for. The nebulous "something". The missing ingredient in Deltarune's "Sauce". When I played Yellow, I was sucked in. Whenever I was playing Yellow I was Clover, or some layer above. I was not playing a video game. With Deltarune, while I am wanting to feel that, and I am tantalizingly close, it's not happening yet. I keep noticing gameyness, little rough edges that bring me back to reality, or referencs that I get almost too well. I think this goes beyond playing Yellow beforehand, and can also be attributed to my larger game catalog and penchant for thinking about the mechanics of how games work. Nonetheless, I keep noticing the slight of hand, keep seeing the playing card's barely noticeable lifted edge. The magic tricks aren't working.

I'm not sure how to use this information, but I'll try to play tonight to see if this observation feels right.

1 Deltarune reference in my Deltarune essay how meta of me.

2 Yellow is really interesting in this regard. I genuinely think it has the same "Spark" as Undertale proper, though it uses this spark to light an intentionally smaller flame. Yellow has a good story, gameplay, world, music, etc, but to my reading of it the metanarrative aspect of Undertale is kinda just not there, meaning it fundamentally can't spread outside it's own bounds like Undertale proper can. It can't do what Andrew Cunningham describes in his video about why Undertale was good.

3 I don't think this is a hot take, Toby is objectively a pretty amateurish developer in a lot of respects. He's good at music writing, narrative, character writing, character design, and a lot of other things. He's very much not good at coding, and I think sometimes mediocre at pixel art. To bring Yellow back in, he's I think generally poor at the post production side of things. His music is written fantastically, and mostly production doesn't matter. However, in certain cases of boss themes or bigger songs, some extra touch ups and production could have elevated the "vibes". I think Yellow makes this comparison for me in an interesting way by having it's own Snowden and Ruins themes that still feel distinctly Undertale and distinctly old school RPG, but leverages some cool production and instrumentation choices to elevate certain emotions. The original songs on the Yellow ost, in contrast to the ones that use Undertale lightmotifs, while good, feel less distinct melodically. They have better "vibes" but less (not no, less) "Sauce". Undertale is as good as it is because it transcends it's component parts, and that okay, fantastic even, but if Toby found partners (or learned the skills necessary himself) to polish his art and music, it could be dangerous to people with Autism like me worldwide.

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

Idk if I stand by everything I said yesterday night in a haze, especially with the Toby fox talent stuff. Like I think he is undeniably a little unskilled but I don't think I made clear enough how little that matters. I do think this experiment is helping me enjoy Deltarune, though, so I'm not going to take it down.

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

Undertale Yellow and a nebulous "something" harming my Deltarune experience.

This is a mostly stream of thought essay of me breaking down, for myself, why Deltarune isn't grabbing me as much as I want it to, so that hopefully i can move past this roadblock and get more invested.

To set up my predicament, I need to communicate my, I believe, novel experience with these games. It starts out pretty normal, Game Theory. Yes, my first exposure to Undertale is Sans is Ness. After getting a taste of Undertale through that video I watched a lot of Let's Plays. Jacksepticeye, Steam Train, etc. I kept watching content about Undertale for years, but never actually played the game, thinking the difficulty of persuading my parents to buy the game outweighed the necessity of actually playing it due to the previously mentioned content consumption.

Fast forward many years, I hear about Undertale Yellow coming out. I had never heard of it before, but I got the animated release trailer in my youtube recommendations. It looks really cool, and I decide, because it's free, to play it.

It takes over my psyche. It has "The Sauce". I refuse to overright my Pacifist save because I don't want to ruin the lives of the characters. I'm invested.

A few months later I try to play Undertale... and it doesn't work. I'm too intimately familiar with Ruins and Snowden to get anything out of it. But above that is something else. A small, near imperceptible pit in my stomach as I play. Undertale has "The Sauce", I know it does, it has to, it's Undertale. Yet, I can't feel it.

Recently, within a week of writing this, I have started Deltarune. The announcement of the chapters 3-4 release date has been enough motivation to galvanize me towards catching up. I'm enjoying it quite a bit. It has "The Sauce", this time within a crack of a stump¹. But a weight has been hanging over me so far. That same pit in my stomach. "The Sauce" is missing an ingredient.

Undertale Yellow's only real objective improvement² over Undertale and Deltarune is that it looks "better." The how of this is a bit nebulous and I'm not a visual artist so I could never figure it out exactly, though I have some idea. My best guesses are the combination of: the pixel artists for Yellow are more skilled than Toby and his chosen Deltarune collabators³, Yellow has a nebulous "esthetic cohesion" Toby didn't think important due to Homestuck's influence, Yellow's animations are smoother. I think it's all of those and more. The effect of playing Yellow before anything else, therefore, is leaving me wanting for that visual polish and finesse.

Immersion. That's the word I'm looking for. The nebulous "something". The missing ingredient in Deltarune's "Sauce". When I played Yellow, I was sucked in. Whenever I was playing Yellow I was Clover, or some layer above. I was not playing a video game. With Deltarune, while I am wanting to feel that, and I am tantalizingly close, it's not happening yet. I keep noticing gameyness, little rough edges that bring me back to reality, or referencs that I get almost too well. I think this goes beyond playing Yellow beforehand, and can also be attributed to my larger game catalog and penchant for thinking about the mechanics of how games work. Nonetheless, I keep noticing the slight of hand, keep seeing the playing card's barely noticeable lifted edge. The magic tricks aren't working.

I'm not sure how to use this information, but I'll try to play tonight to see if this observation feels right.

1 Deltarune reference in my Deltarune essay how meta of me.

2 Yellow is really interesting in this regard. I genuinely think it has the same "Spark" as Undertale proper, though it uses this spark to light an intentionally smaller flame. Yellow has a good story, gameplay, world, music, etc, but to my reading of it the metanarrative aspect of Undertale is kinda just not there, meaning it fundamentally can't spread outside it's own bounds like Undertale proper can. It can't do what Andrew Cunningham describes in his video about why Undertale was good.

3 I don't think this is a hot take, Toby is objectively a pretty amateurish developer in a lot of respects. He's good at music writing, narrative, character writing, character design, and a lot of other things. He's very much not good at coding, and I think sometimes mediocre at pixel art. To bring Yellow back in, he's I think generally poor at the post production side of things. His music is written fantastically, and mostly production doesn't matter. However, in certain cases of boss themes or bigger songs, some extra touch ups and production could have elevated the "vibes". I think Yellow makes this comparison for me in an interesting way by having it's own Snowden and Ruins themes that still feel distinctly Undertale and distinctly old school RPG, but leverages some cool production and instrumentation choices to elevate certain emotions. The original songs on the Yellow ost, in contrast to the ones that use Undertale lightmotifs, while good, feel less distinct melodically. They have better "vibes" but less (not no, less) "Sauce". Undertale is as good as it is because it transcends it's component parts, and that okay, fantastic even, but if Toby found partners (or learned the skills necessary himself) to polish his art and music, it could be dangerous to people with Autism like me worldwide.

[bealilyaliceinmarch]

CHOCOBO

Chocobo WHIMSY Playlist

WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE SILLY CHOCOBO THEME OUT OF THESE FIVE:

FFX-2 Chocobo

FFXIII-2 Crazy Chocobo

FFVII Rebirth Pop de Chocobo

FFVII Remake Hip Hop de Chocobo

Chocobo's Happy Christmas

Voting ended onFeb 3, 2025