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Many of us as kids have wandered out of sight of our parents at least once or twice and found we were scared because we were lost all of the sudden, the world suddenly grew 10 sizes larger and emptier and our imaginations filled the gaps with monsters under the bed and in the woods and in those empty liminal hallways, i mean our brain is literally wired for it, we are meant to find predators and patterns and danger, because those of us who learned how to spot danger early were so much more likely to live and pass on our genes through the generations. This led (through a not insignificant amount of time and natural selection) to people who watch horror movies or play horror games for fun, the kind of people who explore abandoned buildings or get lost in the woods to be found weeks later with no recollection of what happened or swear their long dead aunt patty stands at the foot of their bed and stares at them while they sleep every night. Do you feel it? The prickle up your spine? That’s a survival mechanism, it’s meant to protect you from bears and snakes and lions at night, not to make you anxious when nothing is wrong. I mean youre just reading…right? Theres nothing behind you. Breathe a deep sigh of relief, for the person looking at you through your window decided they were too bored to keep stalking you. Did you know that the average person will walk past around 36 murderers in their life, most without even realizing it? Keep reading, surely theres a conclusion here, surely ill make all the tension mean something, surely theres some philosophical meaning behind the ramblings about missing people, liminal spaces, and the monster under the bed…no? Thats a shame.

Im fascinated by how i can get attached to characters and what to know them just as fully as any friend or family member, jon snow from game of thrones, hornet from silksong, pomni from tadc, the doctor of doctor who, iron man, shallan from stormlight archive, i feel like i know these and wish to keep learning more about them the same way i would a friend, i feel like if i were to drop into these worlds and be forced to deal with these characters due to some kind of inciting incident id be able to live in that world and interact with those characters on more than just a level of a fan. And i want to know them, i enjoy knowing them, i appreciate them, theyve been there with me in some of the most important times in my life, and i feel like i can keep their likes and dislikes and goals and routines and life story in my head, for every character ive grown up with. Writing characters has always been hard for me, and i think thats because ive struggled with creating them in a vacuum. Ive tried generators, character sheets, writing outlines, following vibes and aesthetics and mood boards and nothing really sticks. I mean yeah i create the character, but its hard to write something i dont have a relationship with, and for some reason i can never find that relationship with characters i write as easily as characters ive seen on tv or in books.

Fandom communities are, in my opinion, the most wonderful niche of human expression and love i can think of. From the person who created the thing that the community are fans of to the fans themselves, from markiplier to TADC, fandoms are so good for people, because people are so good for people, because creativity is so good for people, and especially because things that bring joy are good for people. We need more joy in all of our lives. Yes theres a time to work, theres a time for grief, theres a time for sitting around doing absolutely jack shit, but people have got to remember to make good things for themselves, make a life you want to live, and fandoms are one of the easiest and best ways to do exactly that. You make friends, you share philosophies and ideas and support and creativity and love for the medium of which you are all fans. Of course theres always the people that want to gatekeep or use the medium for spouting nonsense and harm, but honestly, people need no excuse to harm other people. Yes we are for the most part generally good and chill and caring and kind and intelligent, but badness will always find its way into good things. Thats not a bug, even if it isnt necessarily a feature. Some people just kind of suck. Of course you dont have to suck and you can enjoy whatever you want to enjoy, and i think you should, because we all need more reasons to enjoy today rather than just trying to make it to tomorrow.

Has anyone else seen game of thrones? Ive been watching a fair chunk of youtube shorts recently and clips of the show have started showing up everywhere. I never saw much of the original show or the books, but the clips got me curious so ive started engaging with the franchise more and more, mostly on the wikis. As a writer id be able to die happy if i could build a world that felt lived in and fought over, with characters that care about the world and readers who care about it just as much. Its why i play dnd, ive been running my dnd campaign for about 3 years now, and it’s something deeply important to me and my group, ive expanded the histories out a thousand years and developed family trees and political maps of various regions of the realm and dozens and dozens of factions, some of which the party havent even engaged with. I think thats something ive heard called worldbuilder’s disease, and if it exists i certainly have it. Theres just something so compelling and enticing to me about engaging with a world, be it the real world or a fictional one, and exploring every corner i can get my hands on. Ive always been curious, ever since i was a wee lad. Of course with the spina bifida and weak bones i had a habit of getting into trouble and getting hospitalized for my curiosity and explorative nature. Curiosity killed the cat they say, and thank god im not a cat, because that statement would more than likely hold true for me especially. Anyways, thats all for part two of ramblings, as always, thanks for reading!

Have you noticed that the internet is dead these days? Yes theres pockets here and there of humans doing silly little human things, and heck, theres even some level of genuine human interactions on the regular social media apps. But really, the internet is dead, its been dying since it’s inception, but that death seems to have accelerated with corporatization and bots and llms and content farms. It might just be a side effect of growing up. As the internet matured maybe it’s destiny was to become a dead rotting landscape with little pockets of regrowth here and there. I dont know, in fact i dont know a lot of things, but i do know that the internet, at least for me, has started feeling like something between an echo chamber and a liminal space for years, more and more as time goes on. I feel like im looking into the void, except…no its more like wandering a long abandoned mall. Yeah sure there definitely used to be life here, things to do and see, people to interact with, but certainly not anymore. Whatever life the internet once had is gone, at least in the way we know it. I mean clearly i wouldnt be typing all of this out if i didnt think someone would see it. I mean maybe, but i do expect someone to read this, eventually at least. So clearly the internet isnt really dead, just kind of decaying and leaving scavengers to recollect the pieces and bring life back in pockets. Its cool, thinking of the internet as a living organism and the people who roam its dead corpse as decomposers and scavengers. I mean have you seen human art recently? I saw a video recently by a youtuber called tale foundry, if you havent watched them i highly recommend, but they talk about online spaces much the same as i do here, and in fact their video is what inspired me to write this in the first place. They talk a lot about the different way they have seen decay and rot and renewal cycles in internet spaces, from brainrot to ai slop to goblincore. And its fascinating. Im not sure there was a point to me writing all of this out, but if you read this thanks for coming along for the first installment of something i think im gonna call ramblings for now. Im just gonna type my thoughts up quickly, not worry about who might see them, not worry about formatting or spelling or grammar or punctuation or any of that pesky nonsense for now. Ill probably have more well put together blog posts soon, but look out for these ramblings if you liked this one, i have a lot more random musings where this came from.

Who knows, maybe they'll welcome us home.