My mom has extensive knowledge of the bionicle lore. It's because my brother was into them when he was like 7 but it's been 25 years since then and he for sure doesn't remember as much as my mom does. The knowledge will surface randomly, like when we were watching the 2nd Moana together and familiar names kept popping up, and the way she recounts the things she knows has kind of the distant yet urgent vibe, sorta traumatized soldier adjacent. Part of the family lore is that when bionicles were expensive due to being a foreign new popular thing, and my folks were young and broke when they had my brother, she won 2 toa for my brother by acing a mall trivia contest, taking it completely seriously why the other parents were just kinda "ahaha such silly names... was is boroccos?". My mom was 5 hour lore explained youtube video kind of serious
Funniest part is that it's not even the only intricate knowledge she has against her will. My whole childhood I thought she loved French because whenever a french word would pop up she translated it with urgency, and only a few years ago did I hear her go "oh no I hate French, but what can I do if I had to learn it in school and it hasn't been actually useful to me once?"
Pathetic little fool. Is THAT all you aspire to become? You would be content with the most meager alterations to your weak corporeal flesh?
Your idea of commanding the respect of others is... for them to use your name? and pronouns? And be treated as...
..an Equal?
Not to strike terror and anguish into the hearts of your enemies? Not to subjugate the weak? Not to bring empires to their knees? Not to inflict untold pain and suffering across the cosmos?
You sicken me. As always, you lesser beings lack vision. You require only a small, insipid body for a small and insipid mind.
Of course your kind could never conceive of being anything more than what you are, that you would transition that miserable, shambling sack of organic material you call a body into something equally dull and unimaginative. You transition, but you never transcend.
Now, were you to comprehend the scope and machinations of my, as you would call it, "transition goals," your feeble mind would surely-
Lil funfact for the tlt fandom from a greek speaker. Alectopause is a word
You may know that 'Alecto' (Αληκτώ) as a name translates to Ceasless, as in 'merciless' or 'implacatable', etc etc. Coming from the mythological Fury. A-lecto. Un-ending.
And 'pause' (παύση) is a word. A greek word in origin.
Therefore, Αληκτόπαυση (Alectopause) is a perfectly understandable to any fluent speaker word, that means "Unending-Pause". Have a fun one with it
((I am genuinely enjoying the Pause, I would never rush the Pause, I have no issue waiting any amount of time ranging from years to forever and frankly believe Tamsyn should have More™ Pause, I just think y'all would enjoy this))
I can't believe it took me this long to post these I finished this like nine months ago
An idea I had for Blood of Eden propaganda/recruitment posters featuring some of our favorite guys - combo of digital-print cyberpunk graphic design style with oldschool Saturday Morning Post covers like you'd see Leyendecker paintings on
I was gonna post these ahead of tabling at a small con and selling prints of them but ended up not tabling because turns out grad school is hard
maybe next year... figured tumblr would like though
thinking about how rough the first however-many years must have been for pearl and cleo together in that castle.
pearl hiding herself away, even barring herself into certain areas, out of fear of potential aggression or harm to cleo. there is no such thing as a safe werewolf, that is what she has been taught all her life, that applies to her too now. it's hard to reconcile this and the fact that cleo is not scared of her transformation.
cleo panicking, and instinctively lashing out when pearl comes to help, saying whatever will hurt enough to make her turn away. anything to not be seen, vulnerable.
pearl struggling with drinking blood, with the memory of when it tasted so much worse but this is what her family said she had to do.
cleo shying away from every candle pearl lights and places around the castle, wary of what one movement the wrong way could start.
pearl really, truly, wishing she was still human, some days. hating that selfish part of her, and shutting it away tightly where cleo can never hear it.
cleo's rules inevitably failing to be the best solution to something, and how they deal with realizing that.
an artful, organized dance around chores cleo cannot bring themself to do, smells and sounds that are too much for pearl. whoever can manage it best handles it.
they have no good understanding of mental health to work with. they don't know what terrible feelings they hate are normal to go through. they don't know in what ways they could feel better, could live together better, with a little work. they just have to figure it out as they go.
It's part of a package called the KIDS Act, filled with digital ID and age verification and censorship!
MAKE THOSE PHONES RING!! CALL YOUR HOUSE REPRESENTATIVES ALL WEEK
202-224-3121
i HIGHLY encourage everyone to read the bills in the KIDS Act, because you will be doing more than 95% of people who read and introduce these bills
Shelby Is Not Naive, Or: Everyone Cares Too Much About Scott Goldsmith
Shelby fully expects the people of Oakhurst to kill her at the first opportunity. Shelby is so invested in the coven and so willing to excuse the flaws of other vampires because she has bought into the idea that the humans can and will hurt her at the first opportunity. There are many reasons for this, but Scott Goldsmith is not one of them.
Scott is her bestie because he stands still and says nice things while everyone else is running around introducing her to new and exciting forms of torment nexus. It is a “luigi wins by doing nothing” ass situation.
Once Shelby is turned, it becomes nearly impossible for her to talk to a human without being threatened. Many social interactions from the very instant she walks back into town after the fishing trip are shadowed by someone openly planning to hurt or kill vampires.
Avid tries to test if she’s repelled by silver and then starts building a jail cell in front of her. Apo isn’t directly threatening, but basically comes to Shelby with the hypothetical “what if there was an evil vampire”. And then they emphasize the importance of keeping a stake at hand.
Shelby asks Ren if they’ll really have to fight each other, and Ren says that it’s just the way of the world. Sausage emphasizes the point by yelling “stab them all until they’re dead!”, which isn’t really a great thing to hear when you are one of the “them” in question.
Eventually, Apo gets turned, and most of the vampires convene at the beacon, where Martyn burns her alive.
Let me repeat that: she burns alive.
The video editing emphasizes this as a big deal. Shelby’s narration in the aftermath concludes that “if i asked for a chance to talk, they would have just killed me without a second thought.” From Shelby’s perspective, they did just kill her without a second thought. It is the climax of their episode 3, and one of the first things Shelby mentions in episode 4. It is a major turning point for the character, with good reason.
As far as Shelby is concerned, the vampire vs human conflict began with her experiencing a horrific death for the grand crime of crouching next to a beacon.
From this point forward, non threatening interactions with humans vanish almost entirely.
The only conversation Shelby has with a human is episode 4 is her face to face with Avid, which has high points and low points. The low points include Avid telling her about staking his partner because she attacked him.
Shelby, does, however, visit the town later, where she finds Avid burning her house down.
And then Legundo reads the cure book in front of the house’s ashes.
Legundo also scolds Avid for burning down the house, but Shelby misses that part. In fact, Shelby missed all of the pro Shelby comments made in the town around that time.
According to the post series creator’s commentary, (which i can’t link because twitch deletes old vods so it probably no longer exists aajfas;llllldg) this isn’t even a matter of clever editing- Shubble was legitimately out of range for all of the parts of the story where people agreed that they wanted to help Shelby.
In episode 5, she is approached by a group of Drift, Cleo, and Pearl. Shelby is surrounded, and asks them to put their swords away. Pearl takes a minute to do so, and when she does she switches to a bottle of holy water. Shelby backs away and Pearl moves forward.
The start of this conversation very much has shades of an interrogation: “why do you look so different? Did you eat truffle?”
Shelby tells them about being burnt alive, and the response she gets from Cleo is “but you got better”. Which sucks, and serves as an ironic mirror for the way that Scott and Owen are dismissive about the trauma involved with turning people. Both factions are expecting Shelby to just walk off the wrongs done to them, but the Oakhurst faction is openly threatening future harm to Shelby.
Of the three of them, Drift is the most supportive. The conversation improves from there, and some nice things are said, but Shelby was still threatened. It was still the preamble to the nice and productive part of the talks.
Then she has the meeting with Avid where he asks to be turned, which goes fairly well but ends with Avid being decidedly non human. Also Owen replaced one of Avid’s messages to Shelby with a death threat, so Shelby was still threatened over it.
Episode 6 has the Oakhurst invasion where all of the vampires visit Oakhurst and Pearl gets chased around. Shelby doesn’t really talk to anyone here, but she sure does get to hear Pearl make a generalized threat. Because Shelby can never catch a break.
We also see another instance of Shelby assuming that the townies are after her: her narration says “i thought Pearl was chasing me”
Then there’s a conversation with Sausage. Sausage pulls out a stake because of course he does.
Then Drift pulls Shelby aside, and they have a lovely chat where there are no threats of bodily harm. However, Drift is a vampire, so it doesn’t count. Rip.
When Avid starts talking about the cure, Shelby’s immediate assumption is that if Avid asks to be cured, the humans will stake her without a second thought. She also is the one to suggest sabotaging the cure for the sake of protecting herself and the other vampires.
Episode 7 sees Shelby dealing with humans twice, and both of them are decidedly hostile interactions
The first bit of human contact comes when the vampires burn down the walls of Oakhurst. This is, naturally, open combat. Shelby makes a point of targeting Martyn.
Her second human interaction in episode 7 is running into Abolish, who promptly introduces her to the Veylocke murder box. In other words, Shelby is stunned, rendered immobile and helpless, and executed in cold blood. It is not an easy death.
Abolish even acknowledges that she didn’t do anything, and then kills her anyway.
episode 8 is the finale, where she fights some humans, hides from humans, eventually has a truce with humans for the first time ever, and then wanders off into the sunset with Drift and Scott.
That’s basically all of Shelby’s major human interactions post episode 3. There is never an instance where speaking to a human is not linked with being threatened by a human after that point.
For the most part, this is entirely the result of the people of Oakhurst’s own priorities and character choices, but there is one vampire that tries to make sure that Shelby can’t talk to the humans. Someone that tries to isolate her, someone that uses threats, someone that is willing to lie to keep Shelby in the castle and away from town.
That person is Owen.
Owen interferes with Shelby speaking to townsfolk three times, to mixed results: he joins the conversation with Apo and successfully diverts them from trying to convince Shelby she’s wanted in town; he replaces Avid’s letter with a threatening message, but Avid manages to set up a meeting with Shelby and clear the air with her anyway; and he appears in the Pearl-Drift-Cleo meeting with Shelby in episode 5, which arguably improves the situation because he took the conversation in a useful direction and Shelby had already felt threatened anyway.
…actually, all three of these things happen in episode 5. Owen has a very brief window of being invested in the coven in this particular way. He does some pretty nasty lying in that window, though.
While this could be an interesting plot thread, Owen’s contributions are something of a cigarette in a burning warehouse. Shelby got killed twice as collateral damage, and both deaths were exceptionally traumatic. No amount of intercession on Owen’s part is going to speak louder than the wrongs done to Shelby by the humans themselves. No amount of lying on Oakhurst’s behalf is more damning then Oakhurst’s own failure to address the damage they’ve done in any way. He’s burying a relationship so far underground it is already in hell.
Even seemingly minor things like Pearl’s tendency to casually arm herself do more to damage Oakhurst’s reputation then Owen is really capable of- there is a direct line of cause and effect between Pearl saying she has a stake and Shelby assuming that Pearl is chasing her down. Shelby is rightfully skeptical of the claims Owen makes about other people, but when someone else is making those kinds of statements, she tends to believe them.
And then there’s Shelby’s backstory.
Shelby’s backstory, where she is isolated from her entire community growing up. Where people she considered friends and neighbors didn’t care about her in turn. Where nobody had even done something as basic as telling her that she’s fun to be around.
Of course Shelby thinks that Oakhurst is willing to write her off at the drop of a hat. That’s what her hometown did.
In conclusion
1: the town is not blameless in the Oakhurst vs Castle conflict. They have done real harm to the Coven, and most of it has fallen on their friendliest and least aggressive member.
2: Shelby is indeed afraid and isolated, but the bulk of that fear and isolation is generated and maintained by the people of Oakhurst themselves. The one time Scott had an opportunity to sabotage one of Shelby’s outside relationships, he chooses not to.
3: Scott is Shelby’s first friend, ever, and the feeling is mutual. This is a key component of why Shelby is Like That.
4: The answer to most gripes regarding vsmp’s story arc and ending is Shelby. Why did Scott live and Pyro die? Shelby. Why did Scott suddenly pivot to pacifism? Shelby. Why can’t the humans just wipe out the coven and call it a day? Shelby. Why was the coven a legitimate social structure in the first place? That’s also Shelby. It’s Shelby all the way down.
In Shelby’s story, Scott is the prize she wins for her kindness and Pyro becomes the avatar of all of the senseless violence she has suffered.
Shelby’s character arc is one of being the collateral damage of other people’s agendas so frequently that she becomes convinced that she must use violence herself. This culminates in her killing the most direct and personal threat to her physical safety, which is Pyro. Shelby’s other character arc is about seeking peace and companionship despite the bloodshed around her. This culminates in her turning her closest companion from the path of violence, and that companion happens to be Scott. Scott and Pyro’s conclusions are mirrored halves of Shelby’s finale, and reflect Shelby’s greatest triumph and lowest low.
The outcomes they get make sense if you position Shelby as the central character, and her choices were the ones that decided their fates.
Mutuals who I have hardly spoken with but we instead communicate through silently liking and reblogging each other's posts... I hope you're all having a lovely day ✨
Okay, I have to talk about something that’s been bugging me.
So in all of Cleo’s Vampires videos, she is always looking down at the ground. She almost never looks at anybody’s face.
It was honestly one of the first details I noticed about Cleo’s POV in ep1 when she acknowledged the town in her vision but never looked up at it, they just kept looking at the ground. I don’t remember a time in the canon footage where they actually looked someone in the face, which was very noticeable to me since all the other MCYTers I watch tend to look others’ in their face when they are speaking in minecraft like you would irl.
It might be a nod to C!Cleo’s guilt or shame, or possibly isolation from others by never looking anybody in the eye and so she could never truly connect to others and nobody could truly connect to her?
I haven’t seen the CC explain this, I even watched the lore VOD they made and this question was never answered. I haven’t heard anybody else mention it either.
I imagine the vampires in their coven didn't take very kindly to a lowly human making eye contact. And I when you have to eventually kill every other human you meet, you probably don't want to meet their eyes while you do it.
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