I’m also a diagnosed autistic person, and I’m pretty sure I have undiagnosed ADHD, so please be patient with me.
An artist (both digital and traditional) and a crazy gamer (and tired student)
DNI if:
You promote any prejudice or hatred, especially to the vulnerable. I do not condone racism, ableism, sexism, homomisia, transmisia or any other kind of discrimination and I will swiftly report should I see any. I also do not support things like the fetishisation of asians or infantilisation of neurodivergents. Please keep such gross behaviour away from me with a 20 kilometer pole.
You promote/align yourself with hateful ideologies such as Nazis, TERFs, etc. This is related to the previous point, don’t hate others for existing.
You engage with me in sexual and/or 18+ topics without prior consent. I will reiterate that I am aroace, and I have no interest in debating my identity. I only discuss topics of an 18+ nature with people I want to, and in private, not on a blog where all can see. Sexual JOKES are okay, but do not dump a whole smut fic onto me, thanks.
You believe in pro-shipping / age-of-consent arguments / any kind of argument that justifies problematic ships, pedophilia, romanticisation of abuse, etc. Just because it’s fiction doesn’t mean it’s okay. Heavy topics like abuse and manipulation should be taken with the weight they carry, and not be treated lightly.
NOTES/WARNINGS:
I consume content that includes but isn’t limited to: violence, gore, cannibalism, and similarly dark topics. I will do my dilligence to tag them, and if I fail to, you can remind me to do so, and I will gladly. However, if the content is not problematic (as in, it romanticises such content), I see no reason to take it down. Consumption lies on you, the viewer, and if the content isn’t promoting morally wrong ideas, I have no reason to remove material that might be uncomfortable to some.
I engage quite regularly in dark humour. If that puts you off, please let me know. I take mental well-being seriously.
Though mun is above 18, I wish for this blog to be clean of NSFW or sexual content. Please respect this wish.
BLOG LIST
— @idv-thespians (IDV OC blog specific to the Thespians)
— @idv-serendipity-casino (IDV OC blog specific to a group of ocs, which may be combined with @idv-fifis-toybox, idk man)
Fandoms I’m in / games I play: Identity V, Genshin Impact, Star Rail, Honkai Impact 3rd, Pressure, Mouthwashing, Killer Chat, Bungo Stray Dogs, Faith: The Unholy Trinity, Woomaverse, Chonny’s Charming Chaos Compendium (CCCC), Moriarty the Patriot, The Amazing Digital Circus, Reverse 1999, Twisted Wonderland (there’s probably more i’ve forgotten, feel free to ask if you wanna know)
I also have two barely fleshed out Non-Fandom worlds, the first is called Dreams of Delirium (or DoD for short), following the journey of a young girl named Initium Horatius where she explores the worlds she comes across.
The second is called Dead: On Air (or D:OA for short), which is more supernatural and science fiction-y than DoD. We follow a pair of best friends, Lux Elsher and Rose Margaret Farley who run a ghost-hunting agency.
(There is also a third called Futureless but literally all I have for that are two characters and the setting of the world. So uh oops)
I create OCs for the fandoms I’m in, and you can read more about them if you’d like. One day I’ll be organised with tags, I swear. (this is probably a lie /j)
TAGS:
Personal art: me arts
Reblogs: reblog
Who would have thought a person without fear could exist in the world? But one is already enough. If there were more, it'd get boring.
This is literally what people are talking about when they say AI will be used to mainstream widely held bigotry. LLMs are trained on frequency and probability -> straight relationships are more well represented in the dataset -> straight pronouns and terms become the "correct" normal.
This is a form of backdoor bigotry from both normative facts (there are more straight than gay relationships) and well represented bigoted beliefs (men are superior to women).
Combine this with the mass of people inclined to believe (and being encouraged to believe) that if AI says and does something it must be correct
okayyyy listen up people 📣📣📣 everyone can stop calling anyone they hate a narcissist now!! we're all done we're moving on to the next new thing: talking kindly about mentally ill people. alright, thanks for your time. pass the message along.
#the fact that 'can prove access to an online account at least 12 years old' or even 'account to be verified is itself fully 18 years old'#AREN'T accepted methods of age verification is such a telling sign of what the real purpose of age-gating laws is:#data harvesting and deanonymization and the buildout of state-controllable ways to restrict both content and internet access itself en masse (via @shinelikethunder )
Possibly my spiciest take is that it's actually good to have people you respect and like that have some dogshit takes.
I think part of what is making young people lonelier, in discussing why they're increasingly isolated, is that they're so afraid of meeting someone who doesn't hold their same beliefs, and instead of being just core beliefs it is kinda ancillary shit.
It's actually okay to disagree even on social topics! Even on some political ones! But I mean, online you can start with "i love this mutual but they have a really bad/uninformed opinion about x media"
I know this is IMMEDIATELY going to be taken in bad faith, and yes babygirl, you are so right, I DO want you to go make best friends with both the KKK grand wizard AND your nearest nazi leader.
But seriously, as someone who has spent two decades doing community organization: finding ways to connect with different people is so so so important. There are people i follow here who ate 80% smart and their brain falls out of their head 20% of the time and that is GOOD FOR MY MENTAL ECOSYSTEM AND GOOD FOR LEARNING HOW TO BE A PERSON
"I wrote a eulogy for my best friend last week. Then I read it to him. At the pub. On a Tuesday."
He was alive, holding a pint, looking at me like I'd lost my mind. Maybe I have.
I'm Mick. I'm 70. The man across the table was Barry. Seventy-two. Best mate for 46 years. Met on a building site in 1979. He dropped a plank on my foot. I called him something unrepeatable. He bought me a pint after the shift. Haven't gone a week without talking since.
Three months ago we went to a funeral. Bloke we'd worked with. Cancer. The eulogies were beautiful - people saying what he meant to them, things they'd clearly never said to his face. And all I could think was, he can't hear any of this.
Every beautiful sentence. Every "he changed my life." Said to a room of crying people and a box of wood.
I turned to Barry. Whispered, "What a waste."
Drove home. Couldn't sleep. Because I realised, if Barry died tomorrow, I'd stand up and say extraordinary things about this man. Things I've never said in 46 years. And he'd be in the box, missing all of it.
So I wrote them down. Took a week. Harder than expected - not finding the words, but admitting I had them.
Rang him. "Tuesday. The Crown. Need to read you something."
"Have you joined a book club?"
"Just come."
Same corner table. Pint of bitter. Crisps. I pulled out the paper. He saw my hands shake.
"Mick. What's this?"
"Your eulogy. I'm reading it now because I'm not wasting it on a day you can't hear it."
"Have you gone mad?"
"Probably. Shut up and listen."
I read it. In a pub. To a man very much alive and very much uncomfortable.
I told him about the plank and how it was the best injury of my life. About the night he drove forty minutes in rain to help change a tyre. About how he rang every day for three months after my divorce and never once asked "Are you alright?" - just talked about football and weather, because he knew I didn't need a question. I needed a voice.
I told him he was the funniest man I'd ever known and his jokes were terrible and both things were true. That he'd been a better father than he thinks. That his wife's a saint and he knows it. That I'd have been a worse man without him.
He didn't look at me. Stared at his pint. Jaw tight. Doing that thing men do when the feelings arrive and they'd rather swallow glass than show it.
When I finished, long silence. Then he picked up his pint, took a sip, and said,
"You're paying for the next round. And the one after."
That was his answer. Perfect. Because Barry doesn't say "I love you too." He says "you're buying."
But in the car park, he hugged me. Not the quick back-pat. A real one. Thirty seconds. Neither let go first.
And he said quietly into my shoulder, "Don't read that again at the real one. I want new material."
Who would you write a eulogy for - while they're still here?
Don't wait. The flowers can't hear. The box doesn't laugh. Say it now. At the pub. Over a bad cup of tea. You'll feel ridiculous.
They'll look uncomfortable. It'll be the most important thing you've ever done.
Read them the speech while they can still hug you in the car park.”
Lovely sentiment, but I want to point out to other people in the notes that this is a repost of an AI-generated story from facebook.
Specifically, from a facebook page called "Paths To Go" that posts a lot of these stories (among many other things), supposedly written by Mary Nelson.
The reason why I say "supposedly" is that I suspect that they are created using AI - there are a lot of these extremely shareable sob stories on their page. (I'll explain more of my reasoning under the cut, if you want to know how I can be so sure.)
As others have pointed out, some of them are pretty easy to disprove, like this one about a guy named Dylan who supposedly narrated a number of audiobooks such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar… who does not exist in real life. I think it's safe to say that this one is also not true.
Please do not come at the tumblr OP; their tags make it clear that this is a repost from facebook that they wanted to share (and with this level of writing quality it's easy to be fooled; I'm sure a considerable number of those 6.7K(!) facebook shares thought it was real). I just wanted to clarify, so you can make an informed decision on whether you want to share it or not.
Footnotes below: a detailed guide to spotting this kind of post (and how you can fact-check things like the audiobook guy):
The first thing that tipped me off was the tone. Obviously, our userbase does not consist of 70-year-old men, but even before I got there I noted that this was not at all in line with the tone of most tumblr posts. It looks like it's from a book or something.
So I thought I'd check the source. I do follow some people who post personal stories, but they're usually attributed to an author or poet. Honestly, it reminded me a bit of this letter from Kurt Vonnegut that I saw shared here a few days ago:
(Side note - I'm pretty confident this is a real letter, because (1) it sounds like something he would write, (2) I can find multiple photos and scans of it, so I'm assuming it's been hung up somewhere and (3) there's a photo of it going around that's attributed to the headmaster of the school.)
So I scrolled to the end of the post, noting the closing quotation mark, fully expecting a credit of some sort and... nope.
I opened the notes to see if anyone had an attribution or further thoughts, and saw a couple of people making the comparison to facebook spam posts. (A problem which has existed for years but is undoubtedly getting worse because of genAI.)
I checked the original post and saw the tags "#not a bad idea #FB", confirming that this was not the OP's own anecdote and that it was from facebook.
Then I did a quick search for a phrase from the post that I thought would be unique, and lo and behold, a number of results that looked like this:
(Note: The date is wrong because of some problem that Facebook or Ecosia has with search indexing where the text of one post shows up as being part of another post (in this case, a photo upload from half a year earlier). Every account in these results is one that has shared the post.)
After going through a few of these I managed to find the original, which was posted less than a month before the tumblr post. (Switch on post dates in your tumblr settings if you haven't yet, by the way! It has stopped me from reblogging old news many, many times.)
Then, as shown in the screenshot above, I find this:
Now, I think it's pretty safe to assume that Mary Nelson is not the "Mick" from the post. Maybe she's just really into creative writing and her preferred genre is emotional facebook posts?
At this point, I start looking at their other posts. At time of writing, they seem to have changed tactics a bit. It's now a mix of short-form videos about celebrities with AI voiceovers (or slightly-off American man voices, at least) and "fun fact" articles about celebrities and news, accompanied by generic images with a tagline.
Here's part of a post and the corresponding image:
(This quote does not occur in the post. Also, Sweden did not give every pre-school child a tablet.)
Once again, the whole post is in quotation marks (with no attribution this time) and it ends with a call to share:
We now have, at best, a bunch of fictional stories created specifically for Facebook engagement. But this is kind of a lot of posts for one person, right? I mean, they have a website linked in their bio, but they only have about a dozen articles, all a few years old and by the same person - clearly this isn't run by a big team of people. If only there was a way to quickly generate new stories, perhaps with some sort of model of language that was rather large...
So, what makes me think it's AI-generated?
The sheer number of posts (4+ per day), which all take about 2-3 minutes to read (the screenshot above is about a fifth of the full post)
The variety in topics (celebrities, news stories, old remarkable events, etc.)
The overall tone. This is kind of hard to describe, but some of these read like a news article, but without the substance - every posts ends in some sort of moral lesson.
These are not stolen posts - doing additional searches shows this facebook page was the first place where they were posted.
A lot of the articles are accompanied by AI images. Especially the stories.
Even if the colours don't tip you off, the fact that this 'retired nurse' is wearing her name badge (which has a man on it...?) and is reading the back of a letter (which clearly has a sendoff on the front, and thus does not continue on the back) should tip you off.
Anyway, am I expecting anyone to do this level of checking before they share something? Absolutely not! But it's good to get a feel for when something is "off" and to know how you can check whether your intuition is right or wrong.
Bonus: a fact-check on the audiobook post
So, reading this post should already give you some red flags:
How can a guy who has narrated 200 audiobooks think that "most people don't know audiobook narrators exist"?
What logic is he using to get from "200 books" to "thousands of homes" to "millions of kids"? (This is an ungenerous reading, but to me it sounds like the average home has a thousand kids in it, when phrased this way.)
He says he's recording an average of 4-6 books per week, so his 200 books would've been recorded in about a year. Later on, though, he says that he has been an audiobook narrator for 12 years.
It's impossible to tell from this snippet, but for some reason 'Dylan' exclusively uses six periods as his ellipsis. This happens five times in this post.
He also eventually starts mentioning the children by name. And the social worker tells him their names on the phone call. I don't know much about foster care, but that feels like some sort of privacy violation.
Also, a very similar style overall to the post that I'm replying to right now! Short, snappy sentences that sound casual, like spoken language. (This does require you to look at the other posts, though.)
But, if that didn't tip you off, you could also look up who recorded the audiobooks in question! In the case of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, it was Kevin R. Free. I have no doubt that there are other versions out there (in fact, there are plenty on youtube) but you aren't able to just buy them.
Of course, his story hinges on the anonymity, but in real life, a quick search with the query "very hungry caterpillar" "dylan" "audiobook" would give us results - but instead it just gives you this facebook post.
If you're wondering what's with the quote marks - I know Google is becoming less reliable as a browser (I personally use Ecosia most of the time), but it does still have something called search operators. You can find a full list of them here, but the ones I recommend learning by heart are:
"word" - lets you filter for results with specific words (also works on google scholar, which has saved me quite a few times! also great for when you have an exact phrase you're looking for, but google keeps interpreting it as separate words.)
-word - lets you filter out a specific word (I use -ai to disable the AI overviews, but you can use it for all sorts of things. I used it earlier to find the source for the quote by looking up "vonnegut" "xavier" -reddit.)
site:word.com - lets you filter for results from a specific website. (example: doctor who theme site:youtube.com)
filetype:word or ext:word - lets you filter for specific document types. (example: fur elise sheet music filetype:pdf)
before:yyyy-mm-dd and after:yyyy-mm-dd - lets you filter for pages with creation dates before/after/between specific dates. (example: "shoelaces" "president" before:2013-01-01 site:tumblr.com would be a good search to try to find the original "thanks, I stole them from the president" post.)
Again, I don't expect anyone to go to this level of effort for something like this, but these tools are helpful for all sorts of things, from finding papers about an overlap in specific subjects to finding the first/original post related to something!
Fourth Year Anniversary ♡ METHOD TRACK .. Lunar Ridge
‘ A GAME OF HUMANITY AND ANOMALY. ’
What do you do when you've entered a world so distinctly different from your own, yet so fatally familiar all the same?
Four years ago, I embarked on a journey I've never done before ♪, and I've had so much fun ever since! ( This post is admittedly a little early, since my original Lunar Ridge starting date was the 10th of July, 2022, and it's the 1st of June, 2026, as of typing this. )
In other words... I had made my very first essence, completed with my own skins for my friends and the friends of my friends, and complete lore that I remembered being sooooo proud of. Back then, I had a really, really good time!
It kind of started a legacy, if you will ♪
Over the four years of the Lunar Ridge series, I've created a lot of cool essences with cool lore, featuring a ton of cool people! There are so many that I don't think I could name every single one, completed or not.
However, the original essence, and the one that really did kick off my love for creation and storylines, has to be the Theatre of Darkness ♪ Elysia's debut essence and the first essence I ever took sign-ups for! I consider it my first ever major project... and I'm still super proud of it and how it showed me what I was able to accomplish!
And, with my fourth anniversary for Lunar Ridge coming up... I wanted to celebrate it with something fun and unexpected ♪ This time, I took inspiration from my original essence, my Neon Theatre. I remember the mindset I was in when I was making it, y'know? I wanted to make everyone proud. I wanted to make everyone think, "Wow, I'm glad I signed up for this!" I was seeking validation for my work really badly at the time... so a lot of the work ended up getting done on the spot.
The lore was kind of messy, a lot of things were left to interpretation, the designs were kind of cluttered... I didn't put enough thought into the story I was telling, the characters I was bringing to life. I had fun, but I knew I could do better with the concept I had built it off of.
Entities and horror were always kind of my thing! Things that don't exist organically, things made to scare you, to scare us, I've always centered many of my original works on the idea of something cosmic and otherworldly. The Theatre was like that. So it is.
Which brings me to the METHOD TRACK essence ♪
I wanted to make an essence that tells the story I always wanted The Theatre to tell, without erasing what the Theatre was and what it had meant to me. I don't want to overwrite the Theatre and the people within the Theatre, I want to add onto it, I want to expand upon it without unruling its history. The ACTS of the theatre were so important to me. The Tracks of the METHOD TRACK serve the same purpose as those ACTS did... although I have fewer tracks than I did ACTS.
In the end, for this essence, I decided I wanted to focus more on the story than the design, which is what I had wanted to do for the Theatre at the time, but didn't have the skills to really.... do so. I actually prioritized the story of the METHOD TRACK so much that I wrote character notes for each character ♪ by hand ♪ because I'm stupid ♪ (/j) But, the gist is that each track has (typically) one human and one entity in it, and a story solely contained to that track, even if characters and elements may connect outside that track.
Now, I just want to say this isn't the Theatre revitalized! The Theatre will remain as its own thing of the past, just as I wanted. I'm not going to erase the past that brings me to this present. Even if that story isn't relevant to the world I've built as "Lunar Ridge", it's still an important story to me. An important story that should remain just as it was. The METHOD TRACKS... I hope you'll see it as an extension of the world the Theatre started building. An extension with a more complete and finalized picture. But, that's enough words, I want you guys to meet the actors of my latest play! After all... is this "long time no see," or "nice to meet you?"
..
TRACK ZERO - Rotten Beauty
METHOD TRACK Zero is the Rotten Beauty Track. It features my two "main" characters, Sabrina and Remnant! I decided to make them Track Zero, because they're the watchers, the observers, they're witnessing the tragedies of Tracks One through Six, without directly involving themselves in them.
If I had to describe them, they're... kind of like us? In a way? We're simply watching the story unfold from an outside perspective, as are they. Sabrina will come to learn about and love characters in the tracks the same way you guys learn and love characters in the story, while Remnant is kind of like me... the storyteller of the inevitable tragedy being told. It revels in its craft, in the tragedies of its own making, in the same way I enjoy making the stories I later get to tell.
They're both simply... watching. Just like us.
It's the reason they ended up playing themselves, as opposed to having a canon character or an original character play them like everyone else. It's a poetic symbolism that I can't truly get if I ended up giving this role to someone else.
Remnant... I did want to talk about it a little bit, since it is very similar to the Agent of Darkness in terms of the role it plays. Remnant was very loosely inspired by the concept of the Jezebel Spirit and the idea of "temptation" and "control" as something not quite humane. I wanted Remnant to embody everything I was told not to be growing up as a tiny tot in the church. I wanted it to be disarming at a first glance, but something truly dangerous and disconcerting if left unchecked. (I don't want to get too much into the religious background of Remnant; I don't think this is the place to do it.)
The Agent of Darkness served a similar role to Remnant as the projector of tragedy, the one who reigns over this world with great control, but not absolute control. They are the curator of tragedy and misfortune. They serve very similar roles in their own stories.
TRACK ONE - I Miss the Quiet.
Track One is the I Miss the Quiet track! It is the first track in the main track list, and it is the first track that Remnant shows Sabrina. It follows the story of a high-schooler named Robin A. (Played by Bethany Anastazja, the Baker) after she stumbles into the domain of the Windwalker (Played by Ithaqua, the Nightwatch) on her way home. Robin is kind of... the main character of her own outside story in the Lunar Ridge universe (Robin and Andie, her brother, share a story in the Lunar Ridge series, but that's for another day!), but she makes an appearance in the METHOD TRACKS as a part of track one.
Robin has her own story, of course, but her story in Track One is really important for setting up the stories of the later tracks, as well as setting the standard of tragedy. In Track One's case, the tragedy actually lies... with The Windwalker.
Track One takes place in a liminal space known as the Winterwoods Forest. The important part of these woods is that the forest itself is alive and conscious. It's not the Windwalker who is the entity, but rather, it is the entire forest that is the entity, and the Windwalker is just an extension of it. The Windwalker, although I will be calling it "Wren" for short (thank you, Tae, for helping me come up with a short-hand name for it!), is just a piece of the much bigger puzzle. Wren was inspired by the concept of being reclaimed by nature.
Now, I wanted it to be a bit more on the horror story side, which is why I opted to make Wren a more instinctual and animalistic character as opposed to someone conscious of their actions, someone more humane in appearance but still something off-putting about them. And, you know the concept of the wind being alive/carrying your words on the wind? That's where the name comes from... the wind is "walking". The wind "walks", Wren is The Windwalker. Eh? Ehh?????? (I raise a brow with a smug expression off-screen.)
Wren is part of the forest, and the forest is part of Wren. Wren was actually a young man (roughly 19-ish in age) who died in the Winterwoods Forest and had his corpse seized by the anomalous forest, essentially being made a part of the forest. Its existence is tied to the forest, its life taken by the forest, its body used by the forest. Wren... probably isn't even conscious inside his own body anymore. It's being driven entirely by instinct, but not even its own instinct, but rather the instinct of something entirely beyond it. Which ends up being the real tragedy.
Robin's found another person she can't help. She's found another person she has to watch fade away into nothingness. There's nothing Robin can do to help Wren or to lay Wren to rest. The only thing Robin can do is live on, to carry on, and to keep looking forward to tomorrow. Robin's only choice is to... keep marching forward. And leave everyone else behind.
Track One not only introduces the concept of human vs entity or liminal spaces, but it also introduces a key aspect of the METHOD TRACK storyline, the concept of daybreak, and what that means for someone trapped in the liminal. Daybreak is basically... the condition for someone to become free from the liminal space. Daybreak, sometimes called "Sunrise" is basically the dawn but for liminal spaces! Liminal Spaces entrances open for a limited time at the dawn of a new day and at the dusk/ending of a new day, which means people can either enter a realm at dusk (usually by accident) or exit a realm at daybreak.
In order for Robin to escape the Winterwoods, she had to survive until daybreak, when the realm becomes the thinnest and intersects with the real world. This means Robin can escape the realm and return to the real world again, but only during that "daybreak" time period, which is different between each liminal space. If she missed it, she has to wait for the next "daybreak". The Windwalker's (and other entities') job is to capture and deal with the humans before daybreak hits. In Track One's case, The Windwalker doesn't capture Robin. In fact, Wren is the one who ejects Robin out at the last second using its wind, launching her backwards and out of the realm. Because Wren is a human foremost, the Windwalker retains a part of Wren's human will and sometimes will act out of "character" because of it. While the Windwalker wants Robin inside the realm, Wren wanted Robin out, and Wren won that struggle.
Not to discredit Robin's own survival instincts, since Wren's intervention only came in at the end. Robin earned her rights to survive; she earned her rights to make it out of that track alive. Robin learned the Windwalker's patterns, she learned the lay of the land, she fought back when she had to, she fought and struggled. She had even broken the beloved guitar her brother had given her when she was younger in her struggle. Robin deserves her survival, every bit of it.
A lot of Robin's character and her interactions with Wren/The Windwalker originate from that close bond she had with her brother, Andie. In Robin's view, Wren is like Andie, someone who's been lost and has someone waiting for them to come back home. Wren is the worst-case scenario; Wren is her fear actualized, Wren is the "brother" who will never come home. Wren is everything about a "missing person" that scares Robin. Wren's fate is the thing that scares her the most.
Wren is the monster in the dark that scares Robin. Which makes it the scariest entity of all in my opinion. Wren's anger warms the forest's heart now- but it will leave the forest cold and empty once it extinguishes.
As far as Beth and Ithaqua go, I chose them for very specific reasons. Beth as Robin was probably the most... drastic choice I could have made, to be honest? Beth is gentle, sweet, a lover and not a fighter, while Robin fought- or rather fights- tooth and nail, through the things that hurt her and the things that destroy her. Beth comes back from the world stronger, but Robin lets the world break her to the point that she wants the Windwalker to win. Robin doesn't overcome her grief; her grief overcomes her. Beth is alive and still fighting, Robin is alive but slowly breaking down. I think the difference between Beth as a character and Robin as a character is very... distinct. In a way, I want Beth's role as Robin to show the real Robin that there is a different way. Through Beth's Robin, I think the real Robin can get stronger, too. And rise from this tragedy just like Beth rose from her own. The casting was an opposites casting, in a way.
As for Ithaqua and "Wren", they have very similar roles in their own stories. "Wren" and Ithaqua both became the nightmares/monsters that people are scared of. They're not just the victims of something beyond them, but they are the punishment as well. Wren takes the role of a tragic villain, but Ithaqua gives it that depth that makes it hurt. Ithaqua brings The Windwalker to life, even if the person behind the mask has long since been forsaken. They are the final destination; they are what remains of something rotten that's long since disappeared. Even Wren's human version is meant to reflect a survivor, while The Windwalker leans more into a hunter visually. The victim and the monster are one and the same, and I think Ithaqua lends himself and his tragedy to my story perfectly.
TRACK TWO - Sinister
Track Two is the Sinister Track! It's the second of the main tracks, and it takes place in a liminal space that looks like one of those racecar tracks. This track is super unique because it has three characters in it, as opposed to the two characters in each track. There's Majin ( Played by Phineas Smith, the Showman ), Tyler B. ( Played by Laurence Godfrey, the News Reporter ), and Boundary ( Played by Avery Star ).
For this track, there were two entities and one human. The two entities have their basis in the shadows and things you can't see, things that lurk in the dark. I always imagine a racetrack would look unsettling, completely empty, and I know my brain tends to make up things in the darkness where I can't see. And in that darkness, you don't know what might be friendly... and what's less than friendly. However, I wanted Majin and Boundary to be starkly different side by side, since a lot of the entities share similar features to one another, such as hair color and eye color. This is also keeping in mind what Legacy entity they originated from, since they both originate from different Legacy entities!
The way the IMtQ track introduced daybreak as a mechanic, the Sinister Track introduces its own important mechanic to the story. This time, its the Legacy Entities. This is very important to figuring out what is truly harmful and truly harmless... in their own sense of the word.
There are four main legacy entities: Legacy Disco, Legacy Alice, Legacy Faker, and Legacy Erebus. Every entity originates from one of the four legacy entities and gains its distinctive traits from these entities. Love (Disco), Playful Curiosity (Alice), Hatred (Faker), and Morbid Curiosity (Erebus). Most of the entities from the METHOD TRACKS originate from Legacy Faker, and they all gained "hatred" and "disdain" at their cores, even though that looks different for each entity. (Alice and Erebus are only lore background for this track; none of the entities share ties to these two, but I do have entities who originate from these two!) However, Majin originated from Legacy Disco, and instead of gaining hatred at its core, Majin gained "love" and "affection" at its core. This makes Majin different from an entity like Boundary on a fundamental level, because the cores of their beings clash. While entities of different fundamentals can get along (See: Nero and Majin), it takes a lot of work and effort from both parties. Disco and Faker saw the world extremely differently, and that's where the conflict herein lies.
And its that unique fundamental with Majin that makes its interactions with Tyler so much different than the other entities and human interactions in future tracks. Majin wants to be Tyler's friend, not his foe or his enemy. Tyler doesn't realize that desire of Majin's is genuine as opposed to manufactured, and that's what results in Tyler's downfall.
For this track, I wanted to test the concept of incorporating more colors into my designs as opposed to the colder and more calculated colors of the following entities. Darker greys, crimson reds and white, with their grey eyes and blue hair, they're all pretty monochromatic across the table when it comes to their schemes. I wanted to experiment with the colors, so I used Majin as my experiment... so it got to have more unique colors in it. I also wanted Majin to represent something fun, so I gave it racecar rights.
Enough about Majin, though... Boundary is also pretty interesting design-wise. For me, Boundary has this like... marionette vibe going on where it is puppetted by its own clothes, its not wearing its clothes but rather its clothes are wearing it. It's been restrained like an animal, and now it behaves rashly so it can survive. Bit ominous. I like it. Boundary doesn't capture Tyler because it wants to, it captures Tyler because it has to. Boundary doesn't enjoy being the Ranger, it doesn't enjoy relying on the mercy of the other entities, it doesn't enjoy being a hunted hunter, but it has to be in order to survive. And in the end, the deal Boundary got from Solace is much, much more valuable to Boundary than whatever Majin would have been to give to it.
In the end, Tyler was nothing more than a trading chip. Both in his own industry and in the Round-A-Bout Racetrack. Similar to Robin, it's his own fears actualized. For him, that inability to escape from something bigger and more powerful than him is what scares him the most. Losing his girlfriend to the mass of fans he has and losing himself to the deals worth more than his life, those are the same thing for Tyler. Its something he can't come back from, something he can't get back, something he can't recover from. Tyler is stuck in the middle, and there's no way out. Boundary is like Tyler, being stuck in the middle, and that is what terrifies Tyler the most about Boundary. He sees himself and his life in Boundary and its life, and that's what scares him.
Tyler always idolized the stars because they were free with no strings attached. To Tyler, although this revelation only comes afterwards, Majin was like those stars he so heavily idolized. Free and without chains. Majin is what Tyler always wanted to be, while Boundary is what Tyler was, and now... Tyler is nothing at all.
As for Phineas, Laurence, and Avery, I chose them for certain reasons. I chose Phineas for Majin due to Phineas' fun-loving personality and generally adaptable wardrobe! Phineas generally lends himself to Majin's character really well... and I think that, if the real Majin met Phineas, they would be the best of friends! They both have a really sweet and intoxicating personality that makes them really fun to be around. I don't think Majin would understand the concept of being a "showman" though... it doesn't understand things like "jobs" or "titles", but Phineas sounds like fun, which is what Majin mainly cares about.
For Tyler and Laurence, it was mainly the fact that they're both men in news/announcement-related fields. Despite that, Tyler and Laurence share a lot in common, like their relationship with the women closest to them, their love for their job, and their tendencies to keep notes on current events and whatnot. Tyler and Laurence are very similar in that way, but I also think of Laurence in the same way Tyler thinks of Majin. Laurence has something that Tyler wants, mainly the freedom to be himself. Tyler envies Laurence's ability to be himself no matter what happens. Tyler is- in my mind, anyway- a less fortunate version of Laurence. Tyler and Laurence walk on the same paths in a lot of ways, but Tyler's path was cut pretty short. I imagine that, if Tyler got the chance to, he'd end up like Laurence, someone free and beloved, unshackled by personal tragedy. But that path Tyler had was cut short. and there's no fixing it, unfortunately.
As for Avery and Boundary... Shamia gets too much shit from me (/j) Originally, I was gonna go with Shamia as Boundary, but I remembered Avery and decided I wanted to give her a little more love <3 Sorry Shamia, mmmmmaybe next time haha (/j) I don't know all too much about the current Avery, but I remember the old Avery, and how she was a fallen angel prior to the possible(?) rework, which matches up with/works in tandem with Boundary and its story. Boundary and old Avery were both people who had fallen from grace and were punished by something beyond their own power and twisted into something unrecognizable. Power and the imbalance of those who hold it are a large part of Boundary's character, and it was a pretty significant part of Avery's old story too.
TRACK THREE - RUNAWAY
Track Three is the RUNAWAY track... which is my favorite one, lorewise I think? This one also had some of the most one-for-one match-ups muse-wise, like so on point it kind of hurts. Like... I don't know if you guys think roles are made for the muse or what, but its usually a coincidence when muse and role match up. Speaking of muses and roles, our skins for Track Three are Hannah C. ( Played Tatya Baudelair, The Go-Go Dancer ) and Solace ( Played by Asmodeus, the Heir of Despair! If anyone is curious, this is Taegan's OC! )
This track is a little unique in the sense that it does a couple of things for the story and the stories set in the METHOD TRACK universe. The main thing, and the most important thing, is the idea of entity created entities. Solace is the most unique entity next to RED (introduced in Track Five), in that it doesn't originate from one of the four Legacy entities, but rather it was an entity created entity. Solace was not born like other entities, but rather made by another entity instead. Solace is unnatural as an entity in every sense of the meaning because it was never supposed to exist; it was never supposed to be made. There is no root behind its existence... which is exactly the story about how I came to Solace to begin with. Solace should not exist and that's the entire reason for its' existence. There isn't a fear or a driving force behind Solace's existence like there is for the Windwalker or Boundary; Solace exists because of Remnant. Remnant has a fear or a terror tied to its existence, deception and temptation, but Solace doesn't. Solace is someone who should not exist. It's just... kind of wrong, in a way?
As for Hannah, her story is a little tragic... Hannah is a recovering alcoholic whose boyfriend pretty much spiraled her out of sobriety. Hannah's unique as a protagonist, as the entity that preys on her isn't tied to her or her fears. Hannah is just an unfortunate victim of an unfortunate circumstance, at the end of the day. Hannah isn't scared of Solace, and Solace doesn't scare her in the same way Wren scares Robin or Boundary scares Tyler. The thing that scares Hannah the most, although only for the briefest moment before total darkness takes over, is how easily Solace gets people like her to turn on her. How effortlessly it gets former humans to turn on Hannah, and how eventually it will get Hannah to turn on someone like her in the future, and how that cycle will continue on for the rest of eternity. Solace doesn't scare Hannah; it's what it's capable of doing that scares her. The entity doesn't represent the fear; the entity is the fear.
In a way, although it wasn't entirely intentional, Track One and Two set up a critical rule about the entities, and Track Three just completely turns that rule onto its head, maybe even breaks it completely.
As for roles, the matchup was kind of foul to be honest... Hannah got Tatya as her matchup due to both being recovering alcoholics and having this entire theme of being..... more than their body and more than just the sum of their parts. They're unflattering to some, but they're loud and proud, they live their lives on their own terms without a damn to give for those who will never get to know them. They have rough pasts, but given a chance, they'll outgrow it and evolve into something a younger them would have never imagined. Hannah, like Tyler, was cut short on that path, but through Tatya (and Laurence), may they get the chance to finish walking that path, even if it only ends up being an illusion after all.
As for Asmodeus and Solace, their matchup hinges on the fact that they shouldn't exist. Asmodeus is the continued existence of someone who should have died a long time ago, someone who had no future but persisted through their fate and ultimately came on top of it. Solace is similar, but in an opposing way. Solace shouldn't exist in the same way Asmodeus shouldn't exist, but rather Solace is the past looking back on itself. Solace has no past, no future, and it shouldn't exist in the present. Yet, it persists despite that fact. They should not exist in the forms they do, yet they defy all odds by being here today. Their existence is proof that the world can be defied, it's kind of poetic. Even when all logic and sense break down, they will always remain, everlasting.
TRACK FOUR - Saint of a Martyr
Track Four is the Saint of a Martyr Track! This is actually... the first track I started with, funnily enough. I went all kinds of out of order drawing these tracks (Four, Three, Two, One, Five, Six, Zero, ????), but Track Four was the first track I designed! Can you tell? I hope not, I want everything to look like its okay,,,,,,,,,
For this track, I decided to cast the OCs of Al and Fifi. For this track, I wanted someone old and someone new... I wanted someone classic and a fresh face for my essences. I settled on Liam Hubert for my "old" OC, due to a lot of factors... I feel like, out of everyone, Liam's grown up with me the most. He's not in every essence I've ever done, and at some point, I mentally excluded him so I could give love to Fifi's other OCs, but Liam has started in a majority of my Lunar Ridge projects, especially the original essence that I'm indirectly celebrating! He wasn't the only one to make a re-appearance, since I also got Beth and Amy, but to me, Liam was... the best choice. He grew with me, and I'm really thankful to have him and Fifi at my side at each creative turn. As for Sally... Al's one of my more recent friends? I mean, not super recent, but I don't make friends all that easily, to be honest... I'm extremely shy and extremely quiet. Al is super cool, I love their vibes and their OCs, they're soooooo creative. I chose Sally for the same reason I chose Liam... the idea of growth and evolution. Even though Sally didn't grow with me, I feel like she'd be someone who would appreciate the journey I went through to get to this point? Sally and Liam lend themselves to my journey as a designer, and I couldn't think of any OC or any mun who deserves the roles of Rosemary and Nero more than Al and Fifi.
As for inspiration, Nero was based on the concept of angel numbers. It's not the first time I've explored characters representing/represented by an angel number, but there are a few things behind it. Track Four is, well, the fourth track in the series. Nero is the fourth entity. The Martyrs' Church is the fourth location. The number four appears a lot... and that's because the angel number Nero was based on is the angel number 444. You guys probably don't know it off the top of your head, so let me save you the Google search. 444 is an angel number that represents protection, encouragement, and a reminder of being on the right path in a lot of interpretations. In which, that's the core of what Nero represents. Nero breaks the mold; he breaks the theme of danger, he is something frankly divine in nature. Nero is, in the depths of his heart, someone who chose to protect people rather than harm them. Everything about Nero centers on that concept. As well as being a church official, I wanted Nero to be someone professional and presentable, but still be represented by the ugly and twisted parts of it. Nero is not a perfect protecter and I wanted that to be represented in his clothes too.
Rosemary is similar... she's also centered on the angel number 444, but instead of representing the concept in her story and character, Rosemary is the one who's seeing the number. She's the one being protected, being encouraged, being on the right path. There is a change she's helping to make, even if it's small and hard to see. Rosemary isn't perfect, but she is amazing as she is. I wanted her to represent the sanctioned in a way... she's pretty much dressed and styled like someone holy and righteous. I like Rosemary's design a lot, its simple, but I feel like she's extremely pretty... and really effective as what she represents.
Rosemary's story surrounds the entities of the Martyrs' Church a lot more than it does Nero... but it's kind of heavy. Nero represents the angel she fears is judging her, watching her every move, deciding what she is and isn't worthy of. Nero is her judge, her jury, and she fears he will also be her executioner. Her kindness and faith, while it comes from a place of genuine love, also come from a place of genuine fear. Rosemary and Nero... they're also really important to me because they represent religion to me as a whole, as someone who grew up in a secondary household who weaponized angels as both a blessing and a fear tactic. Nero is the double-edged sword that angels are portrayed as, something you can't control, something you don't even know for certain is there, something that is different for everyone else. Nero is... for a lack of a better word, Nero is my own angel, in both its beauty and its terror. And, Rosemary is a representation of a me that no one really knows. The more Rosemary helps, the more she earns, not just from Nero but from herself, deep down in her own heart. Love comes from everywhere, after all.
Similar to Track Three, Track Four SoaM also breaks the rules previously introduced. Nero breaks the rule of daybreak, where he totally eclipses the "sun" that causes daybreak. Nero prevents the day from breaking; he takes the matter of "freedom" into his own, which ties a lot into the concept of being an angel. He's not, but he represents one in his own way. He either forces you to do good or to cease existing altogether. You can't outwait him, you can't outlast him, the only way out is through him, and he makes sure you know that.
TRACK FIVE - MEATSHOW
Track Five is a silly track! It started off as a bit of a joke track, if I'm being honest? For context, I started concepting the METHOD TRACKS back in late March, early April time... It's been 3 or 4 total months of work on this project. Track Five was a joke track originally... a track I created to play around with. It was never... supposed to exist? It was actually one of Tae's friends that caused the MEATSHOW track to exist as it is now... I became friends with them by total accident, actually. Apparently, Tae talks about me so much that people I don't know... know ME/are aware of my existence. It's kind of cute in a way? I said hi to them all once; it was cute. The rest was history. But this track exists because of that one friend of Tae. It was my idea of a fun surprise! I do think that it ended up being my favorite track design-wise... and lore-wise, its pretty high up there, actually. It was my first time working with said friend's OC, so I kept it pretty tame? I didn't change much, used the base colors, and kept it really simple. I like Alex a lot, they're a cutie!
RED is... hard to explain. RED, similar to Majin, brought something new to the table, except RED brought the idea of The Mourning Actor to the table! RED is a specific, special kind of entity that has the natural ability to turn other people, specifically humans, into an entity just like itself. RED is actually the original Mourning Actor, not someone who was turned into one and continued the chain. RED is up there with entities like Kikumune and Faker as being the first type of their kind, but RED doesn't make a big deal out of it. To RED, it's the act, the performance that matters. Alex is their newest improv performer, and RED is judging them on each and every aspect of their "performance". RED's existence is all a performance, and that makes them super unique. It's not a fear like Windwalker, it's not a fantasy like Majin, it's a dream, a desire. RED doesn't exist to fear and to intimidate; it exists as a deep-seated and rooted desire to dream and pretend. It bemoans the death of the performance and the dreams of the world. RED is the actor who mourns the death of itself. Dreams. Desire.
Track Five, Meatshow, went from being a joke track to a track about the death of dreams and the burden of reality. RED punishes you for trying to bring reality into its dream. It kills you for disrespecting its very existence, and that's the hard reality that kills dreams like it. It's...... a little dramatic of a shift, but it's really in character, oddly enough.
I chose Kazuko... or, rather, Tae chose Kazuko for me. That's kind of all there is behind it. I gave Tae a task, and Tae completed that task, and now I can add Alex onto my shelf of silly little goobers.
As for RED and Dearil... it was a joke track originally. Kazuko and Dearil were joke picks. In the end, the joke picks became solid, and then, like RED, I made them real. But, if I had to say something for a moment... Dearil lended themself to a character as unserious as RED perfectly. Dearil's mannerisms, way of speaking, and overall personality blended with my vision for RED so well that, in the end, I had to keep the role. I know Four has IDV OCs, I know Four has a lot of them, but Dearil was so perfect as RED, as well as an OC of theirs that I hold so deeply in my heart. In a way, RED is a love letter to Dearil and what they meant to me as well.
Oh... I should actually get into RED a little more, since I wanted to talk about how canonically, RED is the one who brought the likenesses of the humans and the entities to the manor. RED is the one who chose the "actors" to play everyone, with the exception of Kikumune. RED chose its actors, and now everyone gets to play their part in bringing to life a story no one else may ever get to know. Even Dearil, who plays RED, was chosen by RED and indirectly gets the ultimate reward a mourning actor can give.
Turning you into a mourning actor yourself, so you too can spread dreams to a world that's forgetten how to.
Seemed like the perfect role I could give Four.
TRACK SIX - Chorus of an Audience/Chorus of Applause
Track Six... the final of my main tracks in the METHOD TRACKS. This one connects all the way back to the beginning, and honestly, she's pretty lore-heavy! Allow me to quickly introduce our duo, Cassidy Fitzgerald ( Played by Emma Woods, the Gardener ) and "Chorus" ( Played by Richard Sterling, the Knight )
Of all the entities, Chorus looks the most "human", and that's on purpose. Chorus is a pretender, a fake, make-believe; it's false in every sense of the word. It is not who it wants you to think it is. And that's the ploy. Canonically, it's using the likeness of Robin's missing brother, Andie A. That's right, Robin A. from Track One! It all comes full circle, baby. I don't think I have to explain why I chose Richard for this role? I'd be mad at myself if I didn't.
Cassidy... she's many things. She's the first victim. She's the only victim with a canonical last name. She's the cause, the catalyst. She's the love, the light, the force that drove Robin forward through her pain, and even from her grave, Cassidy continues to move the METHOD TRACKS forward. Cassidy is what allows the story of the METHOD TRACKS to occur.
And as Cassidy was the first human, Chorus was the first entity in its own special way. Chorus also does a lot of firsts. It's the first to use likenesses against people. It's the first to delay daybreak. It's the effect, the catalyst, its the consequence. It's the hatred, the darkness, the force that will halt Robin in her tracks, and even beyond the fog, Chorus moves the METHOD TRACKS forward. Chorus is what gives the METHOD TRACKS its conflict and its pain.
Chorus is going to haunt the narrative until it dies, and it'll even persist beyond the narrative's demise. Cassidy is the one person that Chorus never should have killed, because now, they've set something in motion that's far... far beyond anything either of them would have ever imagined.
They haunt the story long beyond the end of their own, and their track sets into motion what I can only describe as Round Two.
TRACK ???? - AND THIS IS WHY THIS IS ROUND TWO !
And... my final track. I nicknamed it Round Two. No one besides me has a character that belongs to Round Two as a track, so I'm not going to focus much on its story. This post is already kind of long as it is, and their character cards say a lot about them as it is. So, yeah, I'm gonna brush past them unless you guys really want to hear their roles.
...
That's kind of it for the reveal ♪ I just wanted to end it off with... a bit of a thank you note, if you even read this far. 4 years ago, I never would have imagined getting the chance to truly design for people I admired and looked up, let alone do it multiple times for multiple years.
I'll never be able to thank you guys enough, honestly. These words, these skins, they'll never be enough to truly express my love and gratitude for everyone, those old and new. Those who watched me as I grew and expanded, and those who only recently got to see me flourish.
To be trusted with something so deeply personal to you all is beyond an honor, and I strive to serve your fantasies once more ♪ Thank you all for being a part of my journey once again.
actually quick correction on my tags radfems DO know what body autonomy is (vaguely) but they will do everything they can to find a way to not include it as a pillar of feminism because they know it would have to include other people besides cis women and they don’t want to stop their ultimate goal of restricting trans and intersex rights, even at the expense of women’s liberation. they will perpetuate their own oppression and uphold the patriarchy as long as it means some trans kid in england can’t access gender affirming care or some little girl in arkansas isn’t allowed to play on a hockey team with her friends. never let them forget how fucking embarassing that is.
when second wave feminists brought the widespread nature of incest and child sex abuse to the light, they located its causes very accurately in the patriarchal family, the social and economic domination of men over women, the dependence and thus vulnerability of children. these critiques which threaten the very foundations of the patriarchal order were quickly swept under the figure of “the pedophile.” it was no longer a deep-seated structural issue inevitable in a society ordered in specific oppressive ways, but a matter of individual pathology. the child molester isn’t your dad or your nice neighbor or your priest or your little league coach, it’s a pedophile: some barely human monster. and if the child molester is your dad, or your nice neighbor, or your priest, or your little league coach, and they can be recognized as such, well, they are transformed as if by magic from those integral parts of the human community into the pedophile as demonic outcast. the feminist systematic critique is neutralized. this is why i hate to see pedophile used to refer to almost anything but someone’s self-expressed sexual fixation on prepubescent children. it is not semantic quibbling or minimizing abuse, but that i think the use of the term pedophile as the ubiquitous framework for understanding csa is the minimization of the depth of the problem.
Despite the situation I still believe we can influence something: Netease are already preparing a response, and they have previously been forced to abandon the use of ai in one of their projects. The worst thing you can do is wave your hand and say, "nah, these big corporations will continue to participate in a race, AI won't go anywhere." If you agree with me and you have the strength and desire, write them by email. Human artists are the only artists, AI ISN'T ART.
