Ah yes, another rapture. Another apocalyptic weekend that came and went with the same fanfare as a wet paper bag in a wind tunnel. I swear, I’ve lived through more ends of the world than Doctor Who at this point. Every few years, someone gets out the prophecy calculator, plugs in some random numerology, and declares that this time, it’s really happening. Spoiler: it never does.

And it’s always the same people. The same preachers with thousand-yard stares and thousand-dollar microphones. The same audience clutching their Bibles and canned beans. The same cycle of panic, repentance, and sheepish silence the morning after. You could set your watch by the disappointment.

The cultural part of this fascinates me — because this whole Rapture thing? It’s so American. Like, apple pie and AR-15s American. Outside the U.S. (and the places where U.S. missionaries went on their little “convert the world” field trips), the Rapture isn’t even really a thing. It’s a uniquely American brand of religious theatre — a mix of end-times paranoia, self-importance, and capitalism with a halo. Everyone’s so sure they’re living in the special generation that God personally decided to nuke first.

I remember reading the Left Behind books about twenty years ago out of sheer morbid curiosity. I’ll admit, I was impressed — not by the theology, but by the marketing. Those books were an empire. Movies, video games, spin-offs, merchandise — the holy trinity of apocalypse profiteering. You’ve got to hand it to them: if Jesus doesn’t return on schedule, you can always sell another deluxe box set.

But honestly? After all these years, I’ve stopped laughing at the absurdity and started marveling at the consistency. These people never learn. The predictions get debunked, the math gets proven wrong, the sun rises like it always does — and yet a few months later, someone new is online explaining why the next date is the real one. It’s like an infinite subscription to disappointment.

At this point, I’m convinced the world will end someday — and half of these people will still be too busy live-streaming it for clout to notice. The sky will crack open, fire will rain down, and someone on TikTok will be shouting, “Guys, this is crazy — like and subscribe if you’re still here!” Meanwhile the rest of us will be rolling our eyes and saying, “Finally. Took you long enough.”

People think writing is easy. Like, *insultingly* easy. As if the act of pressing keys on a keyboard automatically transforms your inner monologue into art. As if everyone with a laptop and a caffeine addiction is suddenly a fucking wordsmith. Newsflash: just because you can type doesn’t mean you can write.

There’s this weird illusion that writing is the most accessible of the arts because the tools are everywhere. Paint needs brushes. Music needs instruments. Film needs equipment and people. But writing? Oh, anyone can open a Word document, right? Just spill some thoughts, slap in a few metaphors, and—boom—art. Never mind craft, tone, pacing, rhythm, emotional precision. Nah, just vibes.

And here’s the kicker: in making writing *more* accessible, we’ve somehow made people *hostile* to the idea that it’s a craft. Like, if you dare to suggest that good writing takes study, discipline, or (heaven forbid) editing, people look at you like you’re gatekeeping. As if saying “learn how sentences work” is some kind of elitist attack on creativity. Everyone thinks they’re a writer now, and that’s why so much of what’s out there is just... shit. Empty words dressed up as profundity. Plotless, rhythmless, heartless. Because nobody wants to do the work anymore. They want the dopamine rush of *feeling* like a writer, not the long, boring grind of *becoming* one.

Being a good writer isn’t about inspiration or word vomit; it’s about skill. Study. Precision. You have to *read*. You have to tear apart other people’s sentences until you understand why they make your bones hum. You have to write badly, over and over, until you start writing less badly. It’s a learned artform, like any other. But people hate that idea now—they want it to be effortless, as if depth and clarity are things that just happen when you’re “authentic.”

And because of that cultural rot, writing as an artform has become undervalued across the creative industries. Everyone wants content, not craft. They want dialogue that sounds like improv, narratives that can be written by committee, scripts that are just vehicles for CGI or branding. Writers are treated like replaceable parts—because, hey, anyone can write, right? Just feed ChatGPT your outline and get a screenplay by Tuesday. Who needs a human who *understands* language?

Writing isn’t easy. It’s not disposable. It’s not “just words.” It’s architecture. Every comma is a gear. Every sentence a vein. And when you stop respecting the craft, when you stop *learning* how to write, you end up with the creative wasteland we have now—where everything looks shiny, sounds clever, and means absolutely nothing.

Writing is a form of madness dressed up as discipline. It’s not for everyone—and that’s okay. But pretending it *is* for everyone has cheapened it beyond recognition.

So. Here’s a fun little identity plot twist: I’ve finally realized I’m asexual. Yeah. That word. The one I used to wave off with a nervous laugh and a “haha not me though.” Except, turns out, it is. It’s me. It’s been me for a while. I just didn’t want to admit it because, well, I’m also kinky as hell, and that’s not the sort of thing that fits neatly in the TikTok infographic version of sexuality.

Let’s back up. For years, I told myself I was just weird. I had this long history of erotic roleplay, of exploring kink scenes, of knowing way too much about certain fetishes — and yet, when it came to actual sex? The physical act of it? I felt... nothing. Like, literally nothing. Not disgust, not arousal, just this kind of bemused detachment, like watching a movie where the characters are really into something you’re not.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy sexuality — I love it as a concept. It’s fun to write, to play with, to explore in theory. I just don’t experience it personally. It’s like being a chef who doesn’t eat meat but still knows how to cook the hell out of a steak. I can understand what makes it appealing, I can craft the scene, but I don’t actually want to take a bite myself.

The thing that always tripped me up is that I do have kinks. I have an entire catalogue of weird little switches in my brain labeled “spanking,” “power dynamics,” “humiliation,” “pretty aesthetic of submission” — all of which light up when I think about them. But I realized, recently, that none of them are sexual for me. They’re emotional, psychological, aesthetic. It’s not about the sexual act — it’s about control, trust, vulnerability, ritual, performance. It’s theater. It’s intimacy. But not sex.

And that’s the thing nobody ever tells you when you’re growing up in a culture that equates sexuality with value: you can be kinky and still be ace. You can love the charge, the tension, the storytelling of it all, without wanting to drag it into the physical realm. That doesn’t make it fake. It doesn’t make you fake. It just makes you wired differently — and for me, that realization has been like unclenching a muscle I didn’t know I’d been tensing for years.

There’s this weird sense of guilt that comes with admitting it, though. Like, oh no, what if everyone I’ve ever flirted with or roleplayed with feels tricked, like I led them on? But here’s the truth: I wasn’t pretending. I was just exploring the only way I knew how to express intimacy. Because that’s what kink and roleplay were for me — they were intimacy simulators, spaces where I could connect with people without needing to pretend I wanted something physical at the end of it.

The irony is, being asexual doesn’t mean I’m not romantic, or affectionate, or that I don’t want connection. Quite the opposite. It just means I experience it differently. I crave closeness, conversation, that spark of shared weirdness — not bodies. And it took me a long time to realize that’s okay. Because we live in a world that screams at you that desire equals worth, and if you don’t feel that hunger, you must be broken. Except… I’m not broken. I’m just not hungry in that way.

So yeah. I’m asexual. Still kinky, still weird, still me. Just finally comfortable saying that the part of me that loves the performance doesn’t need to be part of the act. And honestly? It’s liberating as hell.

Okay, serious question, gang: what is the actual point of the Journal feature on FurAffinity? Because from where I’m sitting (and yes, I am currently sitting, thank you for asking), it looks like it exists exclusively so people can yell into the void about their YCH auctions, post adoptables like they’re black-market Pokémon dealers, and remind us they have a Twitch stream they would really like you to watch.

And look, no shade — get that bread, my furry capitalist comrades — but are we seriously pretending that this was ever meant to be, I dunno, a journal? Like, where you post thoughts? Feelings? Funny anecdotes about the dog chewing on your Wacom pen? Because hoo boy, if that was the intent, the experiment failed harder than Twitter’s attempt at having a decent user interface.

I just have this mental image of the FA dev team back in 2007, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (literally), going: “We’ll give people a place to connect, to share their lives, to have conversations.” And then 15 years later it’s like:

“HEY GUYS I’M STREAMING!!! COME GIVE ME BITS AND VALIDATION!!! YCH SLOT OPEN!!! PAYPAL READY!!!”

And don’t get me wrong, I love supporting artists. But we have turned the whole concept of “talking to each other online” into an endless cycle of monetization pitches. It’s like trying to have a heartfelt conversation with someone at a bar, except every five seconds they pause to remind you that their Ko-Fi link is in their bio.

And you know the second you actually post something that isn’t just a thinly-veiled sales pitch — something heartfelt, vulnerable, or even just dumb and funny — half your watchers will scroll right past it because there’s no transaction to complete. We’re so trained by The Internet™ to see each other as content dispensers that we forget you can just… chat. Like a person. For free.

So yeah, unless the point of FA Journals was “create a secondary, slightly jankier marketplace for your adoptables and commissions,” I’m pretty sure nobody remembers why this feature exists. And that’s kind of tragic. Or maybe just hilariously on brand for 2025, where every online space eventually gets turned into a storefront.

Anyway. This is your reminder that you are allowed — ALLOWED!!! — to post something in your journal that doesn’t ask for money, doesn’t link to a stream, doesn’t hawk your adoptable of the week. Post a weird thought you had at 3am. Post about the cursed thing your cat just did. Post a meme. Hell, post about how nobody talks anymore. Just… talk.

Because otherwise? We might as well just rename the feature “Ads” and call it a day.

Do you remember staying up until 3, 4, 5 a.m. on a Tuesday morning just chatting? I mean just chatting — no webcams, no voice calls, no elaborate virtual worlds to distract you. Just a barebones chatroom or some primitive Instant Messenger window with three fonts and a notification sound that sounded like a dying toaster. And we would just sit there and talk about anything. Movies we liked. Weird thoughts we had. Stupid jokes that were funny only because it was 2:30 a.m. and we were too sleep-deprived to have standards.

It was raw. It was unfiltered. It was human connection in its most feral state, like two raccoons pawing at the same trash can at midnight and deciding to hang out for a while. Before MMORPGs turned the internet into a co-op dungeon crawl. Before Discord became a corporate office simulator with channels like #general, #rules, and #please-introduce-yourself-like-you’re-filling-out-an-HR-form. Before “content creation” turned every stray thought into a TikTok-ready monologue for strangers’ consumption. We just talked. No filters. No pictures. No clout-chasing. Just words on a screen and the little dopamine pop of seeing a reply — honestly, better than sex some nights. (And yes, sometimes we stayed up sexting too. Don’t pretend you didn’t.)

And it was magical. A ritual. A liminal space where time dissolved and you became two disembodied brains swapping secrets until dawn. We forged weird little internet friendships that felt like blood oaths, even if we had never seen each other’s faces. It was about communicating for the sheer animal joy of hearing another human voice through the static.

Now? Forget it. Nobody talks. Nobody even wants to talk. If you want to “get to know” someone, you get shunted to their bio like you’re reading the back of a cereal box. If you want a real conversation, you get an invite link to a Discord server where conversation is either dead silent or scrolling past at the speed of a slot machine. If you do try to speak, your message gets buried under a cascade of gifs, bot alerts, and someone arguing about Minecraft lore.

And people have excuses — oh, the excuses. “We’re all so burned out post-COVID!” “People are more isolated now!” “We’re all neurodivergent!” Spare me. I was one of the neurodivergent isolated weirdos, and we were the ones keeping the chatrooms alive until sunrise. This was literally our ecosystem. We stayed up until ungodly hours typing long, unhinged paragraphs about anime, quantum mechanics, and whether you could cook an egg with a desk lamp. We built parasocial relationships before they were even a cautionary Buzzfeed thinkpiece — and it was fine, because at least we were actually speaking to each other. And yes, sometimes we got horny and overshared, and that was part of the chaos too. The internet was feral, sweaty, ridiculous — and that was good.

So no, it’s not that we can’t talk. It’s that we don’t care to. The interest is gone. The willingness to sit with another person’s thoughts and respond to them like a human being has been euthanized and buried under a pile of reaction emojis. The internet now is a stage, and everyone’s just screaming their monologue into the dark, waiting for applause. Interaction has been boiled down to a thumbs-up, a gif of Pedro Pascal laughing, or the digital equivalent of a shrug while scrolling.

Discord servers now feel like abandoned mall food courts: sticky, echoing, filled with ghosts of conversations that used to matter. Every so often someone lobs a meme across the room like a crumpled receipt and then vanishes for a week. The intimacy is gone. The slow burn of a conversation that builds into a friendship is gone. Everything’s fast, disposable, and sanitized. It’s like trying to have a heartfelt conversation in a public bathroom while someone is blasting TikToks in the next stall.

And over all of this — the silence, the disconnection, the absence of genuine human voices — hangs the reek of corporate ownership. The internet is no longer a weird frontier. It’s a shopping mall. Everything is for-profit. Your conversation isn’t just conversation — it’s data to be harvested, sold, and used to advertise weighted blankets back to you. You can’t even find a place to talk without an algorithm demanding you follow, subscribe, monetize. It’s all engagement farming now. Even the memes are ads.

I miss talking. I miss staying up until the birds were screaming outside like they were personally offended by my insomnia, realising the sun was coming up and I had school in three hours but not caring because the conversation was too good to leave. I miss getting to know someone not through their hot takes or their curated pronoun-fandom-political-alignment bio, but by the slow, messy, gorgeous process of asking questions and waiting for the answers — even if those answers sometimes turned into flirtation that kept me awake for another three hours.

Now it feels like we’re all ghosts haunting each other’s timelines, mouthing words no one will ever hear. It’s not cute. It’s not “just the way things are now.” It’s sterile. It’s lonely. It feels like standing in an empty parking lot screaming into the night, only to have someone send you a gif of SpongeBob shrugging in response.

We used to care. We used to log in just to talk, not to broadcast, not to build a following, not to farm engagement, but to connect. And now we’ve collectively decided that talking is cringe, vulnerability is cringe, effort is cringe. Fine. Call me cringe. At least I’m still here, still yelling into the void, still horny at 3 a.m., hoping someone yells back — even if the internet now feels like a strip mall full of vending machines trying to upsell me Funko Pops while I scream.

Okay, so somehow, somehow, we have reached a point where the World of Darkness brand — once the goth kid’s bible, the TTRPG equivalent of The Cure’s Disintegration — has been hollowed out, stuffed with sawdust, and is now being dragged around by Paradox Interactive like Weekend at Bernie’s. Whatever spark (ha) the IP had has been smothered under years of baffling decisions that feel less like stewardship and more like a slow-motion hit job.

Let’s just talk about the current era, because honestly, the past sins (2016-2020) now look almost quaint. Today’s World of Darkness exists as a Twitter account that posts corporate memes, a half-dead stream of half-hearted lore drops, and promises of video games that keep getting delayed, cancelled, or delivered DOA. There’s no creative vision left — just a long, low corporate hum as the IP is milked for whatever nostalgic residue is still clinging to it.

The tabletop line? Basically in stasis. The few books that do come out are locked behind a mess of licensing decisions that feel like they were made via Ouija board. Vampire: the Masquerade 5th Edition has been reduced to a trickle of supplements that can’t decide if they want to be edgy, woke, or marketable to LARPers in their 30s — so they end up being none of the above.

And oh my god, Bloodlines 2. This game is the Duke Nukem Forever of the goth set, except somehow less charming. Development hell doesn’t even begin to cover it — we’ve had dev teams fired mid-production, lore rewrites that make less sense than a Malkavian haiku, and trailers that promise something gritty and cool only for the actual gameplay footage to look like a Unity asset flip with slightly better lighting. Every time they announce a delay, it’s like watching a beloved relative on life support get wheeled out for another photo op.

And that’s not even touching the glut of cheap visual novels and “interactive fiction” apps that have been vomited out over the past decade, all with the production value of a mid-tier DeviantArt commission and the writing chops of a 14-year-old who just discovered eyeliner. The franchise has been diluted to the point of homeopathy — there’s technically still vampire content, but you’d have to run ten thousand copies through a centrifuge to get anything resembling soul or atmosphere.

What we’re left with is an IP with no pulse, no plan, and no confidence — just a nostalgia-powered zombie brand lurching forward on the fumes of its own past glory. And it’s painful, because World of Darkness was the place for messy, queer, goth storytelling, and now it’s reduced to a hollowed-out logo on a Discord server no one checks.

At this point, the most World of Darkness thing about World of Darkness is watching its slow, tragic degeneration in real time — a perfect Malkavian metaplot twist where the game itself has become its own personal Jyhad. Paradox didn’t just enshitify it. They turned the Masquerade into a marketing plan, then diablerized their own fanbase.

Press F to pay respects.

Yeah, that's right. You heard me.

Gone.

Vanished.

Kaput.

I received a note from FA admins, without warning, suddenly announcing that my journals were TOO HOT and had to be dragged out into the street and shot.

Can't for the life of my figure out why this site's community is dead. Why people don't talk to each other.

This type of puritanist harassment is, I expect, fallout from somebody who I blocked on the SpankedFurs group I run, who was likely banned for being a mewlibg pissbaby, making a complaint about the funny spicy journals of mine that I shared there.

So, here is the plan. If any journal entry of mine are scandalous enough to reference that humans have reproductive anatomy (Oh my!), you will instead receive a LINK to another site where my writing will be posted instead.

Jesus....

Okay, buckle up, because we’re going back to the last Vampire: The Masquerade LARP I ever subjected myself to — a decade ago, and trust me, it was the final straw that broke my undead little camel spine. This was one of those big "regional" games where all the players from several cities would descend like a plague of goth locusts. We rented out a youth hostel that just so happened to be in a castle, which sounds metal as hell until you realize you’re basically paying to be bored in a drafty museum for three days straight.

And oh my god, was it shite. Like, top-tier, gourmet shite. The kind you stare at in disbelief. I had NOTHING to do because, shocker, every single plot thread was already clutched in the claws of high-XP immortals who’ve been playing the same crusty vampire characters since before the invention of Facebook. I was basically an NPC in my own weekend. But whatever, that’s not even the main story here.

See, there was this central plot — something about a magic staff that once belonged to a mind-robbery vampire who could yeet himself into people’s heads and joyride them around like a haunted Uber. The usual VtM business. After the event wrapped, I happened to notice one of the STs (Storytellers, for the non-goth among us) comforting a woman who looked visibly upset. For context: she was about my age, player from another city, and I hadn’t really interacted with her all weekend except to notice she was basically handcuffed to this prop staff the whole time.

I didn’t pry, because — again — didn’t know her, didn’t know her character, and my own character had spent the whole weekend being decorative furniture. But I was close enough to overhear the ST say this gem:

> "You’ve done really well. You’ve been getting hit with the plot stick for over a year now, and you’ve handled it really well."



And that was the moment it all clicked. This poor woman had spent over a year — a YEAR — being forced to play a character whose brain was not her own. Her agency? Gone. Her ability to say what her character would do? Gone. She was literally the staff’s chew toy, and apparently this was considered good roleplay.

Like, yeah, I’d be upset too! Imagine showing up to play a game about your badass vampire OC, and instead you spend twelve months being someone else’s meat puppet. She probably had a whole vibe planned — ambitions, plots, personal arcs — and instead she got Plot-Stick’d into submission. And the cherry on the blood-soaked sundae? She didn’t even get to be involved in the resolution! That big finale where they exorcised the ghost of Mithras or Caine’s half-brother or whatever-the-hell from the magic staff? Guess who got to do the saving-the-day part? That’s right: the same high-XP boomer vamps who hogged every other major plotline, probably rolling dice with one hand and patting themselves on the back with the other.

And you know what? I think about her a lot. Plot Stick Woman. My little larping ghost of Christmas Past, whispering in my ear, reminding me why I don’t do this nonsense anymore. She had her agency taken from her. I had mine quietly starved to death by neglect. Neither of us got to have fun. But she stuck it out for a year and still showed up, and honestly? She deserved better. We all did.

Anyway, every time I think about going back to LARP, I remember that weekend. I remember Plot Stick Woman. And then I close my laptop, pour myself a drink, and thank my lucky stars I never have to get possessed by a prop for twelve straight months just to give someone else a cool character arc ever again.

Okay, so I fell down a rabbit hole, and friends, I have zero regrets. The rabbit hole’s name? Kindaichi Case Files — aka The File of Young Kindaichi, aka Kindaichi Shōnen no Jikenbo aka that anime that wants you to question why you ever trusted anyone, ever.

Here’s the deal: I found this because the main character is literally the grandson of Kosuke Kindaichi, the OG “Japanese Sherlock Holmes” from like seventy books back in the 1940s. That’s seventy mysteries, people. SEVENTY. And because I have a weirdly specific craving for locked-room murders and traumatic backstories on a Wednesday night, I was like “yes, inject this directly into my bloodstream.” I almost went with Detective Conan (aka Case Closed), but that one’s a little more candy-colored, a little more ‘Saturday morning cartoon where people die politely.’ I wanted a darker flavor. I wanted screaming. I wanted the trauma. And oh, my god, did this deliver.

I thought I was signing up for a chill little ‘teen solves murder’ show. Nope. This thing went full horror vibes from the very first case. Corpses in ritual poses, heads missing, suspects dying in increasingly dramatic ways — all wrapped up in 3-episode arcs, which makes them perfect bite-size little doom-nuggets for your evening binge-watch.

And oh, it was a nightmare trying to find watchable copies of this. I swear I felt like I was committing an actual crime just trying to track this show down, but listen — worth it. 100% worth it. Has anyone else even heard of this show? Because I feel like I’ve uncovered buried treasure and I want to drag everyone else into the pit with me.

SPOILERS FOR THE FIRST FOUR MURDER CASES (aka, why I’m never going to camp again)

School’s Seven Mysteries Murder Case (Episodes 1–3): High school urban legends but make them murdery. We’re talking severed hands in the print room, cursed staircases, ghosts in the biology lab — the full horror starter pack. Hajime Kindaichi and Miyuki Nanase get recruited by the Mystery Club (adorable) and immediately have to deal with dead classmates being staged like spooky art installations. And then the body disappears. AND THEN REAPPEARS. And the killer is cosplaying as the “Afterschool Magician.” It’s equal parts Scooby-Doo and Se7en. The whole thing traces back to a 30-year-old pharmaceutical cover-up, because apparently the school used to be a human-testing facility and somebody decided the best way to keep the secret buried was to hang teenagers from ceilings. 10/10. Traumatizing. Loved it.

Broken Heart Lake Legend Murder Case (Episodes 4–6): Murder. At. The. Lake. Hajime and Miyuki join a group trip to a resort, and boom, there’s a killer in a hockey mask beating people to death like it’s Friday the 13th. The gore levels? High. The body count? HIGHER. The twist? Every single guest survived a cruise ship sinking a year ago, except the killer’s sister-lover (yes, it’s that kind of story) who died because someone saved themselves instead of her. So he invited them all to his murder lodge for vengeance. It’s part tragedy, part slasher film, and part “okay but did we really need the incest reveal in the last five minutes?” Still, very fun, very campy, very much makes me want to never accept a free vacation ever again.

Wax Doll Castle Murder Case (Episodes 7–9): We’re in full-on Clue territory now. A remote castle. A creepy collection of wax dolls of all the guests (because apparently red flags are just home décor now). Someone named “Mr. Redrum” starts taking people out one by one — a detective, a criminal psychologist, a critic. The wax figures are used for body swaps and alibi trickery. I guessed the method halfway through (because clearly I am a genius), but the WHO was such a satisfying reveal. Plus, this story introduces Kengo Akechi, a young hotshot police detective who exists purely to rival Hajime and make him sweat. The tension is immaculate.

Murder by Gentleman Thief (Episodes 10–12): This one SLAPS. Gentleman Thief shows up to steal paintings from a famous artist, except surprise! Murders start happening mid-heist. Hajime and Miyuki have to work out whether the charming Lupin-style thief is actually a murderer (spoiler: nope, she’s just here to have a good time and steal some art). The real culprit is Sakura Gamo, the artist’s fake daughter, who’s been plotting revenge because the guy literally stole her real father’s work. It’s one of those “ohhhh” reveals that makes every previous scene click into place. Loved every second.

I’m honestly obsessed. There are something like 140 episodes of this, plus spin-offs, plus movies, plus a manga backlog so huge I may never sleep again. My only gripe so far? The introductions are sometimes a bit rushed — there’s always at least one suspect where I go “wait, who even are you again?” — and the animation is very ‘90s budget TV. But the voice acting? Phenomenal. Carries the whole show. I’m absolutely watching the next case, preferably with the lights on because wow, these stories do NOT hold back.

Here’s the thing about Duckman: it was a sweaty, chain-smoking, half-deranged cartoon about a lecherous bird with a voice like your uncle after three whiskeys and an AM radio marathon—and somehow, in all that chaos, it still had more actual moral clarity than half the self-important “prestige TV” cigar-chewing drama-dads ever farted out. If you dropped it into 2025, the MAGA clown car would immediately screech “WOKE COMMIE PROPAGANDA!!” in between their podcast ads for tactical beef jerky and gold bricks you can bury in your doomsday bunker.

Because the whole point of Duckman was dunking on exactly those grievance-inflated narcissists. Like—episode two. Not season two, not “oh, once they found their footing.” Episode two. TV literally becomes a substitute religion, complete with a Tammy Faye infomercial preacher running a ratings scam. And the punchline? The message itself turns into another cheap idol. That’s not “woke,” that’s media literacy sharpened into a shiv.

And then there’s “America the Beautiful.” Duckman drafted into a patriotic cosplay cult where politicians whip up immigrant panics to score cheap votes. It’s basically a Fox News chyron but animated with more feathers and fewer felony indictments. If that aired now? Half the Senate would be frothing like rabid Labradors about “cartoon subversion.”

King Chicken, oh sweet poultry fascist, was the prototype for every culture-war grifter in a shiny tie. A moral-panic puppeteer who scapegoats “degenerates” while polishing his halo. You’ve seen this guy a hundred times on cable news inventing outrage because “clicks = mortgage payments.” Duckman roasted that pipeline decades before Ben Shapiro bought his first booster seat.

The show even predicted the endless “political correctness” slap fights. “Color of Naught” basically said: none of you are listening, you’re just LARPing for the cameras. No hashtags, no moral sermons—just a diagnosis of how TV takes nuance, puts it through the meat grinder, and sells you team jerseys instead of thoughts.

And “Dammit, Hollywood”? Pure prophecy. A pre-streaming howl about studio execs sanding off every edge until art becomes one giant Funko Pop. That’s the entire reboot economy in one rant. Today, Twitter would drown in 40-tweet threads calling the writers “fun-haters” while those same writers are begging you to stop eating corporate slop like it’s Michelin cuisine.

And then the meta stuff—“T.V. or Not to Be.” An episode that mocks “message shows” while literally being one. That’s satire so sharp it cuts its own wrists on the way out. Nowadays it’d be branded as “agenda-driven” by people whose actual agenda is “please, God, don’t make me look at myself.”

The finale? A wedding farce nuked mid-altar by a gunshot cliffhanger the network never resolved. No closure, no hand-holding—just a giant nihilistic raspberry aimed at the system that profits off dysfunction and then ghosts you when you want answers. That wasn’t just gutsy; it was spitting in the face of tidy sitcom morality while still laughing through the blood.

And here’s the kicker: the reason it would trigger every conservative podcaster with a webcam ring light is the same reason it was brilliant. It punched up. Always up. The villain wasn’t women, or immigrants, or “the youths,” it was power laundering cruelty through spectacle. It let Duckman be a selfish little gremlin and still said, hey, the bigger villain is the machine chewing us all up.

So yeah—if Duckman premiered today? The chyron writes itself: “Cartoon Bird Hates America.” The usual suspects would sob into their Freedom Fries about “PC Ducks Destroying Family Values,” all while the show is busy holding up a funhouse mirror and laughing hard enough to maybe, maybe make us hear the stupid echo chamber we’ve built.

So, as the duck would say, here's how you do your dance. You put your down DOWN; you thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf! You thrust your pelvis, unf!

You ever notice how every Christian who loses their shit over trans people self-identifying… self-identifies as a Christian?
And every Republican who froths at the mouth about “you can’t just say you are something” has no problem slapping a big red R by their name and calling it a day?

Let’s take a slow, sarcastic stroll through this flaming hypocrisy carnival, shall we?

Exhibit A: Christianity.
There’s no DNA test for Jesus. There’s no baptism chromosome. If I drag you to a lab, you can’t piss on a stick and have it come out “positive for Christ.” Your whole “identity” as a Christian is built on self-declaration. You said the magic words, dunked yourself in some lukewarm water, and boom — new species unlocked: Child of God™.

But apparently, when I say “hey, actually, I’m a woman,” suddenly we need SCIENCE. Suddenly there must be blood tests, bone measurements, and an academic panel of Oxford professors in lab coats stamping my gender like a fucking passport. But when you call yourself “washed in the blood of the Lamb” nobody makes you produce a single fluid sample, do they, Karen?

Exhibit B: Republicans.
Again: no objective metric. It’s not like the hospital slaps a sticker on your ass at birth that says “Future Tax Cuts For The Rich Voter.” You decide you’re a Republican. You self-ID. You tick the little box on the ballot and now you’re part of the club.
And then you go online and scream, “You can’t just identify as something you’re not!” Bitch, your entire political party is made up of people identifying as elephants because it makes them feel big and strong, when in reality you’re just an angry raccoon in a red tie.

And don’t even get me started on the number of them who “identify” as pro-life while also identifying as divorced, adulterous, porn-watching hypocrites. Your identity is built on cosplay and vibes.

Here’s the kicker: self-identification is literally the foundation of human society. Religion? Self-ID. Politics? Self-ID. Nationality? Self-ID. Hell, even sports teams — you identify with Manchester United. You’re not genetically bonded to the football, Brian.

But the second trans people do it? Oh no, suddenly it’s the end of civilization. Suddenly it’s chaos, apocalypse, dogs and cats living together. Somehow it’s fine when you say “I’m a Christian” even though nobody checked your blood type for Jesus antibodies, but I can’t say “I’m a woman” without some smug bastard wanting to inspect my chromosomes like they’re fucking Pokémon cards.

So let’s call it what it is: hypocrisy on stilts. The Christian who says “you can’t just identify as something you’re not” is literally identifying as a Christian without proof. The Republican who says “facts don’t care about your feelings” is literally a feelings-based self-identifier for a political tribe.

If self-identification isn’t real, then neither is your religion, your politics, or your patriotism. And maybe next time you open your mouth to whine about trans people, remember: the only reason you get to belong to your club is because you said so.

And no, Karen, I don’t need a permission slip from God, the government, or Greg Abbott to know who I am.

Here’s the thing they don’t tell you when you start transitioning: yes, you will experience the glorious gender euphoria of eyeliner wings sharp enough to kill a man. Yes, you’ll cry the first time someone casually calls you “miss.” Yes, you’ll rediscover your body like a haunted house that finally got redecorated. But nobody — nobody — warns you about the fucking supermarket.

Every trip to Tesco is an unholy crucible of identity. I walk in just wanting oat milk and tampons, and immediately it becomes a Greek tragedy performed under fluorescent lights. The carts are squeaky, the toddlers are screaming, and I’m trapped in a mortal combat scenario where the final boss is the self-checkout machine screaming: “UNEXPECTED ITEM IN THE BAGGING AREA.” Bitch, so am I.

And don’t get me started on the stares. Oh, the stares. Some people look at me like I’m a lost gender cryptid that wandered out of the woods. Others glance, then triple-take, then whisper like I’m the second coming of Marilyn Manson if he discovered conditioner. And gods forbid an old man decides to cough out a “sir” at me while I’m holding a cucumber. Do you know how much psychic damage that does? It’s not just misgendering — it’s misgendering in PRODUCE. It’s like being shot in the soul while standing next to a pile of aubergines.

And the gendered aisles. THE GENDERED AISLES. Shampoo that screams “FOR MEN: GRIT. GUNS. MOTOR OIL.” next to “FOR WOMEN: Delicate Fairy Water infused with the tears of underpaid interns.” Which one do I buy? Do I want my scalp to smell like diesel or daisies? Am I woman enough for “lavender silk blossom”? Am I man enough to handle “charcoal extreme blast™”? Or am I just standing there sweating, wishing there was a bottle that said “FOR TRANS: We’re Sorry You Have To Overthink Everything, Here’s Some Soap.”

And then there’s the checkout line — the true crucible. Do I look okay? Do I sound okay? Do I hand over my debit card like a girl or like some awkward gremlin fumbling her identity in front of a teenager making £8.50 an hour? Sometimes the cashier smiles, says “have a good day, love,” and my heart combusts into fireworks. Sometimes they go “thank you, sir” and I die right there, surrounded by multipacks of crisps and shame.

Here’s the bitter punchline: for cis people, buying groceries is nothing. For me, it’s gender war. A heroic saga. An odyssey. I stride through Asda like Frodo carrying the One Ring, except my Mordor is the “Express Checkout (10 Items or Fewer).”

And yet… when it goes right? When someone casually gender affirms me while I’m buying frozen pizza? When I get through an entire shopping trip without spiraling into a puddle of dysphoric slime? That’s the trans equivalent of winning an Oscar.

So yeah. The real girlhood rite of passage isn’t first kisses or prom dresses. It’s surviving Aldi on a Saturday.

There I was, skipping merrily towards a table at a gaming convention, ten dollars poorer and full of foolish optimism. The event blurb promised A Grand Tournament Adventure!—which sounded like a perfect chance to flex my imaginary muscles, smite some imaginary monsters, and maybe impress my partner with my incredible ability to roll sevens at dramatic moments. What I got instead was… well, imagine buying a ticket for a thrilling roller coaster only to find it’s a single, rickety shopping trolley pushed around a parking lot by a man who keeps making seagull noises at you.

We were four souls: my partner, a rogue-playing woman, me, and… Creepy. Creepy will be explained later, because his whole deal deserves its own section in the DSM-6. Then there was our GM—introducing himself with the confidence of a man who had reinvented Dungeons & Dragons. His “innovative system” would, he declared, purge the game of all the “negative and racist elements” baked into the core rules. And how would he achieve this? With the groundbreaking technique of… giving us three piles of paper. Class. Race. Background. Pick one of each. Revolutionary! Margaret Mead is rolling in her grave.

I picked Monk because I wanted to be a close-quarters kung fu menace. Then I looked at the pre-filled name and felt my soul leave my body. “Fu Long Chop.” This was supposed to be the anti-racism version? Buddy, this name sounds like it was rejected from a 1970s martial arts parody for being too much.

Before I could open my mouth, the GM excused himself. “Back in a moment,” he said, and vanished for 20 minutes. Did he go to get a snack? Referee a boxing match? Sit in a dark room questioning his life choices? We never found out. We made our characters without guidance, which is basically the RPG equivalent of trying to build IKEA furniture using only interpretive dance.

When he finally reappeared, I asked, very politely, if I could change the name. He reacted with a facial expression that screamed someone just spilled warm milk on my tax return and emitted a high-pitched, unholy “Eeeeeeeeeh!” Not “Huh?” Not “Why?” Just this shrill, confused kettle noise. I explained the orientalism problem. Another “Eeeeeeeeeh!” By this point, I was starting to wonder if he had only one reaction programmed into his social repertoire.

We begin: an arena, mid-battle, goblins swarming us. Not a bad start! Until Creepy. Creepy did not look at people when they spoke—he stared. Fixed, unblinking, laser-like, as if trying to determine what you’d taste like sautéed. Any time I spoke to my partner or the rogue, Creepy would jump in with something lewd or just… wrong. His entire presence radiated I have a box under my bed labelled “parts.”

My turn comes. I’m ready to unleash my monk fury, flurry of blows primed and loaded. The GM interrupts: “You should use your feat.” The feat is called Leapfrog. It lets me jump over an enemy and hit another one five feet away. Which is adorable, but completely pointless here. Still, he insists—like he’s about to write a dissertation on why this is superior to, you know, actually doing damage. Fine. I Leapfrog. It’s about as exciting as reading a parking receipt. We eventually win, but between the Eeeeehs, the Creepy Gaze, and the crushing sense of wasted potential, I knew—this was going to be one for the blog. Working title: Why I Paid $10 to Play D&D in the Weirdest Fever Dream of My Life.

After the goblins fell, I was ready for something cinematic. A victorious fanfare. A booming announcer voice declaring us champions of Round One. Maybe even some in-game fan art of my monk doing a heroic pose. Instead, the GM, in his best “by the way” tone, dropped: your characters are taken back to their slave pens. Yes. Slave pens. This was, apparently, the first mention of us being enslaved. Not in the description. Not in the session blurb. And absolutely not in the non-existent trigger warnings section, which was as empty as my enthusiasm at this point.

I went still. My face was frozen in a polite, brittle smile that said, “I am currently processing this decision and have decided to delay my existential crisis until later.” The GM, blissfully unaware, launched into what he clearly thought was a rousing pre-battle speech about the prizes awaiting the tournament winner. He even threw in a big “LET’S GO!” cheer, which landed with all the enthusiasm of a sad trombone at a funeral. The atmosphere had gone from Rocky training montage to Les Misérables prison scene in thirty seconds flat.

Then came the part where we were asked what we’d do with our winnings. Creepy, undeterred by concepts like subtlety or boundaries, said he’d buy an island—while making prolonged eye contact with Rogue. Just a reminder: Rogue is a petite Japanese woman about half Creepy’s age. My soul visibly crawled out of my body, muttered “Nope,” and went to sit outside until the scene was over.

We moved on to the “second part” of the tournament—a dungeon crawl. And by crawl, I mean exactly four rooms in a straight line. Imagine paying for an escape room and finding out it’s just a corridor with a mildly aggressive janitor.
Room One: Exposition. Lots of backstory. Nothing to hit. My monk is bored.

Room Two: a trap with cogs and wheels. Rogue asks the GM how her class interacts with the trap. GM replies, “You’re a rogue. You know how rogues work.” Sir. SIR. You spent half an hour earlier bragging about how your classes are “new and improved.” This is literally the first time she’s touched your Frankensteined ruleset. Also: it’s a convention game. Explain things.
Room Three: Pain and Regret. A five-foot-wide bridge over a deep chasm. We cross in single file. Gargoyles swoop in, hover twenty feet away, and start hurling magic blasts. Great for ranged fighters. I, being melee-only, have the combat range of a particularly angry goldfish. Why? Because the GM decided that instead of helping us build functional characters earlier, he’d go on a mysterious half-hour walkabout.

Rogue throws daggers. Cleric casts. Creepy fires something. My turn: “I can’t hit them.” GM: Eeeeeeeh with the facial expression of a man who just discovered his soup is 90% hair. My partner suggests throwing a stone. GM: no stones. I suggest grabbing a cog from the trap in the last room. GM sighs, waves his hand, says fine, and retroactively decides I already had one. I throw it. Miss. Thrilling.

Room Four: healing pool. We all sip politely. Except Creepy. Creepy decides to swim. Naked. Yes. I ask him to stop. He does not. Instead, he launches into a monologue about his character’s genitals. Then about the other characters’ genitals. The GM? Possibly astral projecting to a land where none of us exist. I ask again. No luck. At this point, my fight-or-flight system chooses “flight,” and I excuse myself for a bathroom break.

In the hall, I genuinely consider just leaving. Ten dollars is already gone. My dignity is halfway to the parking lot. But then Rogue comes over, softly checks if I’m okay. I wasn’t—but her kindness is enough to convince me to power through the last 90 minutes. Which, in hindsight, may have been the bravest (and dumbest) decision I made all weekend.

So, hesitantly, I came back to the table for the third and final part of the tournament. My enthusiasm had been whittled down to the emotional equivalent of a damp teabag. Creepy was still there, radiating his unsettling aura like a human Wi-Fi signal you didn’t want to connect to. No clue if the GM had spoken to him—certainly no indication that anyone had considered checking if I was okay. The GM himself seemed gloomier, moodier, and vaguely resentful, like I’d personally stolen his lunch and fed it to a raccoon. Probably because I’d dared to question his problematic PC name, his casual sprinkling of slavery into the game, and maybe because he’d pegged me as “The Awkward One” during the shooting range debacle.

The third trial was set in a large chamber: locked door at the far end, a dragon between us and freedom. Now, a dragon in D&D can be scary-but-beatable at level 3 with the right adjustments. This could have been an exciting challenge! But before we could so much as roll initiative, the GM narrated how all these previously unmentioned “other competitors” rushed in to fight the dragon… and were immediately obliterated. I assume this was supposed to build tension, but it was really just a flashing neon sign that read: YOU CAN’T WIN.

We players started brainstorming alternatives. Could we wait for another team to show up and fight it for us? “There are no other teams,” says the GM. Could we wait until it’s asleep? “It’s a skeleton dragon. It doesn’t sleep.” Excuse me, what? Skeleton dragon? This had never been mentioned before. It was like the GM had pulled it from his back pocket purely to slam dunk our idea into the bin.

Fine, we’ll sneak past it. “Door’s locked. Key’s on a chain around the dragon’s neck. Do you fight the dragon?” At this point, the railroad tracks were visible from space.

Eventually, I say, “Okay, clearly the GM just wants us to fight it, so let’s fight it.” Choo-choo.

We enter combat, halfheartedly. The GM is doing his best sad puppy impression because we’re not leaping in swords-first. And then—magic happens. Rogue says, “I think I can get the key.” Suddenly, teamwork! Cleric distracts the dragon, I throw Rogue onto its back, Creepy runs into position to catch the key. We’re playing the game.

Just as Rogue reaches for the key: “It’s… uhh… melded to the dragon’s body. It can’t be removed.” Of course it is. Rogue slaps her hand on the table: “That’s fine. I have acid!” GM checks her sheet. Yep, it’s there. Rogue melts the chain. We cheer! She throws the key to Creepy.

GM, clearly miffed, asks, “So… you just want to run?” We nod. “Fine. You win.” And just like that, adventure over. No narration of our daring escape. No acknowledgment of a creative win. Just the sound of a GM angrily scooping up maps and muttering about how he “just wanted to make a fun beer-and-pretzels game.”

The room felt like someone had just announced the party was over because they didn’t like the playlist. Players quietly packed up. I offered a handshake and a polite “Thanks for the game.” He ignored me.

In the days after, I had wanted to reach out to give him some tips and advice on how to improve it. But, unsurprisingly, found the GM had blocked me on any social media sites we might have otherwise shared. He probably blames me for it all going south, and to be honest, I get the impression he'd have blamed anyone and anything else for it rather than looking at what actually happened. The whole thing kept replaying in my head—not because it was some epic tale of woe, but because it was such a perfect case study in how not to GM. It wasn’t just the railroading; it was the resistance to player creativity, the weird mood swings, the inability to read the room. A good GM works with their players to make the story exciting. This guy acted like we were NPCs in his solo campaign.

This could have been salvaged so easily. If he’d set the tone clearly from the start—"Hey, this is a quick, silly brawl for fun"—we could have matched that energy. If he’d rolled with our plans instead of swatting them down, we’d have been telling this story with joy instead of disbelief. Even just acknowledging our final plan as clever before ending the game would have sent us home smiling. Instead, we got the tabletop equivalent of a sulking child flipping the Monopoly board.

And the real kicker? I walked away not thinking about the dragon or the battles, but about how exhausting it is to try to have fun with someone who doesn’t want to share it. That’s the part that lingers—and the reason I’ll be politely skipping any table he runs in the future.

This is not a list of quirky little gremlins who forget their dice or make bad puns. This is the rogues’ gallery. The player archetypes that tear campaigns apart at the seams and turn friend groups into scorched-earth battlefields. Every single one of these types has destroyed tables, nuked Discord servers, and made GMs cry into their prep notes. These are not hypothetical. These are real. And they are out there.

1. The Creeper
There’s always one. The guy (it’s almost always a guy) who rolls up a bard with a 20 Charisma and immediately starts trying to bang barmaids, dragons, or worse—other players. He’s got a ‘seduction check’ locked and loaded before the DM even finishes the NPC’s name. At first it’s flirty jokes. Then it’s prolonged descriptions of “how sexy” their character looks while attacking. Then they start targeting the shyest player at the table for in-game ‘romance,’ usually the one least comfortable with confrontation. Before long, the game devolves into softcore fantasy erotica with an audience held hostage. And when someone finally says, “this is making me uncomfortable,” the Creeper flips it—suddenly they’re the victim, whining about censorship and how “you’re ruining my character arc.”

2. The Chaos Agent
You’re trying to build a tense infiltration scene. They’re trying to ride the gelatinous cube. Every plot hook gets ignored, every stealth roll becomes a keg stand, and their idea of teamwork is stabbing the mayor because “it’s what my character would do.” First, it’s funny. Then it’s exhausting. Then it’s actually campaign-derailing. The group tries to plan something meaningful—and this clown sets it on fire for laughs. You know it’s reached terminal velocity when everyone else just stops planning anything because it’s all pointless. Eventually, they do something so colossally stupid—like breaking a sacred artifact or assassinating a king—that the DM is forced to abandon half the story, or everyone else rage-quits.

3. The Feuding Couple
Remember how your campaign was supposed to be about a cool vampire conspiracy? Now it’s about Brian and Jess passive-aggressively flirting, arguing, or crying in character because someone forgot to do the dishes. At first, it’s background noise. Then Jess’s cleric “accidentally” lets Brian’s rogue die. Brian’s rogue “forgets” to heal Jess after combat. Soon the whole campaign is a soap opera written by gas leaks. Players pick sides. The tension becomes a black hole that eats plot, pacing, and patience. Things explode when someone finally confronts them—and they both claim you’re the problem for “making it awkward.”

4. The Narcissist
They don’t just want the spotlight. They are the spotlight. Every subplot must orbit their tragic backstory. Every scene becomes their dramatic monologue. They interrupt other players’ RP, rewrite conversations, and make every emotional beat about themselves. It’s all center-stage, all the time. They slowly start forming out-of-game alliances, feeding drama, testing how much attention they can control. The campaign dies not with a bang, but with every other player checked out—because why bother showing up to the Solo Show featuring Mr. Main Character Syndrome?

5. The Control Freak
Ah yes, the Grand Strategist. The party is not a group of adventurers—it’s an extension of their spreadsheet. They start off helpful, the “planner.” Then they’re telling you which spells to prep, what your character would do, and how your build is wrong. Eventually, they hijack turns, criticize every suboptimal action, and refuse to accept anything outside their flowchart. Sessions become anxiety drills. People stop experimenting or having fun, afraid of messing up the sacred plan. And when someone does finally do something wild or creative, the Control Freak sulks, ragequits, or scolds them like a disappointed parent.

6. The Gaslighter
The master of retroactive truth. First it’s minor misremembrances. Then it’s “you never said that,” “we agreed to a different plan,” “I didn’t betray anyone, you misunderstood.” They twist events, sow doubt, and rewrite the narrative until everyone’s second-guessing their own memory. Confronting them only makes it worse—they double down, deny, deflect. Trust erodes. The table fragments into paranoia. The final straw? Someone brings out session notes or recordings to prove them wrong—and they still insist everyone else is lying.

7. The Rules Lawyer
They don’t love the rules. They weaponize them. The Rules Lawyer will interrupt your character’s dying words to argue about advantage rules. They throw shade at DMs for fudging dice, accuse others of cheating, and bring flowcharts to boss fights. Early on, they seem helpful. But eventually, they challenge every ruling, stall every scene, and derail the vibe to protect their sacred +2 bonus. The real collapse hits when players stop investing in the fiction and start playing defense against the player instead of the monsters.

8. The PvP Instigator
They say it’s “just what their character would do.” Steal from the cleric. Backstab the party face. Leave the tank to die. But what they’re really doing is treating your campaign like a Hunger Games simulator. First it’s little betrayals. Then sabotage. Then a full-on coup mid-session. Everyone else is forced into metagaming just to survive the rogue’s emotional chaos. Eventually, the party splits—or someone pulls the DM aside and says, “I’m not having fun anymore.”

9. The Ghost
At first, it’s “hey, no worries, life happens.” Then it’s every other session. Then it’s always 40 minutes late. Then it’s “forgot my dice, forgot my sheet, forgot we were playing.” They say they care, but their actions don’t show it. The campaign starts warping around their absence. People stop investing in shared plot because one fifth of the group is always MIA. Eventually, someone jokes that their character should just die offscreen. And when the GM finally stops prepping for them, the Ghost gets offended they’re not included anymore.

10. The Gatekeeper
You like your goblin bard? Cute. They’ll explain—loudly—why that’s wrong. They’ll correct your lore, mock your build, and act like having fun the “wrong way” is a sin against Gygax. New players get talked over. Creative characters get nitpicked. Rule of Cool is outlawed. At first it’s annoying. Then it’s alienating. The final snap? When a newbie visibly checks out or rage-quits the group—and the Gatekeeper just smirks like they’ve protected the sanctity of D&D.

11. The Emotional Time Bomb
They’re not just moody. They detonate. A failed roll? Instant sulk. Another player’s spotlight? Quiet resentment. A plot twist that doesn’t go their way? Tears, silence, or storming off. You spend more time emotionally managing them than playing the game. Everyone walks on eggshells. Eventually, the whole table is trapped in their mood ring. The collapse? When someone finally says “can we just play the game?”—and they react like you kicked their dog.

12. The Saboteur
They smile while they steal your group. They seem friendly. They offer to run a one-shot. Then they move it to the same night. Then they “accidentally” recruit all your players. Then they start comparing campaigns and calling theirs more “chill” or “fun.” What begins as overlap becomes undermining. Suddenly your players are distracted. Sessions get skipped. The vibe is poisoned. The betrayal becomes crystal clear when your game is canceled—for theirs—and nobody even says goodbye.

Okay, listen. I know this is gonna get me banned from at least three discords and half a telegram chat, but I need to talk about the Cursed Plague upon this fandom that is YCHs. Yes, Your Character Here. More like Your Culture Hobbled.

Once upon a time, you got furry art to say something. “This is my OC, she’s a vampire bat warlock with six exes and a cursed vibrator that talks.” It was drama! It was narrative! It was porn with plot. Now? You slap your character’s mug onto a pre-drawn spread-eagle fox and pray the artist doesn’t forget your boy has a dick that glows when he's scared.

We used to tell stories. Now it’s “pose #47 but this time the cum sparkles.”

And let me be clear—I love a good cum sparkle. I live for tasteful dick glitter. But sweetie, when the entire fandom becomes a cursed carousel of the same three ass angles and everyone’s staring dead-eyed into the void while getting railed, we’ve lost the spice. We’ve become bimbo McNuggets of porn. Slut-shaped rubber stamps. And sure, I’ll deepthroat a rubber stamp on a Friday night—but I still want it to have a vibe.

It’s not just the sameness—it’s the death of narrative. I don’t need a Rembrandt-level masterpiece, but I do want to feel like my character’s doing more than starring in the seventh copy of “generic wolfboy rides a tail plug in space.” No offense to wolfboy tail-plug-space fans (actually, some offense, you know what you did). But YCHs have basically turned furry art into Gacha Hell. You don’t even know what you’re getting anymore. You’re just throwing $70 at the vague promise of relevance.

And don't come at me with “but artists need to make money!” YES. ABSOLUTELY. FURRY ARTISTS SHOULD BE ABLE TO PAY RENT IN VIBRANT, SWEATY WOLF PELVIS MONEY. But YCHs aren’t freedom, they’re burnout machines. It’s capitalism wearing a paw glove. The same pose a hundred times until the spark’s gone. Artists deserve better than that. Clients deserve better than that. Your femboy kobold fox with the glowing womb tattoo deserves better than that.

YCHs are the fast food of furry art. Cheap, greasy, comforting, and leaves you feeling vaguely ashamed with sauce on your tits. And I’m not judging! Sometimes you want a sketchy $5 futa hyena in a maid dress getting Eiffel Tower’d by twin incubus deer. But when every artist is offering the same pose in five color slots with no soul, it’s less McDonald’s and more “someone printed porn on a napkin and charged you $80 for it.”

You ever try to find one—just one—piece of art where your character’s doing something interesting? Like cooking soup? Reading a book? Getting railed in a book-themed soup kitchen?? Nope. It’s all facesmashed-to-glass doggy style with the same soulless anime moanface and one paw raised like they’re hailing a goddamn cab.

What kills me is this used to be the weirdest, most creative fandom on the planet. You’d commission a picture of your dragon-sonas slow dancing in the rain on a dying planet, and the artist would be like “yeah okay but what if one of them’s a cybernetic bee necromancer” and you’d high-five each other and cry about it. Now it’s just: Here’s a torso. Insert face. Moan optional.

We’ve gone from Michelangelo to Build-a-Fuck.

What happened to creativity? What happened to “my kobold OC is secretly a cursed Egyptian sex mummy who orgasms when someone solves ancient riddles”? THAT was the good shit. That was art. That was culture.

Now it’s just: “Here’s a slot for your sona’s face. The butthole is non-negotiable.”

And the worst part? The poses are so aggressively horny yet so clinical. It’s like getting fisted by a tax form. No kink, no weirdness, no feral joy. Just 20 different furries jacking off to the same two inches of furry dick at a different angle like it’s the Mona Lisa of moaning.

So look, I’m not saying never buy a YCH. We all need to see our sparkledogs choke on demon cock in a neon piss dungeon sometimes. But maybe—just maybe—ask for a little story with your snatch next time. Ask for some narrative with your nut. Ask for weird. Ask for joy. Ask for someone to draw your fursona getting railed while doing their taxes in space.

You deserve more than copy-paste cock. Your character here? They deserve a legacy. Even if that legacy is just “got throatfucked by a minotaur in a public library.”

Because that’s art.

So Dean Cain — yes, that Dean Cain, walking mayonnaise sculpture and former CW-tier Superman — has once again risen from the crypt of D-list right-wing grievance-punditry to gnash his leathery gums about “wokeness.” Specifically, the horrifying, unthinkable idea that Superman — brace yourself — might be portrayed as an immigrant. You know. Like he has been. Since literally 1938. Since page f***ing one.

But sure, Dean. Let’s pretend your 90s hair gel fever dream of Superman — white, straight, quietly Republican, and probably confused by pronouns — is the gold standard. Let’s ignore the fact that Superman was created by two Jewish kids from Cleveland in the 1930s as a power fantasy for the oppressed. Let’s ignore that he’s a refugee, a foundling, a cultural outsider raised in a foreign land, trying desperately to use his power for good in a system that wasn’t made for him. Let’s pretend he’s just Captain America in a cape, but less fun and more "Blue Lives Matter."

No. Actually? F*** that.

Superman isn’t too woke. He isn’t woke enough.

I want a Superman who burns ICE detention camps to the ground with his heat vision. I want him hovering outside police precincts with arms folded, x-raying every desk drawer for illegal weapons and unfiled evidence. I want Clark Kent to write op-eds about systemic racism that get censored by the Daily Planet’s board of directors and then leak them anonymously to Lois through a dead-drop at a queer anarchist coffee shop.

I want a Superman who knows what power is — and chooses not to prop up the corrupt systems that create suffering. Who chooses instead to dismantle them. Gently, kindly, but without compromise. Not because he’s "anti-cop" or "radical," but because he’s Superman, and Superman is supposed to care. That’s his whole thing. He is what power looks like when it loves you.

The best Superman stories have always been about that. About someone with every power in the world choosing empathy, choosing kindness, choosing us. Not choosing the status quo. Not choosing property over people. Not standing for American exceptionalism, but for decency, justice, and the very idea that we could be better.

So if your idea of Superman doesn’t include that? If your Superman is more comfortable posing for military photo ops than helping trans kids feel safe at school? If he flies over Gaza and does nothing? If he smiles at billionaires and frowns at protestors?

Then congratulations: your Superman sucks. He’s not too woke. He’s just asleep.

And frankly? It’s time for him to wake the hell up.

Right, so here’s the situation: I took my old edgy panther OC—yes, that one, the shadowy growlmonster who was basically 80% muscles and 20% brooding—and I yeeted him straight into the gender tornado and he spun out the other side wearing thigh-highs and lip gloss. His name is still Shadwell. He’s still a panther. But now? He’s the moment.

Why? Oh my sweet summer child, WHY NOT.

Listen, the old Shadwell was cool in that “I smoke clove cigarettes in the rain and never call you back” way, which, okay, respect. But after a while it started to feel like I was dragging around a 2007 Hot Topic mannequin with abandonment issues. He had vibes, sure, but they were exclusively the type you get from a guy who listens to Nine Inch Nails and says things like “I’m not like other predators.”

I needed joy. I needed sparkle. I needed a panther who struts into the bar in a crop top and has the confidence to order a milkshake with a glitter straw and still kick your ass in a knife fight. Enter: femboy Shadwell. Same panther, new priorities.

He still has claws. He still has trauma. He just processes it now by doing eyeliner better than me and making every enemy encounter feel like an audition for RuPaul’s Knife Race.

Somewhere between gender envy and “what if he wore mesh and made it YOUR problem,” the new Shadwell was born. He’s dramatic. He’s devastating. He has zero time for your fragile masculinity and will in fact make eye contact as he applies cherry lip balm after punching a fascist.

And frankly? He’s thriving.

People keep asking me—by which I mean nobody asked but I’m answering anyway—why I “changed” him. I didn’t. He evolved. He unlocked a gender subclass. He became more Shadwell than Shadwell ever was. There is no contradiction between being a sleek predator of the night and also doing a little twirl when the wind hits your skirt just right. Gender is a buffet. Shadwell took one look at toxic masculinity and said “mmm no thank you, I’ll have the e-boy special with a side of subtext.”

So yes, my old panther OC is now a femboy. He’s hotter than you. He smells like cherry vape and danger. And if you don’t like it? He’ll wink and walk away. Or maybe maul you. Either way, he looks fabulous doing it.

Long live femboy Shadwell. May your eyeliner be sharp and your enemies confused.

Okay crew, let’s cut the noise and get real about Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail. The hot takes blaming DEI or “woke mandates” for the expansion’s flaws? They’re rubbish. That’s culture war clickbait hiding a simple truth: this disaster is about craft, not caste. It’s about structure, pacing, tone, and execution—and the online conversation backs it up, if you know where to look.

Sure, some players enjoy the new continent’s charm. The tropical setting and job updates landed for many fans. Some reviewers praised the worldbuilding, characters, and visual updates—but even they admit “main story pace occasionally drops off.” And that’s the problem—everything stalls. That “drastic change in pacing and tone” doesn’t land for most players.

Let’s be honest: splitting the expansion into rival halves—an easygoing rite-of-succession travelogue followed by a hypertech invasion and grief arc—was tone whiplash. It’s like two separate games duct-taped together. Gulool’s arc wraps mid-game while Zoraal persists to the end; that redundancy diffuses tension. A single, cohesive antagonist could’ve delivered thematic impact—but instead, we got a diluted version of both.

Wuk Lamat’s presence doesn’t help. She’s earnest, sure—reviewers say she’s a “good,” “endearing” character. But they also agree the writing “weighs her so heavily you get a little sick of her.” Too much focus on her squeezed out secondary character arcs and dragged down pacing. The overexposure isn’t just a matter of taste—it’s a structural flaw. Consider the Crystal Exarch in Shadowbringers, a fan favorite, who didn’t saturate the narrative like this.

Then there’s Sphere—the AI grief vanguard. This concept could have been massive, echoing Wuk’s emotional journey. But she arrives at the tail end of the game, without setup, without weight. The reveal lands like an afterthought rather than an emotional crescendo. It’s a usable metaphor hamstrung by bad timing. Sphere’s whole arc—trapping her people to avoid the pain of grief—could have been a mirror for Wuk’s struggle, but instead it just sits there, undercooked.

And here’s where tonal dissonance really screws you. You don’t always notice it while you’re playing. It’s not like bad dialogue or janky animations where you can point and say “ah yes, garbage.” Tonal problems are stealthy. They whisper rather than shout. You feel them in your bones when a scene falls flat and you can’t explain why. You finish a session with a weird emotional hangover, like you’re full but still hungry. It’s a subconscious ache that tells you something didn’t click, even if you can’t articulate what. That’s what Dawntrail does—it feeds you two different meals and expects you not to notice they’re fighting in your stomach.

Then we’ve got the zones—huge, beautiful, empty. Especially the back half. Once the king dies and things should tighten, the game sprawls instead. The western frontier zone? Gorgeous but narratively pointless. It exists just to be passed through. Then comes the invasion-borderland wasteland, which looks like it should matter emotionally, but functionally it's just another connector. Both serve the same purpose: slow the story to a crawl. It’s padding, and it shows.

Critics across the board have flagged this as a storytelling failure more than a political one. Some called Dawntrail “a great story with a ton of potential… but told so poorly it nearly ruins the whole thing.” Others described it as “the most complicated expansion so far in terms of how great and bad it is.” That is not a condemnation of “wokeness”—that is a masterclass in mismanaging narrative rhythm and theme.

There’s a bigger issue here too: scope and team structure. Quality control slipped. Execution faltered. Even Square Enix acknowledged in earnings reports that engagement was below expectations. That screams resource stretch, editorial confusion, perhaps hand-offs between writing teams.

Yet online discourse kept devolving into “DEI hurt the writing,” sidelining the real issues in favor of culture-war talking points. Meanwhile, the truly toxic behavior targeted voice actor Sena Bryer—transphobic harassment hijacked rational critique. And that’s shameful.

So here’s the brutal, non-negotiable truth: Dawntrail doesn’t fall apart because it's “diverse.” It fails because the bones of its story are crooked. The narrative’s broken in structure and tone, leaves pacing in shambles, buries its best themes, and makes overexposure a feature instead of a flaw. That’s a craft crisis—and until fandom learns to name these failures, we’ll keep blaming everything except the real issues.

Let’s stop losing the plot to culture-war noise. Because when your voice gets drowned out in the reflexive writ of “it’s woke that ruins art,” that’s when we truly lose the ability to talk about storytelling. And yeah, that’s way sadder than any AI who forgot how to feel.

Been binging Doctor Who audio plays lately (because someone still remembers how to write the Doctor), and it just makes the TV episode Interstellar Song Contest hit even worse. We’ve got the Doctor, literal genocide survivor, played by Ncuti bloody Gatwa—a man whose family survived the Rwandan genocide—facing off against a character whose entire species was wiped out in a space ethnic cleansing… and instead of empathy or even a “huh, maybe I’ve been here too,” he straight-up tortures them. The show frames the actual genociders, a mega-corp, as background noise, and the real focus is “ugh, why are survivors of atrocity so angry all the time?” It aired right after Eurovision, a contest actively embroiled in discourse about platforming settler-colonial violence, and the metaphor isn't even subtle. But instead of using sci-fi to punch up, it punches down and sends a clear message: don't resist, don’t grieve too loud, don’t exist if your pain makes the status quo uncomfortable. It tells us that resistance is terrorism and that those crushed by empire should sit quietly so as not to disrupt the vibes. This isn’t just a misstep—it’s ideological rot wrapped in sparkly camp. It’s propaganda. And it’s shameful.

What I want you all to understand is this -
Everyone turned their backs on Gaiman. Fans. Producers. Editors. Industries.
Nobody turned their backs on Rowling.
The difference is that Gaiman targeted women, and Rowling targeted LGBTQ+ folks, and it utterly shows that y'all still don't think LGBTQ+ folks count like the rest of you.

Ah yes, the most sacred incantation of the lazy thinker, the coward's final dodge, the conversational nuke of mediocrity:
“Everyone’s entitled to their opinion.”

What a deeply stupid phrase. What a festering landfill of cowardice we’ve built around those seven little words. It's the last bastion of people who want to say hateful, wrong, damaging things but don’t want to be held accountable for it. It’s the intellectual equivalent of farting in an elevator and insisting it’s your right.

Look. You are allowed to like pineapple on pizza. I am allowed to think that makes you a war criminal. We are all allowed our preferences, our tastes, our subjective experiences of reality. That’s the beauty of existence: we’re all little meat goblins rolling around in the absurdity of life, feeling weird things about weird things. Hurrah.

But that’s not what we mean when we say “opinion,” is it?

Because when your opinion is that trans people don’t deserve rights? When your opinion is that vaccines are a government mind control plot? When your opinion is that the Earth is flat because YouTube told you so, and therefore science is a global hoax? Sorry, that’s not “just your opinion.” That’s ignorance, weaponized. That’s wrong. Not subjectively. Not morally grey. Objectively. Wrong.

Your opinion isn’t valid just because you hold it. You don’t get to bypass fact and consequence with a shrug and a smirk. This isn't some cosmic preschool where everyone's finger-painting on equal footing. Some people know more. Some people study more. Some people have spent their whole lives learning and listening and refining what they believe because it’s backed up by evidence, data, empathy, lived experience, reality.

And some people have spent their lives yelling into mirrors and calling it research.

Let’s be brutally clear: the “opinion” of a climate scientist on climate change is worth more than the “opinion” of your uncle Greg, who once saw a meme about snow in Texas. A medical expert’s opinion on vaccines is worth more than a wellness influencer who sells moon water and vibes. A trans person’s opinion on gender is worth more than J.K. Rowling’s fever dream blog posts of condescending cruelty wrapped in smug imperial grammar.

And when people with power and platforms spew these “opinions,” they’re not just chatting at brunch — they’re shaping policies, targeting communities, and fuelling the bonfire of bad faith. If you punch someone in the face, you don’t get to claim “that’s just my opinion” about their jawline. Shitty opinions lead to shitty actions. Bigotry starts with “just asking questions,” and ends in someone losing healthcare, losing safety, losing their goddamn life.

You know what “just my opinion” really means? It means “I don’t want to change.” It means “I want to be cruel without criticism.” It means “I’d rather cling to my convenient delusions than do the difficult work of being better.”

But we can be better. We should be better. Empathy doesn’t mean letting people believe whatever they want no matter the harm — it means caring enough to challenge them. Education doesn’t mean tolerating lies — it means dragging truth into the light, even when it burns. Opinions can change. That’s the whole goddamn point. Growth isn’t comfortable — but neither is being buried under the weight of everyone else’s entitled ignorance.

So no. Not every opinion deserves respect.

Some opinions deserve a correction.
Some deserve a rebuttal.
And some deserve to be hurled into the sun, still smoldering with the heat of their own self-satisfied stupidity.

And that’s not just my opinion.

That’s reality, baby.

You ever walk into a party and immediately realise everyone’s wearing matching jackets and speaking in a secret code you technically know, but not well enough to use without someone giving you that look like you just licked the punch bowl?

Yeah. Welcome to furry.

Now, don’t get me wrong—this isn’t some tortured yearning to be accepted. I’m not on my knees in the rain, begging to be let into the great warm paw-shaped clubhouse. I have a home already. A gorgeous, noisy, gloriously dysfunctional home made of trans girls with eyeshadow like warpaint, autistic disastergays who hyperfixate on vampire fiction, and people who use voice chat like a walk-in existential therapy booth. That’s my turf. That’s my crypt. I’m not looking to move out.

But sometimes I wander into furry spaces—forums, Telegram groups, Discord servers, the gaping glittering void that is Twitter—and I think: neat. Here are people who, statistically, should be a venn diagram circle directly overlapping mine. Trans? Neurodivergent? Online too long? Identity performance via stylised animal mascot? I should be able to vibe here.

Except I don't. Because here's the thing nobody tells you: in furry, you need a passport. A social ID card. A laminated character sheet that says “hello, I am this particular flavour of dog” with an attached resume detailing your commission history, suit progress, and favourite species-specific pronoun quirks.

I don’t have that.

I don’t have a badge name, or a pile of con selfies where I’m half-posed next to some LED-eyed deer in a crop top, or a Telegram sticker pack of my OC eating ramen and looking bashfully horny. I don’t even have a fursona that anyone knows. No ref sheet. No suit. No art. No pin badge of my character’s butt on a lanyard.

And without that? You’re just a civilian. An NPC. A cryptid lurking at the edge of the con hall who hasn’t unlocked the “speak to dog” dialogue tree.

I've lost count of the number of times I’ve tried to strike up conversation with someone in a space where we absolutely had stuff in common—same shows, same obsessions, same autistic tangents about fictional worldbuilding logistics—only for it to go dead silent the moment they realise I don’t have a fursona to show them. Like: “Oh, you don’t have a suit or an icon of a pastel hyena sniffing roses while wearing thigh-highs? Guess this chat’s over. Goodbye, outsider.”

I’m not exaggerating when I say that being furry-adjacent without proof is like trying to order coffee using interpretive dance. Everyone pretends not to see you until you start flailing hard enough to become meme-worthy.

It’s not that I don’t love anthropomorphic characters. I do. I have a whole feathered gothic disaster of a self-insert that I love to bits (hi, Lenore). But because I’m not known for her—because she doesn’t come with an art trail or a performance history or a glitter-printed badge—I don’t count. It’s like telling someone you’re a Star Trek fan and them going, “Oh yeah? Name every warp core.”

And it sucks. Because you think “oh, these are my people,” only to be met with this weird purity test of fur levels, like some strange gatekeeping Pokémon evolution chart.

The message I keep getting is: “Sure, you're trans and neurodivergent and queer and obsessed with your character... but you're not one of our trans and neurodivergent queers.” Like there’s some branded version of that experience you need to opt into, with a $2,000 suit minimum and a monthly Telegram subscription.

It’s especially infuriating when you're basically just trying to talk. Not sell art. Not promote anything. Not even chase clout. Just talk to other weird internet animals about shared interests, only to be iced out because your Twitter icon isn’t a soft-shaded lynx with bisexual eyeliner.

And now, honest to god, every time I see a cartoon dog avatar online I get this creeping sense of dread. Not because I don’t like them—but because I know I’m about to either be ignored completely, or get the digital equivalent of the suspicious side-eye you give someone who shows up to D&D night and says “what’s a d20?”

It’s gotten to the point where cartoon-animal avatars aren’t “people I can talk to” anymore. They’re a warning: this person won’t speak to you unless you speak their dialect of fur. And that? That’s weak sauce. That’s the mildest, blandest, room-temperature sauce you could possibly ladle over a community that prides itself on being weird and welcoming.

So yeah. I’m not saying I need to be crowned Queen of the Furries (that post is taken, and she’s very fluffy). I’m just saying maybe, maybe, we don’t need to treat identity like a digital passport that only gets stamped if your tail is visible in three-quarters view. Some of us are just trying to exist—queer, autistic, overly dressed, full of angst—and maybe, just maybe, we shouldn’t need a fursona tax ID to get a word in.

Anyway. If you see me standing awkwardly at the punch bowl of the Internet, it’s not because I wandered into the wrong party. I’m already home. I just popped by to see what the neighbours were up to.

And yes. I’m judging your fox icon. Just a little.

Imagine taking a 14-book epic full of prophecy, dread, political intrigue, and rich world-building—and then feeding it into a magic blender that turns everything into CW-tier melodrama and wigs from the Spirit Halloween clearance bin.

I swear half these characters are cosplaying Tumblr headcanons of themselves. Everyone’s hair looks like it’s been mousse’d by a time traveler from 2006. The dialogue has been reduced to “I’m sad and mysterious,” “No I’m sad and mysterious,” and “Let’s dramatically whisper about destiny while standing in the rain.”

Robert Jordan’s ghost is doing laps around the Pattern like it’s a NASCAR track.

They took a complex, slow-burn fantasy about the cyclical nature of time, power, and gender, and gave it the same emotional depth as a bad Shadowhunters episode. And I like trash TV—but this ain’t even good trash. This is trash that smells like it knows better.

Anyway. If you need me, I’ll be in the corner rereading the actual books and muttering “Ta’veren my ass” under my breath.

(Also, how dare they do Lan like that. Unforgivable.)

Let’s talk about the other kind of depression.

Not the cinematic tragedy. Not the sobbing-on-the-bathroom-floor, mascara-smudged, thunderstorm-in-your-ribcage brand. That one has drama, flair, poetry. That one gets novels, Oscar nominations, and charity ballads with sad piano chords in A minor.

No, this one’s quieter. Greyer. This one has the emotional tone of a beige waiting room. It’s not sorrow, not grief, not rage. It’s not even despair, if we’re being honest.

It’s ennui.

Capital E. French and fancy. Sounds better than saying, “I haven’t felt a human emotion in three days but I did eat a crumpet because I had to take a vitamin and didn’t want to die.”

This depression doesn’t cry. It shrugs. It lounges in your brain like a cat on your keyboard, pressing all the wrong buttons and then acting confused when you stop working. It doesn’t scream that life is meaningless—it just kind of... forgets why it ever meant anything to begin with.

Everything is muted. Everything is a little bit too much and not quite enough at the same time.

It’s the fog. The flatline. The absence of joy and sorrow. It’s the middle of the sandwich when you didn’t put enough filling in.

And the worst part?

It’s boring.

I don’t even get the drama. Just a constant parade of “meh.”

So what do you do, when you’ve misplaced your motivation, your spark, your sense of forward motion? What happens when even the idea of joy feels like it requires a permissions slip and two weeks’ notice?

Well.

You rebel.

But not in some big, cinematic, phoenix-rising-from-the-ashes way. Please. That’s exhausting just to think about.

I mean in the smallest ways. The stupid little ways. The petty, human, defiant ways.

This morning, I made my bed. I got back in it fifteen minutes later—but I made it first. That’s called style.

I added cinnamon to my coffee, even though I couldn’t taste the difference, because it made me feel like the kind of person who does that. That’s aspirational.

I replied to two emails. Only two. But those were two more than zero, and sometimes zero is the goal of this particular flavor of depression.

Small wins. Tiny rebellions.

They add up.

Not to some grand, glorious resurrection of your Old Self (who, frankly, was always a bit of a mess too, let’s be real), but to something. A little hum of aliveness.

A flicker. A twitch. A pulse.

See, healing doesn’t always look like progress. Sometimes it looks like washing a fork. Or stretching one leg. Or actually taking your meds before 2pm. Sometimes it’s just being, even if you don’t particularly enjoy the being part that day.

This kind of depression won’t kill you with knives. It’ll do it with nothing. Just a slow drift into blankness, a creeping stillness. So staying in motion, even in silly, stubborn ways, becomes an act of resistance.

You wear the ridiculous socks. You microwave the sad leftovers. You watch The Muppet Movie for the 87th time because you remember what joy sounded like, even if you can’t quite feel it in the moment.

It counts.

It all counts.

I’m not writing this from the far side of recovery, perched on a mountain top with a green smoothie and a motivational quote tattooed on my wrist. I’m writing it from the middle. From the fog. With bed hair. And mismatched pajamas. And last night’s dishes still in the sink.

But I’m still here.

And if you are too?

That’s not nothing.

That’s everything.

So let’s keep showing up.
Let’s keep going.
Let’s make the toast.
Let’s defy the void in house slippers and ironic t-shirts.

Because the apathy can’t kill wonder.
It can only delay it.

And I’ve got time.
And toast.