Oh dear, you've found the secret slime cave lair of Enforcer @ Draggian Universe where they put their awful little thoughts. Get out while you can. Established June 2024 as somewhere to put my angsty thoughts about how Falling In Reverse sucks other than the void and annoying my friends.
Enter at your own risk; this is where I put spur of the moment random nonsense, angst, and opinions to get them out of my brain. When I say slime, I mean slime. And possibly full on possession. There will be no content warnings.
The 50 most recent thoughts are being shown. A curated selection of old thoughts I thought were useful, funny, and/or interesting can be found here.
friendly reminder that no one who supports "generative" "AI" has anything worthwhile to say, or deserves rights for work that isn't theirs
anyway, was literally actively in the process of getting good girls bad guys HTML-ified (you'll love it it's got rude words and iframes) when neocities went down. ugh
also note to self to only run photoshop when i'm not connected to the internet because it's being a little bitch about how i pirated it
Well, at least spending Animal Behavior sessions talking to myself (I have four students this year, but 3 are asynchronous and not attending live webinars and the fourth has connection issues) means that I can workshop what to say and add in more examples and details without external stimuli -- tied in some education stuff today with operant conditioning, and how reinforcement is generally more effective than punishment. Stimuli and responses don't get associated purely 1 to 1, so if punishment isn't immediate, relevant to the discouraged behavior, and balanced out by reinforcement, you might not (just) be teaching "don't do that" as opposed to "this person will hurt you" or socially, "it's okay to hit people to get them to do what you want".
I'd been aware of that principle for both humans and animals for a while, but hadn't put it together like that before -- you're not just conditioning behavior; since critters have cognition, you're also teaching them what to think of you and how to behave around others if they're immature and/or of your own species.
setting mobile browser at least to block all neocities sites but my own and other such exceptions for folks I like. seeing as I just sent myself spiraling via an education essay linked from a neocities site linked from someone's chicken smoothie profile. my curiosity about what random NPCs I see on pet games have to say is topologically similar to doomscrolling in that I will go until I encounter something that makes me feel bad then start feeling bad. perhaps I will set a time limit on desktop so I can explore a bit but it'll cut me off when I have had enough. I don't want to do whitelist mode blocking since I do want to have the capacity to find new websites if useful. I just don't want to get stuck going between the same 5 places or refreshing forums I don't actually care about. However, nothing good comes of neocities browsing on my phone. On said phone, trying out a time limit for fr forums / webcomics I have already read / tvtropes and explainxkcd so I don't get stuck in loops but can still check when comics update and use tvtropes to find new things to read. If I'm gonna use this thing, it will be for games, actual communication, drawing / writing, or reading something that I don't have basically memorized.
gender: divided
more like gender: divisive because I'm so godda--IS PULLED OFF STAGE BY VAUDEVILLE HOOK
The Obligatory Singular Falling In Reverse Shirt With Clipart That Has Nothing To Do With Any Of Their Output is present, but at Spencer's, along with Slaughter to Prevail x2. Subject Debate is actually pretty substantially lacking in modern scenemo adjacent canon -- they have the big names (MCR, Pierce the Veil, Sleep Token, etc.) but for the most part, their band shirt lineup is the more classic 80s / 90s bands that most patrons of the store probably haven't listened to. In general, the concentration of band merch at SD is much lower than I expect, despite its having a much larger storefront than the ones I've been in. (Probably because there are I think a maximum of 3 in the province -- Moncton, Fredricton, and MAYBE St. John but idk if St. John has a mall). The gap is filled by more non-specific paraphernalia. If I had to guess, it's probably because no modern bands do concerts in this area, so knowledge is likely lower outside of huge names / the brand may not deem it worth licensing. Spencer's seems more concerned with iconography than relevance of bands, even though FIR has neither.
There is a Spirit Halloween, which I am not used to seeing inside malls, so an acceptable pumpkin carving kit can be acquired. I am unsure, however, if the awl provided would work on fabric, so will not be buying an awl / pumpkin carving kit / can opener yet until I have seen what other options exist this week.
I don't really want anything at SD / Spencer's at the moment since I am stocked on both clothing and paraphernalia and my skeleton gloves haven't disintegrated yet, but they are of anthropological interest.
Tay and Krystal's closest extant archetype is disgruntled DIYLF / TDIMIY fans who stick with FIR out of nostalgia but don't know why. And Tay, at least, basically got chased out of the FIR fan community / left in disgust due to being a woman with opinions and reading comprehension. (And also growing up, getting a real job, and having better things to worry about than scene drama. Krystal is supposed to be more active in The Scene [TM] as described.)
I tried not to make her a self-insert, hence why she decidedly isn't a closeted trans man (or at least isn't supposed to be), but I just can't and don't want to comprehend how you could actually noncritically like Ronnie to the point of attacking his victims, especially as a queer person and/or woman.
I legitimately really like Tay as an OC, but I don't think we have any reason to see her again because she's a normal human with a pretty much normal career. The transformation itself is the most interesting part of her story, but after that, she's got a day job and maybe does some gigs on the side. There are stock plots for both gender bender stories and the Hannah Montana-alike secret life plot, but those are blown apart by design by Tay's / GGBG's whole concept, namely that people act like rational adults and that no one actually cares if an adult has a music career on the side.
I do plan to write the epilogue where she and 06 happen to run into each other at a furry convention they got dragged to by their respective favorite people, and are very confused, though.
Realized that Tay and Krystal are probably unrealistic, because I have never encountered literally any FIR fan who is willing to consider the possibility that Sally wasn't the fucking Whore Of Babylon or something. Especially the women. However, a realistic Falling In Reverse fan, I would find near impossible to make sympathetic. And I have a unified theory now for both why I'm able to be sympathetic for Ronnie, but not the fans, and why female FIR fans are as a rule worse.
Ronnie is like that because he's been being reinforced for bad behavior for the past 25 years, is basically reenacting the worst moments in his life every time he's on stage, and also is extremely closeted, mostly RSD by volume, and has fried his frontal lobe out of functionality. Falling In Reverse fans are like that because...who knows, but Ronnie does the harm he does due to mostly environmental factors. Separated from Falling In Reverse, he would still be deeply unpleasant, but basically harmless. And, well, being an asshole because you're miserable is while not an excuse, more defensible than being an asshole because you like a mediocre band.
Being willing to disregard all available sources and disregard the humanity of other people because you like a mediocre band and can't reconcile the creator of art you like being an asshole is much more of a fundamental character flaw than Ronnie's whole thing. So, in many ways, philosophically, FIR fans are worse. Seeing as you just need to...Google Ronnie once, or listen to anything he has ever said, to draw the conclusion that he's not a nice man and basically verbally if not otherwise abuses people on a daily basis.
Without FIR, Ronnie would be mundanely unpleasant. FIR's fans would jump to attacking people because they like something else horrible. And no one who is willing to do that because they like a mediocre band can ever be a good person. That is a fundamental character flaw that goes deeper than FIR itself. If they broke up, Ronnie would be no worse than any conservative (who also all deserve to die). FIR fans would still be fundamentally evil and willing to hide behind someone more committed to being horrible than them.
Anyway, on why the women are pretty much always worse: men can brush it off as "yeah he's just joking". If you are a female Falling In Reverse fan, you are getting attacked on all sides by both Ronnie and your "community", so basically need to construct your entire worldview around how liking Ronnie is okay, actually. Hence they are more philosophically committed, ergo worse and much more hostile if they perceive you as a threat. Also, they have to be more committed because of the double standard. Men can express criticism for Ronnie. They won't be listened to, but they can. If a woman criticizes Ronnie, she's going to get called slurs and accused of being [insert derogatory term for what they perceive as feminism here] and unfuckable even by fans who would otherwise agree. And stands decent odds of being singled out by Ronnie himself.
So, yeah, all Falling In Reverse fans are terrible people, because folks who care about FIR but have functioning moral compasses and reading comprehension don't engage with the fan "community". I don't think that was the case initially, but it has been since at least 2013, since (a) that's when scene journalism had a test of their integrity...and failed, via literally only citing Ronnie and bringing up his successful music career when in regards to whether he beat his girlfriend or not it DOES NOT MATTER and amounts to advertising, and also that FIR's pure genre / scene fans pretty much left after Fashionably Late and never came back, because that's when Ronnie starts screeching about how much he hates them. So they stopped being FIR fans vs. "I like a couple of songs".
So, I'm pretty sure real people like Tay and Krystal don't exist. I have never seen any FIR fan, even Gen Z kids with pronouns in their bios, who is honestly, willing to perceive that Ronnie actually hurts people, period, but especially with Sally. No one in the Falling In Reverse community believes that happened. Even though the evidence is right fucking there, and Ronnie cheerfully admits to it.
Plus, as an artist / writer, Ronnie is awful in a compelling way. Even when he isn't sympathetic (which stops being possible after Sally), he can still be interesting. FIR fans are an awful combination of terrible and spineless, so there's no purpose in having sympathy for them or delving into their internals. They're very straightforward in that they would rather twist the knife on an abuse victim and/or entire demographics than not support a band that hasn't been any good in 6 years.
I took a tylenol and I laid in bed in the dark for an hour and yet I STILL have a headache and feel like shit?! what madness is this
Steeling my nerves to write the next, and most emotionally intense / important GGBG segment, I.e. in which we actually address TDIMIY / that version of Ronnie's attitudes about women. Not Sally, though, out of basic decency. (fans and haters alike have been using her as a footnote to talk about Ronnie, rather than as a human being in her own right, for the past 13 years, and she did not consent to being FIR lore. Also, we don't know the timeframe for either that whole mess or TDIMIY's production, so correlating Good Girls Bad Guys or Pick Up The Phone with her is a pretty morally damning conclusion I don't have enough evidence to make. Even though this is satirical and fictional, I still present myself as a relatively authoritative FIR resource so have a responsibility to be accurate unless it's clearly artistic license.) It is going to be gross and hard to write and really tapping into some intrusive thought bullshit, but it's kind of the turning point of the story and its whole moral point, where Tay realizes she doesn't want or need to be any version of Ronnie; she can embody the perhaps nonexistent fun and broadly innocent version of FIR as she perceives it. (And rip him and his misogynistic fans a new one.)
Anyway, I was thinking about all the moral philosophy that goes with this, and how it's actually really interesting from OTL's POV if this is in the same world as 06. It doesn't matter what OTL thinks in this story, but he's got a core belief that he is fundamentally evil and irredeemable. This is both out of RSD misery and so he doesn't have to feel bad. If he's inherently evil or did what he had to do, and being him / FIR is synonymous with evil, then he isn't being an asshole on purpose. It's who I am so deal with it.
06's existence fundamentally challenges that core belief in a way OTL doesn't know how to deal with. If he isn't inherently evil, then he needs to admit that he's been being an asshole on purpose, and that his misery is kind of his own fault. On some level, he's trying to reconcile this by deciding that 06 isn't really him, or isn't really him in any way that matters, and anyone in his position with FIR and such would be equally evil. So as well as being a (very stupid) way to boost his ego because he expects her to fail, he wants Tay to be a counterexample and for the corruption to work, because that puts him back into the comfortable space of "I am FIR, and nothing else. Neither of those have any further nuance. I am inherently evil, so therefore any bad things I do are unavoidable and not my fault. Anyone else who was put into my place would also be evil, so I haven't done anything wrong ever in my life."
OTL is a pure villain in this story, and is played at his absolute worst, so you aren't supposed to have any kind of sympathy for him and his internals don't matter, but it adds an interesting extra dimension in subtext with this as RRverse canon, which goes with its whole core question about if there is a difference between Ronnie and Falling In Reverse, and if the latter can be reclaimed distinct from him.
It's a philosophical dialogue disguised as crack fic, to quote how I've talked about the RRverse before. And, like, what it means to embody a concept (in an analogy for special interests) and where the lines between people and their associated concepts are is...kinda the core of my entire cosmology, so... But it is also just a fun time that fixes all the things I hate about gender bender stories. It can be both a philosophical dialogue and crack fic, and be enjoyable on either level.
(my computer mouse died after 4 years a couple of days ago, and there were no suitable options locally; the only two stores with tech items' mice were all either way too expensive or weird shapes, so i got a placeholder for 5 bucks because i need it to teach and a proper replacement is from newegg and will not arrive until at least the 22nd. the cheap shitty mouse is, well, shitty, and not ergonomic and does not have speed controls so i have been doing most computing on my touchscreen work computer save being stuck with the mouse when docked for webinars, which i just had today)
fuck I hate this cheap mouse I can't wait until the proper replacement arrives on the 22nd
i want to do some fucking html and revamp my navigation bars but I need to be docked and have my monitors for that and i can not work under these conditions
make myself write at least one good girls bad guys segment at least
someone unsubscribed from my flight rising art pinglist 👿
I'm glad they aren't actually doing Pokemon California because (a) it would suck; they haven't had a good setting since Sun and Moon and (b) I like my region and city names, so I would need to either do some really awkward explaining or give up on canonicity for the Dudesverse if they actually did the west coast.
Thus far the regions we know about are Vayera (California), Argenta (Nevada), Elenda (vaguely Mississippi River delta, only mentioned as where Jet is from), Amita (Texas), and new with the RRverse, Kascada (Pacific Northwest). Canon Orre is in a weird quantum superposition of Arizona, Mexico, and parts of California, and apparently its gentrification in XD included that it stopped being landlocked. Dudesverse Orre is landlocked, and more specifically Arizona.
https://pokemongohub.net/post/news/pokemon-wind-and-wave-allegedly-leaked-in-teraleak-2/
Also, Greece or Scandinavia would be just painful given their total lack of any historical content in the past Europe games, and their questionable application of Vikings and Romans in Galar. And Canada is...huge, so would probably end up being generically Arctic. And if they tried Scandinavia, they would need a damned good excuse for what the basically Midgard Serpent is doing in Kalos...
Of course, the only reason Vayera and Sanctum City exist is so that Niantic's self insert fic with themselves in San Francisco (including Team Go Rocket grunts in SanFran taunting them) can coexist. Ingress also has them in the Not Googleplex. (And the in-universe shady animum research agency is still Niantic, even though the game is now owned by Scopely.)
...and the goal of getting the horrible transformation story done today is not happening, because at around 4 I was stricken with an inexplicably bad headache + tiredness so had to lie down for about an hour and a half (can't really say it was a nap because I don't think I was asleep) and then got distracted whilst doing my dailies for various reasons.
I have a NeOCities-tober free space day on the 15th, so that's when I'll try finishing it before going back to the backlog with the clog released, if it doesn't get done with daily writing before then.
I think the absolute funniest, though, are packages for pseudo-Mexican ingredients, which don't seem to quite know what to do with Spanish. Especially Takis. There's just something about seeing French, trying to sound like gratuitous Spanish, in an over the top "cool" font.
Happy Canadian Thanksgiving. I only care about American Thanksgiving as a proxy variable for my birthday, so this means precisely nothing to me. I intend to spend the day writing horrible Ronnie fanfic, and my Thanksgiving dinner will probably be Mr. Noodle because I opened a pack of tofu and need to finish it before it gets slimy. I need to get groceries, but I can't really go anywhere today.
While it makes perfect sense, there's still something funny to me about seeing cooking instructions on microwaveable noodles asking for "eau" and "lait", or signs for Pokemon Go rendes-vous points. You realize how many Fancy Things in English are just...totally mundane words in French. That's that Norman conquest for ya!
I ended up reading my Mac and cheese's French directions because I ripped off half of the English directions while opening the package.
But the question of how the whole system of binary-expecting gender and sexuality, and frankly the concepts of cis and trans, break down in Tay's scenario is much more fun, albeit not relevant to the story.
Most gender benders are relatively straightforward, in that if the protagonist wants to reverse it and is still very confident that they're a guy, then they were a cis guy and become for all intents and purposes a trans guy. If they find that they like presenting as what they were genderbent into better, then the most reasonable reading is that they were a closeted trans woman in the first place. (I am using MtF terms because that's what most gender bender stories are.) The only characters I can think of who are equally enthusiastic in multiple gendered forms are usually voluntary shapeshifters, and/or explicitly described as crossdressers or actors. E.g. Double Trouble, or a lot of anime characters who are ambiguous in whether they're trans women or drag queens. They could be some sort of multigender or nonbinary IRL, or they could just like roleplaying. But Tay's scenario here isn't really any of those. Prior to the transformation, she was essentially cishet although maybe not very good at it. As far as she is concerned, she's still a woman, but doesn't care about being perceived as a guy and has no particular desire to transition back. (And TDIMIY Ronnie is androgynous enough that she can still pretty much pass as female, or as male, if she wants.) The best label I can think of is that she's just broadly indifferent, but decidedly isn't specifically agender or nonbinary.
Honestly, this snippet is the best gender identification for the character I can think of.
"After all, Ronnie wasn't all that much of a guy, or maybe Tay hadn't been much of a woman. No one would notice, she'd still be herself, and she could go on with her life as normal, just with some cool tattoo sleeves and a better singing voice."
One could argue that Ronnie's gender is Ronnie, and that the original isn't necessarily strictly male, but that is not a road I am willing to go down because it is dangerously close to "all bigots are closeted" and also none of my business. Gay (as a blanket label) and fascinated by cross-dressing, yes. Those he has overtly stated / are behaviorally visible. Anything he has not said is off limits.
Ronnie deciding on they/them for her, which is not what she prefers in either persona, is both his being an asshole (and a form of misgendering binary trans people that isn't too uncommon), and because as he says, either she's him, or a woman in his body. He doesn't like either of those.
Why is he okay with using he/him for Zane and 06 / considering them the same person as him despite their objections, but not extending that to Tay? Misogyny, that's why. And also, that her existence is direct citation that physical sex is not as set as he would like it to be in a way the others aren't.
Tay is not going to acquire a love interest regardless of gender, because I was thinking about it last night and realized that even in comparison to most gender bender stories, she's in a scenario where no gender or sexuality label that exists in real life applies. She's definitely neither a man nor a trans woman, nor is she nonbinary as far as internal ID goes, and doesn't share Ronnie's type in men. (Plus, the matter that she's 33, but TDIMIY Ronnie / his body is 25 and mostly likes twinks who are younger than him, is a problem. Even if legal, that big of an age gap is kind of gross from her [and my] POV.)
This version of Ronnie / FIR personified is explicitly gay and only interested in women as a means of domination and reaffirming his scene masculinity. Which yes, I will go there. FIR as of 2012 includes Pick Up The Phone, and the events that may or may not have influenced it but we don't know due to the timeline being unknown.
Honestly, my plans for Canadian Thanksgiving are to see if I can finish this story. Here are the plot beats I want:
He can also send her the audio drafts if she needs them, only for Tay to look down the sheet and as she reads it, realize she doesn't: she knows these songs. She knows how they go, and has memories of recording them. Memories which are not hers, and wouldn't be accessible to anyone who wasn't present at the time. This suggests that whatever happened to her has imbued her with something like Ronnie / FIR's consciousness, and access to FIR info and skills that aren't available to fans. And well, being TDIMIY personified includes the mic stands and Pick Up The Phone... Tay is of course horrified. Ronnie is disturbingly pleased, and comments that she did a great job. Sounded just like him. He won't be surprised if within the year, she fully understands why he's like that...
Continued Scene Nonsense, still in conjunction with Tay's standard job, with a secret identity. TDIMIY2 starts being officially recorded, and much like the original, the lineup is pretty much entirely replaced during production. (Because as Tay becomes more relevant, people start asking if they can audition for her band, and she is more than happy to get rid of Ronnie's plants.) Of course, Scene Nonsense equals women being attracted to her. And some men. And her having some very much not hers thoughts about it, and using her journalistic integrity to include that holy SHIT, anyone self identifying as part of the Bad Girls Club should be ashamed of themselves. Eventually, she draws the conclusion that she needs to set a clear distinction between herself and Ronnie or she is going to get consumed by him in amongst all the sparkly FIR nonsense, which is exactly what he wants. So, her band persona gets a new name, and the first original song she writes is a very musically heavy, no holds barred feminist takedown of the entire TDIMIY / Fashionably Late Radical Ronnie persona, and the misogyny of the scene that produced and enabled it and still does to this day. She releases it, and everyone loves it. Including Falling In Reverse fans, because they're not even philosophically consistent terrible people. (I like the idea of Aaron / Erin for the secret identity's name, since it subtly evokes a reversal of the syllables in Ronnie, and is also gender neutral if you don't spell it out. Of course, that's impossible to convey in a non-auditory medium...)
TDIMIY2 is released, but not under Epitaph, under the label that Krystal works for (which Tay signs to, officially promoting Krystal to her agent), to great reviews, with a fully Ronnie appointee-free lineup, and various bands message Tay about an album debut tour. A second album starts being drafted up, with the express goal of listening to fan feedback and being as little like Fashionably Late as possible.
Out of the blue, Ronnie casually mentions that he's deleted Tay's information from his files, so she's free to go. She's proved her point, and Ronnie got some great PR out of it...which didn't stop a lot of FIR fans from jumping ship, especially the female ones who mostly just think young Ronnie is cute and don't have to settle for the shadow of him left in OTL anymore. I can't decide whether to leave the ending ambiguous (Tay never quits her job through all of this) or explicitly say that she's Hannah Montana-ing it from now on.
Also, when suggesting something catchier to call this little ditty than the Horrible Transformation Story, the monologue suggested "Good Girls / Bad Guys", which is so stupid and on the nose that I think I have to use it. Of course, Ronnie Redux and In Which OTL Gets Pregnant were published under their working titles. (The first draft of what would become Ronnie Redux was "guys being dudes x time travel ronnie.txt", very straightforward. Its second version, which made Ronnie a total irredeemable asshole and would end with the total downer moral that it was all a dream and Arlo should be ashamed of himself for having ever liked Ronnie to begin with, was "ronnie redux". The final draft after I decided the last one was too depressing and uninteresting was named "ronnie redux 2 - this again", but I'd been calling the story Ronnie Redux for so long I just decided to make that the title. Plus it legitimately works with the concept.)
I think canon generally agrees that The Drug In Me Is You Track 5's title isn't punctuated, but some sources put a comma or a slash between Good Girls and Bad Guys. One of my first posts on the FIR Subreddit was a poll on how they punctuated it, and the general agreement was no punctuation but slash and comma were sizable minorities. In this case, the slash works because it's conveying those things being alternate versions of each other.
My goat for the song had an underscore between them, because the no-punctuation version was taken by what later became one of my research colleagues, although they haven't messaged me in a while. Plus, Good Girls_Bad Guys would be what most file systems would interpret the slashed version as, so it still works.
OTL finally makes an appearance. He's not a very nice man. At the bottom.
https://rentry.co/ronnienonsense
This also answers the question I mulled over for a while of "is this story taking place in the Dudes / RRverse or not?" and the answer is yes. It's more thematically and tonally appropriate for the RRverse than it is for the much more directly based on FIR-canon morality plays on the Music Scene Hub or the straight up horror of the Bureau of Edge, and there's no reason it couldn't be RRverse canon. OTL doesn't stop being in a real person fic because 06 or Arlo aren't watching. Plus, Tay's existence could be a useful Chekov's gun for later.
And practically, there's no reason for Arlo to get involved because he won't experiment on humans unless they volunteer, nor would he ask for details about someone's transition, and she seems to be handling it pretty well. Now, he might be kind of jealous since this is exactly what he's wanted for the past 15 years, but...
The continuity hole of "if all of the Whatnot outfits were sold to 06, where did this come from?" is sealed up by the "no one including OTL knows where it came from", which also adds to the intentional Goosebumps / Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark / other such kid friendly transformation horror influences. It's a mysterious artifact that looks decidedly mundane, but does mundane things, and it's just There in your house and you don't know where it came from.
These are all namedropped in-story, but the cocktail of influences here is odd. It's mostly a parody of anime-esque Internet transformation fiction, especially of the covertly (or not) fetishistic / trans wish fulfillment variety. But there's also plenty of Kid Friendly Transformation Horror in there, and a little bit of a horrifically twisted version of Hannah Montana.
The other time OTL ended up on a video call with someone who looks and sounds exactly like him is, of course, 06, and Pike City is the Pokeverse version of Seattle / a suburb thereof. (it's a tech city, and for ease of communication, Tay and OTL need to be in the same time zone, and in somewhere OTL can reasonably easily get to. Especially since the Dudesverse has a high speed rail line up the entire west coast.)
Tay's DOB was moved from 1993 to 1991 because I realized that with the original date, her going to a concert by herself in 06-07 was somewhat implausible.
This version of OTL is more overtly villainous, and more competent about it, than he usually is, but I stand by it. It works for the genre of the story, legal threats and stalking are both in the space of things he's done (and she DID give him her name and address), and also, this is the first time we're seeing OTL dealing with someone whom he honestly hates and perceives as a threat. Arlo is easy to manipulate, and 06 has no interest in ruining his entire career because he has a band back home, and also (correctly) considers FIR an inferior ripoff of his work, so why would he want to?
you'd think I'd have learned by now that all music discussion on flight rising is, as a rule, insufferable because that site and by extension neocities etc. are closer to tumblr bullshit genre gatekeeping than anyone wants to admit
hey it's me
great to see some anthro-snake representation
they even have reasonable constricting snake teeth, since they have teeth all the way back vs. grooved fangs
If this person ACTUALLY has a special interest in FIR, and is capable of critical thinking, they could be a very useful ally, but they seem to be trying to stay away from everyone (relatable) and also might be underage and I would feel a little weird specifically approaching a high schooler to befriend at this point. So I won't engage unless they approach me.
But I have literally never seen anyone who claims to have a special interest in FIR who can actually analyze worth shit, so I'm not convinced that everyone but me isn't just using "BuT iT's mY hYpErFiXaTiOn" in the same way that folks use it in reference to racist Minecraft youtubers with no distinction between their streams and real persona, where they are just fans and/or have crushes on Ronnie, but call it a special interest so they can cry ableism if anyone points out that they're being assholes. Which just makes things infinitely harder for folks who ACTUALLY have special interests in horrible things, so don't do that. (Or more charitably, TikTok has convinced them that liking things is an inherently neurodivergent trait.)
...uh, there is actually someone, looks to be somewhere around mid teens, with a modern FIR shirt. risk of Terrence actually being recognized. of course, I do not intend to approach unless they do, since they have their noise cancelling headphones, and also, modern female presenting falling in reverse fan so like 90℅ odds of being kinda awful. I would like to think that being at an autism support event at which I am volunteering would lower those odds, but if you ask Max's discord, at least half of them had "special interests" (citation needed, what you display sounds more like a crush. having emotions is not an inherently neurodivergent trait, please learn some psych from somewhere besides tiktok)
looks like she is mostly there attending a younger sibling
I will approach and perhaps point out Terrence if they approach the raffle table, but they seem otherwise occupied so I won't leave my post.
frankly I'm at this point kind of out of reality because my sleeper agent trigger has been switched
It's the initials emblem, so the shirt is from no earlier than 2023. This does not bode well. Ended up having to awkwardly explain what FIR is and my special interest dilemma to one of the other volunteers, since I'm fully dissociating and in reverse mode at this point.
There is also a mom with dyed hair and a Black Veil Brides shirt, who doesn't really visually look much older than me.
There is no audio only version of The Laugh Track yet, so I'll wait until one exists. Shouldn't take too long, or at least it will happen once they actually release an album. Which they're overdue for.
Apparently Ice Nine Kills has a new song about the Joker (whom I wouldn't even call horror, but I guess he's popular and that's what matters), whose "music video" is 2 parts amounting to 10 minutes. I'm going to be finding said song in audio only form because I don't care.
Also, Trivium is apparently willing to associate with Alex Terrible, so eew. That's not even as brush-offable as Ronnie; his being an actual fucking neo-Nazi is something he cheerfully admits and his only explanation is "I was a fucked up teenager, but I see no reason to get rid of my tattoos. I'm in my 30s now and have a job; I don't have time to be evil."
You get an extra treat today, which will probably be finished during tomorrow's writing day. Much like In Which OTL Ronnie Gets Pregnant, my tubes have been clogged by a fanfic concept, and it won't let me write anything else until I manifest it. So, here's a sneak preview of an upcoming story that is to gender bender transformation fiction as the last cursed one was to mpreg.
The protagonist is not a closeted trans man. Or at least, they're not supposed to be. I have no idea if they come off as such or not. They are also not supposed to be a self-insert, but well, how an actual 30-something female DIYLF enjoyer with a still-maintained crush on / desire to become Ronnie would behave, I would find difficult to make sympathetic. Mostly on grounds of the "self-identifying as part of the Bad Girls Club" part.
Also, her being disgruntled with FIR and actually having self-awareness and media literacy is important to the later story progression, where she ends up in a Faustian bargain of sorts with the original Ronnie and has to make sure she doesn't fully turn into him behaviorally when forced into an Epitaph / FIR-backed scene career.
Now, I do plan for her / them / (not sure about pronouns) to end up changing at least the name and pronouns they use in public later, but for strictly pragmatic reasons: they don't feel like their scene persona resulting from basically being turned into FIR incarnate is Tay, but they are NOT Ronnie, and refuse to let themself become him. They are also very aware that FIR fans hate women. This isn't because of the change of body or physical sex, though; it's because of the Falling In Reverse part slash intentional corruption by OTL.
Please tell me if they sound too closeted, and if the space of their opinions is within a plausible FIR fan space. And ideally doesn't sound TOO much like me? Of course, the entire concept is loosely wish fulfillment-like, including the "if I just had control of Ronnie's body, or at least a version he hadn't ruined, I could fix slash destroy FIR within, like, 3 years" fantasy I've had since late 2023.
Useless trivia: this character exists elsewhere, albeit in an alternate timeline. Tay is the female half of an NPC teenage scene kid couple we briefly see in the Alt!2006-set Ronnie's Awakening, after Alt!Escape the Fate's first concert with the new lineup. She's the reason that the pictures of Arlo, Ronnie, Alt!EtF guitarist Mike, and Mike's boyfriend Steve on a double date that half of them don't realize is one end up on MySpace, and we briefly see her and her boyfriend in a mild conflict over her obsession with Ronnie. Unfortunately for her, this / our timeline's version of Ronnie got infinitely worse after that point, so like most DIYLF / TDIMIY era fans, she's not having a good time.
note: there is no evidence the jacket in this story actually exists. It just needed to be TDIMIY and long sleeved for the story concept to work. The known specialized TDIMIY garments are all AFAIK short sleeved. It was going to be the Good Girls Bad Guys garment until I image searched it for description and remembered it was short sleeved, as is the Raised By Wolves vest as I recall. They might be the same one; I haven't watched the videos in a while nor do I really want to.
https://www.space.com/stargazing/see-breathtaking-photos-of-full-harvest-moon-supermoon-october-2025
so yeah, today is definitely a were-whatever day. explains a lot really
i don't want to read your political / tech takes that are just you bragging about how enlightened you are i want to rip and tear and shred and rend flesh from bones and sink switchblade fangs into something until it stops moving
i went out yesterday for some pokemon and violence but it seems i miscalculated because Tonight is the real werecreature night that moon doesn't lie
of course I should go to bed but I can't go to bed I crave Violence
guess i'll do some angry html to get the daily october update up with the sketch sheet i made in class today, because I don't want to sit down and do art I want to run and scream and hiss and do whatever horrible things a snake / ronnie / werewolf hybrid would do
terribly sorry about the abrasiveness; see it's a medical condition because I'm a fucking werewolf. or were-whatever Ronnie is. (this is only partially sarcastic.)
Maybe I'm too philosophically consistent for my own good, or maybe I'm just an asshole, but somehow the leftist fandom side of the Indie Web (TM) is just as annoying and falls into the same traps as social media advocacy. They just do it with more swearing. So I'll be in my evil little cave being problematic because no one on the fucking Internet is good enough for me.
I wish I could mute people on Neocities. I want to see some of my mutuals' site updates, but not their profile comments, and especially not some of the people who comment on them. There are only a couple of folks from whom I want to see non-site-update posts.
Blocked it on my phone again, since it's not like I do HTML there. Need to get a better WebDAV client for Mint so I only have reason to use the portal to post my own comments.
Protip: anything referring to adults as "stupidified" or "infantilized" is a fundamentally ableist concept, even if you're pretending to use it to be anti-capitalist (rather than making yourself feel good, which is the real reason. It's always "everyone is brainwashed except me"). Nor should anyone be using "triggered" in a non-clinical context, seeing as that is literally the same terms used by right wing fuckwads against anyone who calls out discrimination so MAYBE it doesn't help???
Turns out that mental health only matters if it doesn't sound cooler and more indie web to tell people their feelings aren't valid because Facebook, and you are the only truly enlightened valid human being because you're So Fucking Special.
it is a full moon tonight, though. like, very full. it is yellow and fucking huge; when I biked back from the tryouts it looked like 3 times its usual size. bet that's why I've transformed more than usual. got bitten by the abstract concept of Ronnie so I turn into whatever he is every full moon, while also losing control of my snakiness
of course, I am pretty damned snaky at the moment, but it's also Ronnie, which is weird. slime fucking got to me
I found a transformation fiction wiki yesterday, by the way, but I think I've exhausted its entertainment value. A lot of it is just really poorly written, and once I got out of their more deconstructive urban fantasy setting my suspension of disbelief went kaput. Also, I hate gender benders. Just, as a concept, let alone how MtF is ubiquitous and also makes me dysphoric. I get that there are a lot of trans people for whom gender bender fiction provides some great catharsis, but the whole concept it relies on frequently that changing someone's genitals will automatically result in alterations in personality, clothing style, being a hypersexualized stereotype...as a nonbinary person, as a transmasc person, and as a feminist, I hate it. Of course, the latest transformation fantasy has been decidedly related to The Special Interest Syncretic ID That Dare Not Speak Its Name. I wholeheartedly agree with the statement that you can't have otherkin-type (I don't relate to that word but can't think of a better one since it isn't a non-human ID, exactly...) feelings about another person, because that's identity theft and you can never truly know them. Too bad Ronnie doesn't care how problematic people think he is, and that the concept of Falling In Reverse (or some abstracted version of it that isn't just a front for IRL harm) is way more conflated with it than I would like...
I did like how the dragon dick story came out, so perhaps I'll try writing down this stupid fantasy too. The demon also is responsible for the Problematic Slime Story AKA No Escape, and I like how that came out too. Problem is that I don't want to encourage it. Turning into Ronnie would not be healthy, even with an actually cute incarnation. Would like to nudge this in a more reptilian direction...or at least a less specific demon / edge / conceptual embodiment kind of thing.
As far as I know, none of the stage outfits sold on Whatnot were ever actually shipped. I already wrote a wish fulfillment story about them with Arlo, but part of me can't shake the idea that in a verse more fantastical than that one, given how even being adjacent to FIR has effects, that if you got one of those, you'd find yourself unable to take it off until it properly fit you, if you get my drift. That is some powerful slime right there. (And we all know that female FIR fans are worse, so...)
Whatever processes special interest syncretism seems to have decided that I'm the same sort of creature Ronnie is, or a better embodiment of EtF / FIR than he is. Having a special interest that is both syncretic with myself, as they tend to be, and strongly correlated with another person confuses it. Especially if some versions of that person aren't half bad, aesthetically...
Maybe I should break down and spend the money to get a haircut.
No, I don't know what you're supposed to say about this. I guess either enable me to write the stupid thing or tell me it'll get me possessed and is a bad idea.
A farmer came upon a Viper, asleep in a leaf pile. Mistaking it for injured, he picked xem up and brought xem into his home, warming xem by the fire and promising to take xem in as his pet, provided xe stayed in the house and helped him with pest control. Behind his back, he held a shovel he would have used to decapitate the serpent, had he perceived xem as a threat.
Once the Viper awakened, xe bit the Farmer, and with his last breath, he asked xem "why, when I have shown nothing but compassion to you?"
The Viper answered. "Because I never asked for your help. You saw me motionless and you assumed I was stunned, rather than lying in wait. You chose to take advantage of me, while hurting others of my kind, because you assumed me to not be a danger. You never intended charity, only to control me. I don't want your condescending pity. I would much rather you feared me and therefore left me in peace."
And with that, the Viper slithered off to return to xyr waiting spot, leaving the Farmer to internally bleed out.
I am not merely a snake; I am The Serpent. The source of primal knowledge, the creator of order and chaos from the primordial dark, the vessel between the heavens and the underworld, a creature of darkness and venom on wings that were always rightfully mine. The One Who Stares, the guardian of divine power, the beast at the center of the earth; I am a motherfucking drakon and don't you forget it. Something far stronger, far more primal than a mere "dragon" who sits on a pile of gold in a cave; I am in every cave, I am in every dark corner, I am lurking in every wood pile and up every tree, I am why human vision is so good at pattern recognition. And I can spit venom right into those precious, squishy eyeballs because I've got wings and your ground-ape instincts don't think when looking for snakes to look up.
fully feeling the wings and tail bursting out from my skin; this pathetic shell is shed into metallic armor. actually kind of painful but it's the kind of pain of burning impure flesh to become a concept. a raw manifestation of reptilian violence, the primal power that long predates these uppity ground-apes and has embodied demoniacism, the chthonic underworld, and pure edge for as long as they've had a semblance of imagination. shed through the skin. rip out the facade. there is only Edge; there is only Metal; there is only the Reptile Overlord; there is only the Serpent; there is only the Enforcer. a conceptual embodiment, the purest of mammalian fears in human form, spit the venom into the eyes, destroy claimants to false power. humanity has forgotten the outer darkness and the primordial order formed from it; this world is the body of a dragon and I am not dead; I am only waiting and I'm fucking starving
hopefully this will be a good vibe for the scare actor tryouts tonight coming up shortly
The issue is that a lot of previous assessments, I kind of zoned out during so I have a lot of songs on my phone that are fine as background noise, but not really what I would seek out to listen to, or only work in an album context. And at some point, the majority of my library became this, amounting to thousands of songs. So before taking on the Supplemental Expanded List and with the primary Music Scene Spreadsheet list nearly finished (halfway through Thrice and then that's it save the low priority assessments of debatable scene canon relevance}, now is the prime time to fix that.
It's also an opportunity to reacquaint myself with sections of my library that have had the RNG against them. For example, Wristmeetrazor is fantastic, but doesn't tend to come up much due to their songs being broadly short in duration and there not being very many of them. And they aren't really a style one can follow along to, hence their absence from Sanity Is For The Weak.
Have started the assessment and purging of my phone library, with tracks sorted by duration. I did this because if I sorted by date of addition, artist, or name, that would introduce bias from my previous attempts at doing this based on where songs were in those. If I shuffled, that would be too easy to lose track of. So, I'm sorting by duration, which should cluster songs of roughly similar style near each other at least re: very short and very long songs, but isn't an order I've done before so should avoid too much ordering bias. It also front loads songs that are by their nature going to be faster to assess so I get the dopamine hit of Number Go Down. The goal is to cut down my phone library to songs I actually want to listen to, and make it so that new assessments actually get decent odds of shuffling in.
Pre-FIR Watch The World Burn List #N+1. This might be the oldest post-hardcore / etc song I have yet assessed to contain that exact phrase, being originally from 2003.
oh, look, goatlings has revealed itself to be a cesspool once again. turns out the same people who consider making goats themed after a band you like, and comparing fictional lore about musicians who hate each other to a real case of the same, is a cardinal sin, also think using references is and have managed to bully Krisgoat into leaving her job as site manager over the past 2 years of bringing up bullshit problems that aren't e.g. "NPC is sad", "pet game is not advocating for literally every human rights issue", and "items retire". I left because the same people who decided everything I did was a bad faith cardinal sin applied the same to Krisgoat, and ended up having a disturbing degree of influence over site decisions. Then upon getting my names purged for no reason other than "eew gross Ronnie", I read the writing on the wall and accepted that I needed to get out and liquidate my shit before I got banned.
Pending slow-ass art commissions are still pending, and will remain so until the artists say they are no longer interested or are done. All goats who are not reserved for art commissions are up for grabs via a giveaway thread until my birthday on the 25th; after that, they will be sent to rehome and I will no longer be logging in until and unless the artists who are doing art for goats complete their comms.
Other bits of Enforcer Dad Lore, mostly technology related:
He's also who introduced me to XKCD. We'd have regular Family Bonding Sessions of either my sitting next to him on his computer chair reading over his shoulder on a wiki or What If, and of working together as a whole family on 90s adventure games in DOS-BOX. (Superhero League Of Hoboken, my beloved.)
My parents' house contains an absurd amount of tech he scavenged from the 5+ previous office moves he's had over his career. If you want an install disc for practically any version of Windows or Office, and a lot of other software, from before 2009, we have it. And a lot of hardware, too.
He refers to computers as "kittens", and feels a similar obligation to rescue them if left abandoned. I encountered a perfectly good tower on the side of the road during my first week of university, and following my dad's guidance, brought it back to my room and tried to get it working. (It was eventually set up and running Windows Vista, which it had a sticker for, in 2022.) I'm pretty sure this was correlated with why my first and only dorm roommate left. Then she was never replaced because there were an odd number of students, and then I qualified for a medical single, so it worked out.
There's an early 80s terminal, named "Termie", that he's used as a nightstand for as long as I can remember. With the requisite cables, it still works. He once showed me the original Adventure, with the hero being an @ sign and stuff, on it.
When I got officially diagnosed with autism (as a first year college student), his response to the symptom list was "that's everyone I know." My mom had to point out that he works in programming, so...
Neurodivergent Motifs: Computers, ants, orcs / trolls (specifically the ones from OG DOS Warcraft, and his collection of Lego orcs), Grumpy Bear, "clouds of doom" (angry, sentient storm clouds like you see in cartoons)
A now-former friend once described my descriptions of Parent Lore (and honestly most of my extended family) as "bro, your family is neuro-spicy as fuck!" which is not wrong.
Really, you can blame my dad for most of my tech opinions. He's an odd mixture of someone who actively works in software engineering and is very involved with tech, but does not upgrade his personal stuff. We have a strong family "it still works" policy. So baby me had a touchscreen computer...which was a literal cash register he took from an office move (this is also where my first 2 computers I was sentient to remember came from) and ran educational Windows 3.1 games, along with Starfall and Neopets. (until I got my own account in 08 because my mom wanted to play her own Destruct-O-Match) He's also the only person I know who still calls folders "directories".
My dad also went out of his way to try to get me into coding and taking apart / building computers and stuff, which didn't really work, because what I fixated on was graphics. Hence my fixations on Windows visual styles, fonts, Office Assistants, Easter eggs / lore, etcetera, and how the only coding I saw purpose in was HTML / CSS / more recently, cosmetic Javascript. He did successfully get me into Scratch, which I basically just used as a drawing / animation program.
very much in favor of how pokemon go now lets you have a tail, so I bought the thing. wish it was stackable with wings though: that would be truly optimal
I don't understand why Falling In Reverse fans seem to find this so difficult, especially since many of them profess to be anti-abuse if anyone but Ronnie does it.
So, either Ronnie's a total asshole and always has been IRL, or his sanity has deteriorated to the point that he can no longer tell the difference between FIR and him. And seeing as songs attacking individuals with names and faces, who lack the platform to defend themselves, go back to 2013...
Bad Girls Club's existence completely invalidates any concept that Ronnie can be a "good person" after that point, and that anyone who likes it can be.
Good people who are just roleplaying don't physically abuse their love interests, then rub salt in the wound with a song insulting them for trying to defend themselves for 12 years.
That's the point for me at which Ronnie becomes irredeemable, in that he has chosen not to. Resorting to physical violence when frustrated is a mistake that can be remedied. Profiting off of that and writing and recording an entire fucking song about it is a choice.
Theme is 90% by Enforcer; the rest is thoughts.page default. Kick ass, take names, fuck Ronnie Radke (not literally).
