Really Helpful Technique ^ Once You Know How To Divide By Halves And Thirds It Makes Drawing Evenly Spaced

Not a woman myself, but dang if I don’t empathize with this. Every time I hear people talking about how not having any close relationships is a red flag, it just deepens this feeling like my life has been irreparably fucked up and there’s no fixing it. And like, I know it’s not true and it’s never too late and all that, but damn if it’s not hard to stay convinced of that sometimes.

Being a girl without close girl friends I spend time with feels like some sort of spiritual jail I've been put in for this particular lifetime and it's such a walk of shame in this day and age like I can't count how many reels or tiktoks I see of girls saying stuff like "girls who don't have girl friends??? RED FLAG!!!" Or like jokes about when you befriend the girl who has no girl friends and then you realize why...yikes! Cause she sucks and is toxic and unlovable! And I'm like ouch, that's tough to hear. I know those narratives are popular because girl friendships can be painful and I'm sure there's lot of people out there who have been deeply unkind whether on purpose or not but I guess it pains me to watch people make laughable comments about lonely women. I feel like being a lonely woman is such a derogatory notion already deeply imbedded in society and sexism that I feel like it's just sort of being reframed in the new age as like "she did that to herself" and that's never true, we are all the result of the love we get or don't and it's definitely our own responsibility how we act and how we heal or don't - but it feels so judgmental sometimes to further "other" women who don't have friends

Scarlet Hollow and Slay the Princess

Okay, brace yourself, we're going full strings-and-corkboard today. Also, there are SO MANY SPOILERS IN THIS POST FOR BOTH GAMES. DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN'T FINISHED AT LEAST ONE PLAYTHROUGH OF BOTH.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way...

It wasn't an accident that we got Slay the Princess when we did, right before the ramp up to Scarlet Hollow's climax begins. Slay the Princess isn't just it's own thing - it's an explicit explanation of the dynamics of Scarlet Hollow. It's a direct metaphor, and may be more than that.

"You are on a path in the woods. At the end of that path is a cabin. In the basement of that cabin is a Princess. You are here to slay her. If you don't, it will mean the end of the world."

There are three forces in both games. We can see that explicitly in Slay the Princess, with The Narrator, The Long Quiet, and The Princess. We can also see it in Scarlet Hollow, with Sybil, Wayne, and Tabitha. Episode 3's tablet spells this out explicitly:

Three wolves, the three forces of the town, surrounding a goat. A sacrifice. That's the Witch, the Entity, and the Scarlets in the context of the vision.

There is a controlling force who tries to convince and cajole and control if that fails, who is immediately suspicious, and while they seem to be against the Princess, they are actually against both forces in play. The force can and does affect the minds of others. It turns people against the other two forces in play. It's friendly, as long as you do what it tells you, but betrays you as well, in the end. The Narrator. Sybil.

A being who is fundamentally disturbing, but whose face is always shadowed and unclear, or outright covered. Despite that, we always see his glowing eyes. He rots slowly as we proceed with the story, eventually rotting away to show his true form, perhaps. He is a fundamentally eternal being, one who cannot be killed permanently. He is reborn into different bodies, over and over. He may represent a "new and unending dawn", eternity unchanging. He also has the most agency of this own, though. He is fundamentally connected to The Princess. There are multiple of him. The Long Quiet. Wayne... or whatever is controlling him.

Then there's a Princess. Feels trapped in a house at the top of a hill, unable to escape unless she is freed by outside forces. A monarch, but actually has the least agency in her situation. Not yet a queen. Despite all of this, she may have the greatest capacity to change, and to change the world around her. Her role changes based on how she's treated and perceived by others. When perceived as a friend deserving of sympathy, she softens into one. When perceived as a harsh being, she is one. She is disturbed by The Long Quiet's appearance, but is inextricably connected to him. The Princess. Tabitha.

Whether Slay the Princess is just a metaphor for what's going on in Scarlet Hollow, or whether these are actual forces that exist in the Scarlet Hollow universe being replicated on a miniature stage is hard to say.

I think, though, that it's hard for me to deny that there is a strong connection between the two games. Perhaps this is why we haven't seen the choice the Mystic can influence yet?

A question I get asked a lot while working at a public library is "how do you deal with homeless people?"

And the answer is, we don't.

The unhoused people who come here seeking refuge 99% of the time understand that they will be kicked out if they misbehave.

The people you have to watch out for are Jessica, who only came because the kid she didn't want had to visit for a homework assignment and she just *needs* to yell at her child for asking to borrow two books or stay an extra five minutes, or Michael, who came in to look at porn on our computers for whatever fucking reason, or Karen who just wanted to come by to throw a fit that the particular book she wanted was checked out and harrass our staff about our collection being too limited.

99% of the time, the people we need to ban are middle to upper-middle class white people while the homeless and mentally ill/disabled people mind their own damn business and are honestly some of the best patrons we have.

I need to know the server

Felt you guys should know but Witch playing the French horn left an impact on my discord server so great that she's become our most used emote in like a week

(we called her 'bwaah')

hell yeah

this is my favorite adventure time monster battle and one of my top 5 adventure time monsters (its dialog is CRITICAL so you better have sound on)

Been doing this a lot lately too!

Brb replacing "I should" with "I have the option/opportunity to" in my internal monologue re: beating myself up over shit that needs doing. Let's see if that works.

I literally just woke up from a dream where chapter 5 was already out

It has begun

Oh how the times change 😂

Still coming to terms with the fact that eight months ago Huntlow was a crack ship with about ten dedicated shippers and about forty fics on AO3, and now it's the 2nd most popular m/f ship on tumblr.