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huggingtentacles · 9 days

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Alright you just beat Elden Ring. Congratulations! You're now one of the cool folks who can actually beat the game, and you're not ready to put it down yet.

Maybe PvP intimidates you and you just wanna explore the world again. You may try a new build sure, but now that you know more about the game, you might wanna try something different, like a challenge run.

"huggingtentacles I am trash at the game there is no way I could do any of the cool runs, I died to Radagon a bazillion times"

NO, You are good enough to try any challenge run! You can define what a challange is for yourself! There is no need to jump into something insane like a rune level 1 run or a torch only run. You can set any restriction you want, and completing the game with an additional challange is immensely more satisfying (and gives you bragging rights)

There are many different challange runs all varying in difficulty. Here are the runs that I've done personally.

Easy:

Region Lock Run — the premise is simple, you can't leave the region you are in unless you best the major boss(es) of that region. You can't go to Liurnia untill you beat Margit, you can't go to Altus untill you beat Rennala, etc. This run is fun because you can't skip over progression (like killing the Caelid dragon early with bleed to be overlevelled for Limgrave) which makes every fight feel appropriately difficult.

Starting Class Run — Only use the gear you start the game with. You can level up and upgrade your weapons and flask, but you can't use any other consumables and talismans you didn't start the game with. This run is quite flexible in difficulty because whether you choose to, say, use ashes of war or different spells or even golden seeds is ultimately up to you. All of them count.

No spirit summons — for some this is just the normal Elden Ring run, but for most it's a challange. While it can be somewhat difficult, not having spirit summons still leaves you with enough options to steamroll through the game if you. The challenge comes from actually learning the bosses and their patterns and engaging with combat more.

No status effects — As simple as it sounds. Perhaps you used to crutch on bleed, frost, rot or poison, now you can't. There are plenty of other very powerful damage options in the game, so the run is definitely not very hard, it only limits your arsenal somewhat.

Spells only/melee only — depending on what your previous run was. If you're used to standing behind and throwing pebbles, picking up a weapon might be a fun new challenge. And if you are used to your Big Sword, it's gonna be kinda hard to adjust to managing your FP and putting together a build.

Medium:

Spirit Summons Only — moderately difficult because it requires rather extensive knowledge of the game's mechanics. The basic premise is that you can only deal damage using spirit summons. You can restrict it to bosses only or to the whole run in general. It's an absolutely hilarious run. The AI built into the game can beat the entire game for you. Including the hardest endgame bosses like Malenia. Also playing as a support, healing and buffing your summons is really fun :)

No Crimson Flask — LISTEN. I swear it's not that hard. Yes it sucks a bit in the early game, but there are so many tools and options available to completely replace your flask with regen and heal spells. Just level up your vigor. This run is incredibly fun and it's good if you are aiming for harder runs in the future but aren't sure if you have it in you. I know you do ;)

Taunter's Tongue Run — Definitely my FAVOURITE of all of them. Its incredibly simple: you get Taunter's Tongue as soon as you get access to Roundtable Hold and you turn it on forever. Fight invaders alone or with a friend in 2v2s. If you don't have any PvP experience, this is one of the ways to learn. By the end of it, you won't be half bad at PvP, trust me (unless you just run away all the time which is also an option)

Hard:

Rune Level 1 is such a difficult run to do, but the cultural legacy of Fromsoft "no leveling up" runs makes the completion of it so desirable. Completing this run basically makes you part of the small section of people who actually know how to fight every single boss without relying on cheap tactics and cheese. You learn how to counter every move most enemies make because of how unforgiving it is.

But what's more fun is the sheer variety. Stat boosting gear is so common in this game you can literally use almost anything you want as a weapon.

Permadeath — If you die, you restart. Use any tools at your disposal to survive, play it safe, level up your vigor. But most importantly, brace for setbacks. Restarting because of a dumb mistake sucks, but that's why it's such an impressive run to complete. If you can take a loss on Elden Beast and make it to the inside of the Erdtree again, you will achieve one of the hardest challanges ER has to offer.

An easier variation of Permadeath would be "no rune loss" run. There are tools the game gives you to avoid losing runes, but it's still a very difficult run.

Torch Only Run — You pick up a standard torch from Church of Elleh and you use it to Kill God.

An easier variation would be Torches Only run which allows you to use the entire arsenal of torches. Still a very difficult run that requires a lot of skill to beat.

Impossible:

No Thinking About Kissing Malenia run — still working on this one. Can't figure it out. If you have advice please DM me

Feel free to add more challange run ideas!

#elden ring #shitpost #elden ring pvp #invader talk #elden ring invasions #elden ring challange runs

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professionalscrublord · 4 months

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The Black Marauder IIC

Turnaround:

WIPs:

The "Black Marauder" is a horror story of a cursed mech. Over the years urban legend has built it up into some kind of extradimensional beast, a living machine that moves of its own volition, consumes the souls of its victims and strikes fear in all that come close to it. It emerges from mist and shadows to kill efficiently and mercilessly before disappearing once more.

So I know the story says it looks like an inner sphere MAD-3R, but the way it's described as looking "Off-proportioned" and "Too smooth, almost organic-looking" makes me think it's a IIC. That and it having "Teeth", which the IIC's array of chin-lasers could be mistaken for. It also has a tendency to oneshot mechs with PPCs to the cockpit, which only Clan PPCs have the damage to do reliably. It performs unusually well in smoke/fog (advanced clan sensors perhaps?). Maybe the pirates didn't recognize what they were looking at given they lived on the opposite side of IS space from the Clan invasion front. It's also black with bits of red, the paint scheme of a certain Wolf's Dragoons "mercenary company" (read: Clan spies roaming IS space) which would explain the lack of factory markings/serial numbers. The stories mention weird behavior and unidentifiable mechanical issues so it could've been left behind since it was a liability, stripped of insignia and left on a forsaken airless asteroid in some random uninhabited system to conceal the trail. That's just my pet theory, anyway.

Pictured: Teefies (and bloody claws)

This one was difficult for a different reason, not painting this time but being my first time working with greenstuff and sculpting/modifying a miniature.

The paint job itself was fairly quick because of the almost uniform coloration despite the number of steps: -Primed with matte black -basecoated with Night Scales metallic black (It barely shows up, there is a faint glitter in some spots but mostly it looks like a slightly lighter black.) -Heavily drybrushed with Rough Iron, a dark rust color metallic -Lighter drybrush with Gunmetal, grayish/silver metallic. at this point I thought it was too light/shiny so I went over some panels with matte black paint, keeping away from the edges I'd drybrushed. -Mars Red in the eyeholes. White on the lasers/cockpit later covered with Red/Green/Blue speedpaint. -Blood Red speedpaint over the "monstrous" bits. It disappeared into the black, until: -Gloss varnish over the speedpaint brought the red back out again. I wanted everything to be black but still have the monster bits to stand out texturally, the gloss makes them glisten nicely. -Anti-shine matte varnish on the rest. That still looks pretty shiny to me but what can you do (Vantablack miniature paint, anyone??) -The label says MAD-BLK in the Standard Galactic Alphabet. At some point I knew how to read/write it after it featured in Minecraft enchantments, though by now I lost that and had to look it up.

The sculpting was interesting. -Green stuff is tacky and sticks to my fingers when fresh, hard to apply to the model in a careful manner, but is pretty easily workable on the model, once it's on. At some points I used metal sculpting tools almost like chopsticks to avoid touching it with my hands. I twisted a pointed tool like a little drill bit to get the eyeholes in. -Getting closer to the 1hr mark it stiffens up and becomes the opposite. Easier to apply and get off my fingers but harder to work into the shapes I want and fit in the crevices for a good hold. -The claws are superglued given they're sticking out a fair bit. Roughed up the plastic surface before applying glue for a better bond. The other greenstuff I trusted to stay on since they were molded into the surfaces pretty closely. -The blood was red ink Speedpaint mixed with good old AK water medium.

I'll have to do more modding in future, truly customize my mechs.

Last Lance of Cardinal Sins featured a Zeus, only too late did I have the idea of modding a ZEU-X with the wing-like cooling vanes. Fortunately I have a King Crab waiting for me (my favorite mech!) to make a prototype KGC-010 with. It has flush-mounted dual PPCs with spiky cooling vanes sticking out the back. Should be fun.

#battletech #mechwarrior #miniature painting #green stuff #modeling #sculpting #art #sci fi #monster #ghost stories #urban legends #eldritch #horror

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cu-taibhseil · 1 year

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i think a lot of people who are working on their grimoire / book of shadows or what have you forget is that it's supposed to be unique. your book of shadows isn't supposed to be filled with generalized information that just any witch can open up and use. you're not marketing your practice to the masses to consume. it's supposed to be unique, and weird, and messy, and filled with information so unique to your own practice that it's borderline gibberish to someone else.

here are some ideas on how to make your grimoire / book of shadows less accessible to other people and more accessible to yourself.

you can have as many books of shadows as your heart desires. you can have one for divination, one for spells, one for mushroom hunting, one you only use in the summer or the winter, etc. you don't have to shove all of your information into one notebook. separating the information will give you more room to go more in-depth for certain subjects. and it will make it harder for people to know exactly what you've got going on, if that's something you're into.

forget about aesthetics. forget about looking cool or legitimate or neat or organized. forget about how someone else would perceive your BoS/grimoire if they found it. if you're a new witch, and especially if you came from tiktok, you need to unlearn that witchcraft requires aesthetics and certain tools in order to be "legitimate." you can use a spiral bound notebook, you can use scraps of paper put in a manila folder, you can use a tumblr blog, you can print out pages from images on Google and put them in a 3 ring binder and call it day, you can use multiple bulletin boards hung up in your kitchen - ALL OF THOSE ARE LEGITIMATE MEDIUMS FOR A BOS! it's not about what looks the best, it's about what's the most functional for you - the term "book" is just a jumping off point.

come up with a written code that only you have the key to. get one from online, take one from history, or make up your own. write your grimoire or just the important pages, or even just the even or odd pages in code. make it so people cannot physically read your BoS. sigils and protections are great, but keeping people physically out is even better. mine is written partially in Scottish Gaelic and partially in a written code that i invented when i was 11. can anyone else read it? no. because that's the point.

go to the craft store and buy a journal lock. put a lock on it. wear the key around your neck. it'll make you feel so powerful, trust me.

include sketches and drawings of plants, animals, your altar, your house, you, your pets, stones, nature, etc. pretend like you're being paid to illustrate a children's book and go nuts. adding little drawings and sketches of the things you use in your practice, or things you see all of the time, or places you go is a great way to set the mood of your grimoire.

along the same lines, use crayons and colored pencils and markers not just black ink. use glitter. use ribbons. use bias tape. go to the craft store and get stickers. put those in there. whatever you think is cute or you like the best.

tape in more pages! if your notebook is only 100 pages long and you know you're going to need more pages, tape some more in! the limit is only how far the rubber band holding your grimoire closed will stretch before snapping (and even then you can just tie it with ribbon or twine or something)

you can also do taped in fold outs for maps, drawings, recipes, etc

why not add polaroid pictures or pictures you printed off google or pictures you got printed at walmart?

you can add stickers and sequins and glitter to the outside too. it doesnt need to look ancient and serious. we dont live in ancient and serious times. get funky with it.

if you've been struggling with your BoS or grimoire i hope this post helps you!

#personal #my craft #witchcraft #witchblr #book of shadows #grimoire #traditional witchcraft #nontraditional witchcraft

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vaciiosol · 1 year

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Art history is good for you and how it impacts your view of the art you consume so quickly everyday thanks to social media giving artist just a second to catch everyone's eye.

If I had the patience and ability to write something interesting I'd make a docuseries myself on the tragedy and struggle online artists/writers face today from the streamline of "content" and fandom impacting how successful they are as well as the persona you have to build in order to be likeable enough to make it.

It's incredibly sad especially with the recent documents that show illustrators are being paid 7.5% of what they used to in the past century and now the struggle artists face with a/i and n/f/ts.

Could have a whole segment on artists/writers underselling themselves below industry standard that's already so low in order to "make it" and how if they don't make fan content for whatever thing is the most popular at the time then they struggle to make an impact or build an audience and how it's even harder for slower artist who cannot hop on "trends" quick enough before the internet moves on.

Do me a favor and watch something today or whenever you can afford the time to just watch 10 minutes of something or even just look at a wiki if you can't sleep before bed. The knowledge is important both as an artist/writer/consumer.

Here's a few recs from me

The History of Gay Adult film (if you're a gay/trans artist/writer/sex worker it's especially good to know the struggle the lgbt community went through at the time porn was being popularized)

Simon Schama's Power of Art (covers some important people who changed how art is made/perceived in their genre/mediums)

John Berger Ways of Seeing (good for people who have never watched or delved into art history before. it's old but still holds up)

add one of your favs if you have one!

#long post #it's important to development of your sense of culture and appreciation of creations imo #ok to reblog in fact would love if u did

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blubberquark · 5 months

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Share Your Anecdotes: Multicore Pessimisation

I took a look at the specs of new 7000 series Threadripper CPUs, and I really don't have any excuse to buy one, even if I had the money to spare. I thought long and hard about different workloads, but nothing came to mind.

Back in university, we had courses about map/reduce clusters, and I experimented with parallel interpreters for Prolog, and distributed computing systems. What I learned is that the potential performance gains from better data structures and algorithms trump the performance gains from fancy hardware, and that there is more to be gained from using the GPU or from re-writing the performance-critical sections in C and making sure your data structures take up less memory than from multi-threaded code. Of course, all this is especially important when you are working in pure Python, because of the GIL.

The performance penalty of parallelisation hits even harder when you try to distribute your computation between different computers over the network, and the overhead of serialisation, communication, and scheduling work can easily exceed the gains of parallel computation, especially for small to medium workloads. If you benchmark your Hadoop cluster on a toy problem, you may well find that it's faster to solve your toy problem on one desktop PC than a whole cluster, because it's a toy problem, and the gains only kick in when your data set is too big to fit on a single computer.

The new Threadripper got me thinking: Has this happened to somebody with just a multicore CPU? Is there software that performs better with 2 cores than with just one, and better with 4 cores than with 2, but substantially worse with 64? It could happen! Deadlocks, livelocks, weird inter-process communication issues where you have one process per core and every one of the 64 processes communicates with the other 63 via pipes? There could be software that has a badly optimised main thread, or a badly optimised work unit scheduler, and the limiting factor is single-thread performance of that scheduler that needs to distribute and integrate work units for 64 threads, to the point where the worker threads are mostly idling and only one core is at 100%.

I am not trying to blame any programmer if this happens. Most likely such software was developed back when quad-core CPUs were a new thing, or even back when there were multi-CPU-socket mainboards, and the developer never imagined that one day there would be Threadrippers on the consumer market. Programs from back then, built for Windows XP, could still run on Windows 10 or 11.

In spite of all this, I suspect that this kind of problem is quite rare in practice. It requires software that spawns one thread or one process per core, but which is deoptimised for more cores, maybe written under the assumption that users have for two to six CPU cores, a user who can afford a Threadripper, and needs a Threadripper, and a workload where the problem is noticeable. You wouldn't get a Threadripper in the first place if it made your workflows slower, so that hypothetical user probably has one main workload that really benefits from the many cores, and another that doesn't.

So, has this happened to you? Dou you have a Threadripper at work? Do you work in bioinformatics or visual effects? Do you encode a lot of video? Do you know a guy who does? Do you own a Threadripper or an Ampere just for the hell of it? Or have you tried to build a Hadoop/Beowulf/OpenMP cluster, only to have your code run slower?

I would love to hear from you.

#programming #algorithms #distributed computing #threadripper #software development

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merakimoonglade · 12 days

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Hello 🌝 Hope it's not a bother, but I do want to know, so I'll pass you this 😅

List 5 things that make you happy, then put this in the askbox for the last 10 people who liked or reblogged something from you! Get to know your mutuals and followers ❤️

Thank you for sending it to me! I'm looking forward to yours and everyone else's answers since I'm new here though I've been on A03 for just over a year. My overly verbose response:

My kids. I have 2. They're great 97% of the time.

Stories. Books, movies, tv, audiobook, play, any format. I've always been drawn to them and been an avid consumer. I usually read a few books at a time; right now it's 4 books plus an audiobook and random fics. Visual medium: I'm super behind everything (I still haven't caught season 2 of Shadow and Bone 😬), but I'm looking forward to Fallout and season 2 of Arcane. The last thing I saw in the theater was Dune, part 2 (I love Villeneuve), and I want to see Monkey Man.

Writing. Splitting hairs and making this it's own thing because it genuinely makes me happy and I feel a need to write. I wrote as a kid then stopped for a long time. and ACOTAR is what got me back into it. I created all these stories for Elain and Azriel and wanted to write them, and now I also have an original work I'm very slowly moving forward on.

Water. 🌊 Bath, pool, ocean, puddle, tide pool. I find it calming.

Massages. The deeper and harder the better. Turn my muscles into jelly and I will be happy the rest of the day.

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wickedcriminal · 1 year

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you’ve made me want to get into fma where should I start

Oh dear that's a tough one hdhdjsksabha. So personally, I watched 2003 first, then watched Brotherhood, then read the manga, and I would recommend that! But that's not the only way you can do it!

The cool thing is that there's no wrong answer, here! You can consume the three versions (the manga, the manga-divergent 2003 series, and the manga-accurate 2009 series) in any order, because they're all complete stories. The fandom is of course split on what version tells the story best.

Me personally, I have no preference, I love them all equally. However there are definitely different strengths to each medium that might make your experience better!

The manga is best at pacing, imo. There are certain story beats that both anime revealed a bit quickly that were better told in manga slowly over time, as well as certain scenes that were taken out entirely that were supposed to enhance the story and characters (particularly the Ishvalan War in Brotherhood's case). It's also the full story that Arakawa wanted to tell, which includes its fair share of comedy, angst, philosophical introspection, and moral dilemma. ALSO you get to read all the omakes from the manga. I cannot stress enough how funny Arakawa is, I highly recommend them.

2003 is best at character!! 2003 breaks away from the manga's story around halfway through (and the fandom is still mixed about the ending), but in return it explores its characters in an extremely profound way that enhances the source material, which makes you care a whole lot more when bad things happen to them. It's also a lot darker and more morally gray than the source material, and it gets pretty heavy at the end. I've heard several people describe it as closer to a seinen than a shonen (though im not versed enough in anime genres to say for sure). Personally I found the philosophy and moral nuance of this one to be my favorite of the bunch.

Brotherhood (2009) knocks it out of the park with presentation!! It's the manga accurate adaptation, but it does cut some of the beginning chapters from the manga to speed past the things that were already explored in 2003, which makes it kinda clunky. Eventually though it does slow down and get really good in its delivery. The fights are amazing, the character wardrobe is varied and fun, the music (especially the OPs and EDs) are phenomenal, the voice acting in both sub and dub are brilliant, the colors are bright, it looks great and the story just doesn't stop moving. It also adds in a few details that weren't in the manga to make certain scenes hit that much harder.

So, which one first? There are multiple ways you can do it! You can follow the order in which it came out; manga first, then 2003, then Brotherhood. This is probably the most effective way to do it, because it's the way the anime producers have expected you to do it while they were still coming out! There are patterns you'll pick up easier in this order.

If you don't want to read the manga, you could still watch 2003 first and then Brotherhood second and still get the same experience! (Some people even suggest watching up to the divergence point in 2003, and then pick up Brotherhood from the beginning, which contextualizes the stuff Brotherhood cut, but that's only if you're not interested in watching 2003 in its entirety, which I'd personally recommend.)

And if 2003's more melancholy and bittersweet tone just isn't doing it for you, that's alright because even by itself Brotherhood is a brilliant watch and it along with the manga is more optimistic in nature. Brotherhood by itself tells the manga's story beautifully, if a bit fast at the beginning. You can always go back to the manga later if you wanted to catch up on the story beats Brotherhood cut. It's up to you!

While I'm here, this is my chance to tell Brotherhood Only's that if you haven't seen 2003, I'd definitely give it a chance!! It really does enhance the source material with its different perspective and exploration of the characters!! Also the animation and soundtrack are absolutely gorgeous and really set the tone for the a very profound anime. Really, don't knock it till you've seen it.

#thanks for giving me the opportunity to gush ajshdhsjakakal #ask #fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood #fullmetal alchemist 2003 #fullmetal alchemist #fma #fmab #fma 03 #anime #anime recommendation

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worldsfromhoney · 7 months

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pristine clean

Masterlist | AO3 | Medium

tw: minor character death, assault

It’s always the ones dumped in a forest that takes the longest to clean.

The dirt gets everywhere.

Through the drag marks (really, not even carried) treading on grass and tearing through (stillness, what a thought) undisturbed bushes, everything gets everywhere. Some bits of rolling pebble dragged from the earth. There’s the occasional (one out of three and I have to wait—) bursting struggle that tears through the forest and makes the encroaching dirt stir away.

Even then (always), It is gone and loses and there’s more dirt that I have to clean up.

Sometimes, when It really (truly and an impossible emotion is there on the edge—) fought, there’ll even be bark pieces I have to pluck out. A delicate (time-consuming and this is why it takes so long) scrape under the nails and wherever-whatever else wielded as broken weapons.

It’s in that struggle that pulls (tug of a noose—) me to take the glance and catch that glimpse (I don’t want to but it’s right there) at the reflections.

When I do, see, and watch the forest visage, I know it’ll take me hours to clean this one.

Today’s a really bad day.

The dirt’s everywhere at everytime for eversolong I can’t even (too muddled and unclean) see if there’s anything left to salvage. The question of is there even anything at all always comes (a nagging thing echoing the answer), rippling across thick layers of dirt.

I have to try, obviously. I always (an oath, I think, to—) take the scraping step, timeless kneel, and the searching reach.

The body’s on its front and I can’t (It can’t, too) see the face. That’s another sign it’s a really bad day—how the dumper’s (gone, tires spitting soil and running) careless throw result in sprawled limbs everywhere for more, more dirt.

Even before the car stopped, I was (am) here. I already saw the struggle and the splatter splash of dirt (so, so much with no consideration for me) going everywhere.

I (am, always) was witness to the moment the screams (useless in this place where I already am), moans, and grunts stopped, silence stretching taut again.

Still.

Still, I wait. I always (why do I and the answer is there, in the corners—) wait before… cleaning.

Kneeling over the body like this, my reach and tearing touch hovering, I wait for It to stir. For the splayed limbs to twitch (fight, fight, they always fight), spasm, and move against the dirt that’s already hardening—rearing, ready to reach and pull.

I always wait (no need, really, but I still—) for that gasping rush of breath.

My head creaks and screeches as I tilt my head to listen for the breath that shakes off the freshest coat of dirt and (just the one thing) pierces through the silence I bring to any place. Because I wait, I look for the cracks and slips—the twitch of a leaf, the cracking peel of bark, and the trying groan of this (my, now and here) forest to stir again.

I wait, like always.

The dripping morning dew doesn’t drop from the leaves and today, like always (I am already here), the body keeps lying on the forest floor and in more, more dirt.

I sigh.

The sound echoes in this warped time, coming out (tips clawing against that dumper’s conscience) and ringing back. It’s a scraping, clinking noise of sharp things—of jagged pieces of mirrors, knives freed from handles, and glass in all its twisted shapes.

It helps, I think, to have a body like this. Where everything sharp is everything me (I am something—old, oath, bound) and it’s easy to clean as it is to be.

Before (when—?), I learned that cleaning’s better to do in layers. Just piercing through the body—skin, skin, flesh, flesh, blood and bone—and cracking It open does too much damage.

Too many risks and too much of a mess, too, that on the really, truly terrible days… they get under my nails and leave stains on me. Cleaning in layers takes longer, though, and today’s a really bad day so the dirt is harder and fresher and everywhere.

Stripping the body of clothes is easy, so I don’t count it as cleaning. It’s nothing and easier since there’s barely anything (don’t they learn? is a silly thought) to tear through and apart, thread by piece and on and on.

It’s the ones that dumpers go to forests for that makes cleaning (so, so, just so—) go too short and long.

The cloth strips are heavy with dirt. Snapping from the tear (easy, just a finger of everything sharp), they flop on either side, curling away from the body. It shatters out, pieces timelessly moving (run, run to what—?) through the forest floor, climbing tree roots, and drowning in stopped streams.

I don’t blame them. The body’s worse. Dirtier. Ruined flesh that even I (that says something) can’t distinguish from salvageable and not.

I’m not surprised, though. After all… it’s the ones dumped in a forest that are the dirtiest.

Still, I sigh again and the sound (disappointment, really, I should stop expecting—) settles over the bare back of the body.

With It lying face down, I can’t see myself through their wide eyes. No reference to tell me when to stop.

There’s no need, though. I don’t need that blankness (a dim light frozen in this time—my time) to see the body’s dirt reflecting on me. I already feel (there’s a weight that crushes, cracks, and I—) the bruises, scars, broken dreams, and wailing horrors dirtying the surface of everything me.

After all, to see how deep I am (was and still, still going) in the dirt has always been more of a… distraction—like a silent order of the body daring to tell me when I can and cannot be.

I cannot see Its eyes so I am gentle in slicing the body open to… clean.

Today really is a very bad day.

It’s a day that brings me to a forest (a horrible, favorite place) with its equally spaced trees, the scent of fresh rain twining with the air. It’s a bad day that makes the trees’ leaves droop with weight from the rain and allows spearing light to pin down the struggle (always, It screams and begs—) into silence.

Today, I get a body that annoyingly doesn’t stop spilling out and drawing in trickling layers of dirt.

The first slice isn’t so bad and (forget, forgot that it never stays still, stupid), at the next, the dirt goes on and out and on me.

It’s everywhere, splattering on my jagged reflections and trying (fools) to stick, dry, and sneak through my joints and shifting edges. They gush (twisted laughter of winners) as layer after next, slice after tear, the dirt doesn’t stop going at me.

I keep cleaning because laughter cannot ring (be) here.

I just snort when the dirt slips out, shredded and shaking as they go (crawl down, up, nowhere) to find the unending end of this (my) forest.

The drops and flecks of dirt that get to (moments and angles that are just so) truly and really run, I simply let go. I let them give the body a lasting caress before they leap and go everywhere—swirling in morning dew drops, jumping from flecks of piercing sky light for momentary shadows, and following the half-healed tire tracks.

It’s already a bad day so I let the occasional dirt slip past, out, and (let, let because as long as I am here—) back to the body again.

Maybe the pranking’s why, when I’m almost through the other end, what’s left and still stirring inside It tries pulling me in.

The strips of flesh that aren’t curling away (blindly afraid to see what they are and what they’ve become) from my jagged ends wrap around whatever they can.

How annoying.

It’s always (never, these never learn from a lost lesson) the strips of flesh and shave of organs seeped in dirt that try this stunt with me. A foolish (and it is) attempt to get me to let go — To stop. For me to stand, leave, and believe there is nothing more here.

It’s foolish because there’s always something to clean.

Always. There is always, and I tear into the body one more time—

I stop and I shine.

The body’s lying on its front and I can’t see it but I feel my smile. Its stretch (scrapes and clinks again but this one is—) on my face as I shrug off the now cowing (dirty, dirty) strips of flesh and sigh.

The sound makes Its soul tremble in my hands.

For all the trouble and time to clean the dirt (I tear, scrape, and it’s an uncaring ravaging I am no different from—), the soul comes out easy. As it shakes and shudders in stunted gasps, I don’t stop shining.

I don’t stop reflecting that cleaned, salvaged light.

There are stains, obviously. In bodies like this—dumped, silenced, and left to sprawl—some dirt stays.

Still. The soul is (always) a bright thing, anyway.

Eventually, It learns how to walk—To let go. To slip out from the grinding (harmless now, as smoothened sharpness) clinks of my hold.

The soul stumbles. The forest floor littered with strips of dirt flesh doesn’t stir. There is no disturbed soil (wet, still wet in this still space we stir), cracked branches, or slips on dew-heavy leaves.

Everything still smells as fresh as this soul that I spent hours (my count of beats, ticks, and marks) cleaning out from the dirt.

It’s always the ones dumped carelessly and back torn open that don’t give me a clear face. Just a shimmer mimicking me (worthy of envy, what a thought) in Its misty, shifting shades and layers.

The stumbling and disorientation’s funny before it no longer is and my hands are over Its eyes.

I don’t touch It. My hands, in their shattering reflections (dark, clean, dirt, light, and over again over—), just hover.

The soul chokes. The sound’s a garbled, wispy thing.

“Is this a dream?” It asks.

I don’t speak. Usually. The words and attempts never sound right (not meant and not made to but still I—) no matter how long I’ve tried—

No matter how long I’ve been this cleaner of souls.

Still.

My hands stay over Its eyes as I let the words work from memory (an impossible emotion again; there and stirring) and out.

“Keep your eyes closed, breathe, and it will be,” I say.

The ones dumped in a forest and call me to try to clean their souls (I can; I am there) always hear me. The incoherency of the words (a kindness that slips, always) washes over them easily, as if it is molten sharpness twining with their wispy light.

This soul is not different. It hears, listens, and breathes.

And I come along as the sound shatters this space between death and discovery.

The rain-burdened leaves start to dry. The bent bows of branches creak back into its close, snuffing out visages of the sky. The forest’s spears of light (letting up and out, easy) turn narrow, into pinpricks, and then—

Nothing.

The forest and the body stop smelling fresh by the time something flickers in my reflections.

There is a muted call (a cry, whisper, fight) and I am gone, off to clean another soul.

#flash fiction #writing #writeblr #speculative fiction #supernatural #weird entity #bee writes some stuff #length is closer to a short story tbh #but just close

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chainmail-butch · 11 months

Text

I'm furious and I need to vent.

Last year I was hired on to Invicta as a researcher. A Byzantinist, specifically. I say hired on but I was never given an employee contract and I didn't file a W-2. I instead have to pay all my taxes out of pocket because my boss refuses to honor his promises (contract, healthcare)

I quickly discovered that my writing was not respected and was only used to glorify war. I discovered that the vast majority of the people who consumed my work would despise me personally and I, in turn, don't like them. But my work was successful. My topics, my writing, my art design, and my direction produced videos that ranged between 'successful' and 'wildly successful.' Around my string of successes the channel rotted. My boss adopted a corner-cutting do-it-cheap-and-shitty attitude which disrespected his viewers and failed to recognize the inherent worth of written and visual mediums as art.

My work continued to hit the mark while my boss continued to deliberately kneecap his staff with constant micromanagement combined with an unwillingness to listen to us (me) when we (I) pointed out that his strategies were failing and that he was setting up a member of his team to fail by giving her (the only other woman on the team) a video series that had already proved itself to be failed format (How They Did It).

Last April, I was given my own series to direct. I managed art design, I managed the research, I managed R&D, I managed the 2D storyboard and I was solely responsible for the 3D storyboard. The results of my project exceeded my wildest dreams.

My boss, predictably, tried to turn the format that I pioneered into a collection of cheap shitty cashgrabs that relied on the words '3D' and an interesting thumbnail.

It didn't work.

And now here we are, at my latest project. It was, once again, a smash hit. This video alone has nearly the same amount of views as all of the videos we've put out in the past month put together.

I was pleased, and I had hoped that this demonstration of my ability would make my boss trust me to run the series as I see fit. Instead all it has done is make him attempt to micromanage even harder.

I've had 3 hour-long arguments with him this week. All of them were to prevent him from taking steps to make the series worse in all quantifiable ways.

I'm so fucking tired.

He called me on my fucking lunch break and I had to argue with him while I had a hunger headache.

I just want some goddamn recognition for all of the work I've put in.

#long post under the cut

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nazuna-tunnel-vision · 5 months

Note

4, 5

tq for sending an ask! 🫶

4: Say something nice about a ship you don't ship

Keito's possessiveness over Kuro is so incredibly funny to me (positive). I want to put him under a microscope I wish I had the time to read his stories.

Actually whatever Keito has with Eichi is incredibly funny too, the line where Keito says "first Eichi finds another friend and now you (Kuro) too?!??" lives rent free in my head even though it's been like two years since I read (I think) Shinsengumi. I also love how bratty Eichi is around Keito. It's so funny and endearing and he sounds like such a pain in the ass but I'm not the one dealing with him so it's just funny and cute instead. RIP Keito but also Keito also clearly cares so much about Eichi and can't quite leave him alone despite everything he says, theyre so ghnggg.

Anyway back to KuroKei the fact that Keito keeps showing Kuro various manga when Kuro isn't really that interested is super cute too. Whatever I've learned through osmosis feels like some nebulous zone between crazy obsession and wholesomeness. Maybe both. Love that. Every time I learn something new about them I like them even more, they sound incredibly entertaining.

5: Something you see in fics a lot and love

Ritsu skinship!!! Ritsu flopping over people he loves!! Ritsu cuddles!! Ritsu skinship is an incredibly important part of his characterisation to me because we have the same love language and idk, it never really gets portrayed very often. Like there are normal hugs when people feel sad or as a greeting and then there's whatever me and Ritsu prefer (always physically attached to someone else like a limpet). This isn't a fanfic-exclusive thing because it comes from canon, but I always love to see it being described as opposed to hearing about it in dialogue-form only in canon.

Writing style wise it'll be characters being introspective and their thoughts being part of the narration. Some fics just go "X did this, then Y did this, and Z did that" but like if I wanted action only I'd go read a manga. I love knowing what the characters are thinking, bonus points if it's in their character voices too. I think weaving a character thoughts into the narration is harder to do in comic formats, which is the other medium I usually consume, because there's only so many thought bubbles you can fit on a page. I like it when characters monologue and get stuck in their heads basically.

Also characters' internal dialogues somehow flow better in fanfic than enstars canon, for some reason. I dunno if it's a language gap or something to do with the dialogue boxes preventing proper paragraphing. Or maybe Akira just likes to insert too many philosophical ideas or literature references that I don't get. Like I can take Ritsu spiralling in fanfic anyday, I eat that shit up, but I never managed to read Shu's Human Comedy monologue about human nature in full.

#asks #clock

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whetstonefires · 7 months

Note

💖🎶🛒

For the fanfic ask meme :3

💖 What made you start writing?

I...okay so there's a dumb literal answer to this I'm going to give first. My sixth grade English class was a two-semester-long creative writing seminar, where we were honestly taught almost nothing; the teacher just. Made us write things. Whatever things. For months.

She was incredibly patient with our baby shit, looking back, although when two of her students started writing execrable sixth grade poetry she set us on each other so we could get feedback without her, and managed not to make it obvious she was trying to escape the horror of sing-song childish scansion and the way kids that age take themselves horribly seriously and you have to not laugh.

Her name was Keely and I owe her, because up to that point I had refused to write my ideas down because if I slowed down enough to get a sentence written out I'd have forgotten all the bits that came after and the story was now dead and stupid and it was the worst, so writing was clearly not for me.

(I couldn't really type at this point, and didn't have reliable computer access anyway, and I'm left-handed, which makes writing longhand slightly slower and more difficult no matter what you do. Also you just don't write fast when you're ten.)

But Keely made me, for months, and it turned out this was a skillset I'd just had to work to acquire, and then I could do it and it wasn't a miserable soul-killing process after all. That's the first time I remember learning that lesson in life, and it's such a useful one. (Technically I went through a similar process with reading several years earlier, but that was partly because some very bad pedagogy put me off it at first, so it was less enlightening.)

Less prosaically, I got stuck on writing because I was a voracious reader and I kept thinking up stories, and writing them down was rewarding.

I find it's a great craft because you can get in all kinds of practice without actually doing it; you can string and edit sentences in your head when you have nothing to do or while doing something boring, and critique fiction you're exposed to, and try to understand literally anything you experience, and it's all applicable. As someone who gets frustrated with 1) materials consumed 2) skill plateaus and 3) having a Thing around after having made it, writing in the era of the word processor and cheap data storage is ideal, because it's both easier to keep my skills growing and harder to notice when they aren't than with most creative outlets, because I can store all the millions of words I've written in an object the size of my thumbnail, and because it's not supposed to do anything useful in the first place. If it does that's a happy bonus but if it doesn't I don't have to feel bad.

Fic is nice because it's got an audience to share the Things with, which makes it even better. And because you get to start at around the complexity level of a third or even fourth draft, skipping a lot of grunt work that I think is honestly overvalued--not that it's not valuable or important skill to have, especially if you want to be a novelist, but also there's a reason people on the whole mostly tell familiar stories over again, but better. The first go will suck in basically any medium. Insisting on starting there every time can lead to subtler skills getting underdeveloped.

🎶 Do you listen to music while you write? What song have you been playing on loop lately?

Occasionally? Most of the time it would just be a distraction I'd have to work through, setting myself up for sensory overload and maybe a migraine.

But when I do it often is a single song on a loop, because the point is that I'm keeping myself suspended in a particular vibe as I pursue a specific scene or character relationship or something. Hasn't happened recently, but I should maybe pull that trick out and see if it helps with any of my stuck pieces.

I seem to recall writing something once to about 19 iterations of Dessa's 'The Lamb?' Oh and several passages of Angels Still Have Faces were written to the Sonata Arctica song I took the title from; it helped me get Angeal to the right state of repressed extreme melodrama.

🛒 What are some common things you incorporate in your fics? Themes, feels, scenes, imagery, etc.

Um. Food? Definitely food, between my strong opinions about subsistence informing social priorities and my personal sense that meals are both a major part of the daily pattern of life and very grounding in a place and body, I come back to it endlessly. 'Two people in a room (or other defined space granting privacy) trying so so hard to communicate' is, you know, pretty common motif but I go embarrassingly hard on it.

I'm a sucker for certain flavors of angst, and for when someone is very hopeless and then someone else gives them support. I think maybe people breaking down and asking for help and then actually getting it? And just how gross and messy it feels to be miserable and how much of it happens in the body.

What else? I feel like a third party would be better able to call me out on my patterns. A lot of them after all are the patterns of my thoughts, to a sufficient extent that I experience the universe in those terms by default and that's why it keeps being there.

When I describe hugs I tend to be very precise about where everyone's arms are because I feel like that's important. I try to be specific about features of nature like the species of a bird or tree or whatever, unless the pov character wouldn't notice such a thing, and even then I often know for the sake of precision. Lots of hand gestures, and putting of one's hands on pieces of scenery and so forth, that's my theater background coming through mostly. A tendency to emphasize the kinetic relationship between objects perhaps a bit more than usual.

If I'm describing a character that has an existing visual form, I drill in on the most distinctive details I can find; this is probably by way of mild face-blindness meaning I care a great deal about whether someone has a crooked eyebrow or distinctive dimpling or something, because I'm not going to learn their face fast enough to get away with not being able to id them and call them by name until then. It usually takes months.

Diana Wynne Jones advised making sure your mental image when you describe something, especially a place, is as precise as possible, so you won't decline into abstraction, and I've found following this advice to reliably net good results. If you only know about the things you actually mention, things get flat real fast.

(The trick then is not getting bogged down in deciding which things to mention.)

I dunno, what would you guys say are my signature moves?

#ask #hoc est meum #corgisenpai #ask game #writing #fanfiction

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evanthenerd83 · 5 months

Text

“This Library? Occupied!”

“Do you guys have a library?”

Anna turned towards me, cocking an eyebrow.

She wore an emerald gown. It exposed both of her shoulders, which were extremely pale.

I could see a mole.

Somebody, maybe Emi, had put her hair up in a ponytail. It would bob whenever she walked or nodded her head.

“Yyyyyyyyyyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeessssssssssssssssssssssssss,” Anna nodded very slowly. “Why?”

She also stared at me. Hard.

I blushed. My hands instinctively went to my pockets, except… I didn’t have any. I was wearing my nightgown.

They were deflected by my hips, wounding up behind my back.

I coughed, avoiding her gaze. “No. No reason.”

‘Smooth move, idiot.’

Anna continued to stare. She drilled a hole through my already pitiful excuse of a… Well, an excuse.

There we were, two girls… just standing in the middle of a hallway, playing the quiet game. During a staring contest. I felt several pairs of eyes glancing our way.

Maids bowed their heads as they passed us. A bald butler came close to bumping into me, but carefully maneuvered around.

I didn’t have an answer for Anna. I hadn’t expected that question. In my mind, while sitting in the medium-sized armchair, I’d imagined this going one of two ways:

“Do you guys have a library?”

“Yes. It’s right over there. Here’s the key. Have fun!”

Or…

“Do you guys have a library?”

“Royals only, peasant.”

That’s it. Either apathetic affirmation or hostile gatekeeping. Maybe a cruel, short giggle fit before my swift, publicized beheading. But not… well-mannered suspicion.

I coughed into my hand, avoiding her gaze. “I… no reason… it’s just…”

I practically choked on my tongue. The words got stuck on a patch of flypaper, dying before they could come out.

Anna blinked.

I wasn’t embarrassed. Far from it. If she’d asked me about what I did as a hobby, I’d have confessed to being a magical girl.

But ask me what my obsession was? I’d have slammed my backpack on the table, unzipped it, and shown her the manga, the fairy tale anthology, and the one rogue light novel stuffed inside.

Yes. I’ll admit it. I’ll scream it from the mountaintops, the wind dramatically tossing my hair.

I loved to read.

I would read at home. I would read on the bus. I would read while navigating the foot traffic in the hallways, where students resembled spawning salmon.

I would even read during class. Which, come to think of it, might explain why Mr. Atlas eventually refused to let me visit the school library after finishing my assignments.

Eh. Whatever.

In terms of what I read… I only checked out my favorite genres. Fantasy and fairy tales. Maybe a little paranormal romance, if I was feeling particularly lonely.

What?

Being a magical girl doesn’t help you find dating prospects.

You barely have any free time. Witches and monsters constantly assault human cities, and you are responsible for repelling them.

These fights prove to be both time-consuming and exhausting. Casting spells costs large amounts of energy. Some monsters are harder to take down than others.

When you finally eliminate a combatant, you feel like you’ve just ran fifty kilometers. Everything is numb.

Walking turns into stumbling.

No time for dates. Or parties. You miss classes and dances. You focus squarely on your job.

Anyway…

… yeah, I loved to read.

What I didn’t love, however, was when someone teased me about it.

And at my middle school, where hormones turned rational human beings into moody, awkward psychos, someone was always teasing me.

I took a deep, long, shuddering breath. My mind dove headfirst into a foxhole.

“... I wanted to read something.”

Silence.

Anna simply blinked.

I bit my tongue, waiting for the sneer and the laughter. Anna blinked again. Her eyes went dull.

I cleared my throat.

She blinked for a third time, and then…

“YOU LOVE BOOKS TOO?!”

I leaned back. My hair touched the floor.

Anna was staring at me, face now inches from mine. Her teeth gleamed. Gems sparkled within her eyes.

Her eyes burned with childlike enthusiasm. And just a twinge of surprise.

“Y-yes? W-why wouldn’t I?”

I avoided her gaze, instead focusing on a corner of the ceiling.

We were so, so close. I could practically smell the flatcake she’d had for breakfast.

Not to mention her shampoo.

The scent hit my nose, and I instantly blushed. Strawberry. Or this world’s equivalent of strawberry.

Yes.

I know. Creepy.

But look, I couldn’t help it. We really were that close.

Anna didn’t seem to notice. She was too busy jumping, hair slapping her face with every ascent. Heels kept clicking against the floor.

She was also clapping.

It sounded like an automatic machine gun. Being fired by a little girl. Who’d just run into a friendly face.

My mind slowly lifted its head. It began surveying the battlefield, then sighed in relief. False alarm.

Anna suddenly grabbed my hands, then dragged me down the hallway.

The Grand Royal Library made quite an unusual first impression.

“Oh my god,” I gasped.

Anna stepped back. She crouched in the doorway, her body barely filling its girth.

The door had been big. Not as imposing as the others. And there were a lot of doors here, millions even, that might’ve given those a run for their money.

It was carved from deep crimson wood. Swirling lines curved around a golden knob.

Certain patterns caught my attention. Leafs. Trees. Streams converging.

But my eyes only lingered on these for a millisecond, because Anna soon clapped her hands.

Light flared into being. Flames whipped about, briefly illuminating a massive room, walls taller than anything I’d ever seen.

The ceiling loomed beyond their reach.

My mouth fell open.

It hit the floor.

“O…”

Anna giggled. She leaned against the door, arms crossed. “Amazing isn’t it?”

“... M…”

My jaws swung side to side. They creaked.

“... G!”

Bookshelves.

Tons of them. Millions of them. I couldn’t even tell where one ended and another began.

Nor how many rows each had. They seemed to extend into the sky, boundless; unrestricted by the laws of physics.

Just like with the Royal Castle.

And the books? Dear goddess, the books!

Big books. Small books. Books with labeled spines, titles unreadable, and books without labels themselves. Books that were close to collapsing into dust at the gentlest touch. Books hard as iron.

Books standing upright. Books floating in midair. Books standing stock still. Books vibrating and humming. Books knocking against their neighbors. Books dripping with these unrecognizable fluids.

Books of all sorts and kinds.

Books I desperately wanted to touch.

My hands clenched and unclenched.

“U-uh,” Anna blinked. “J-Juby?”

“Haaaaaaa, haaaaaaaaaa, haaaaaaaaaaaa…”

“Juby? You’re bleeding.”

Anna weakly pointed at her own nose.

“S-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s…”

I took a step. Well, it was more of a stumble. Warmth flooded my body. You could’ve seen steam wafting up from my forehead. Which might as well have been burning bright red.

Anna cringed. “You’re also drooling.”

“Heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh,” I walked towards the nearest shelf. One stumble at a time.

This was perfect.

Paradise.

Heaven among heavens.

So many books to read. To sink deep into, like a stone falling into a pond.

Did this fantasy world have fairy tales of its own? It probably did. It had to. Ithyca itself was the stuff of fairy tales, with magic, elves, and cursed swords.

In any case, I intended to find out.

“Should I call for a healing mage?”

Immediately.

I began scanning the shelf one book at a time. Committing their titles to memory at a snail’s pace. Each cover was, thankfully, a different color than the rest.

Certain Tasks For Certain Classes.

Harnessing Your Innate Magical Potential For Magicless Dummies.

On and on they went.

The Demontongue-English Dictionary: Second Edition.

How To Cook Spriggans, Will-o-the-Wisps, & Other Pests.

Designing Your Very Own Familiar.

As I read more spines, the elation I had been feeling began to slowly… disappear. My finger traced disappointment after disappointment.

Goddess Dares You To Jump: Is YOUR Child Using Windleweed?

The History of Ithyca.

Witchcraft In Heresberg.

As The Sun Goes Down.

Eureka! A novel! I reached for the brick-sized paperback, hands trembling from anticipation. Expectations ran rampant. What would I find? A gothic romance? A dark fantasy epic about demons turning on their own kind?

My fingers inched closer towards…

“Gah! What’s that doing here?!”

I blinked. Where ATSGD had once been, only empty space.

A gap between two encyclopedias. Dust.

I turned towards Anna, who was now standing beside me. She clutched it. Both of her cheeks flushed bright red.

Her eyes were wider than mine.

“What’s wro—”

I went to grab it.

But the princess apparently had other plans. She recoiled from my empty hand, twisting away, curling inward. As if to protect some secret treasure.

Her body grew even redder than before.

The air between us got slightly warmer.

“You… You can’t read this bo-book.”

Shock turned into confusion.

“Why not?”

Anna’s face exploded into a supernova. Pure unadulterated embarrassment. Her eyes popped out of their sockets, looking very much like balloons. That were close to deflating.

I started to sweat. The collar of my white nightgown stuck to my clavicle.

“It… It’s not… Ap-app-appro-appro-appro-appro-appro-appro-appro-appro-appro-appro-appro-appro—”

She kept stammering. Her lips shook harder than San Francisco during the 1900s.

It would have been funny, if she wasn’t clenching the cover of ATSGD with every twitch. Panic settled in. She’d ruin it.

I hate rumpled or cressed, or bent, covers on paperbacks. I’m not sure why. Just seeing one bending upwards sends a sharp electric pulse straight to my brain that says:

NONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONONOONONONOOONONONONONONONONONONO

If I didn’t act fast enough…

“Appropriate? It’s not appropriate? Is that what you’re saying?”

My words might have come out harsher than necessary.

But this was serious.

Anna blinked a few times, then drained of color. The room cooled by several degrees.

She took a deep breath before looking me in the eyes. Speaking of serious. That look could have melted an Obliteride.

“Yes. That’s very much what I am saying, Juby.”

“Why?”

“Be-because…”

I tilted my head.

The princess sighed. She flipped ATSGD upside down and handed it to me. I graciously accepted it.

“Just read the back.”

“Oh. Ok?”

I glanced at the back of the novel.

“But I don’t see why you’d thii—”

I slipped the book back on the shelf.

Anna rubbed my shoulder. “Yeah. I know.”

A few minutes later…

“Why would your father leave that lying around for anyone to find?”

Anna shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Daddy usually keeps that…”

She glanced at ATSGD with muted horror.

“... Filth… in his chambers.”

The princess shuddered. Then shook her head, hair flopping all over.

She looked at me. A smile spread across her face. My heart knocked on my lungs, as if they were drums.

I bit my tongue.

Be still. Be still.

“Nevermind. Doesn’t matter.”

I began to nod.

Anna grabbed my hands, squeezing them.

“I’m just glad you like to read too.”

“U-uh-huh.”

Was I blushing?

I could’ve been blushing.

I definitely was blushing.

My eyes wandered around the room. I began counting the number of cobwebs in the ceiling, which was… Huh. Zero.

Say what you want about their paranoia about witches, and how eager they were to pull out their swords. The people of Ithyca knew how to clean. At least in places where they expected company.

No dust. No errant debris. Everything was polished, glinting, and maintained with utmost care.

One had to be in awe of the servants’ hardworking nature. They must’ve been paid well.

Either that, or the Royal Family hired extreme germaphobes who used weapons-grade cleaning products. Which was the most likely option. All things considered.

They probably screamed at the sight of a dust bunny. Fainted at a fingerprint on a window.

Or—

“Heh.”

“Uh,” someone asked. “Juby?”

“Heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh-heh…”

“What’s so funny?”

Anna blinked, eyes so wide. So blue.

Like the sky. You could get lost in them. I almost started to.

She let go of my hands. That shut up those heckling thoughts, who sat back down. I wiped off my chin.

My blush deepened, a blinking traffic light warning passing motorists that, yes, this road was on fire. Please use extra caution.

Anna held a little heat herself.

“You okay? You always do that, zone out.”

I coughed. “Y-yeah. I’m fine. Just remembered something I saw on TV once.”

Anna tilted her head. “T… V? What is that?”

I almost explained what ‘TV’ stood for.

But I remembered. This was a fantasy world full of magic, witches and wizards; even giant squirrels. One modeled after medieval Europe.

Of course she wouldn’t understand. The only entertainment available ranged from books to plays, at the very least.

I waved my hand.

“Never mind. You wouldn’t get it.”

She tucked a golden strand behind an ear. Her heat disappeared. My own followed suit. We were both left staring in opposite directions.

She checked her black slippers. I had once again focused on the rows and rows of books.

So many to read.

Most were no doubt non-fiction, guides and enyclopedias. Textbooks giving advice on certain topics. How to cast spells. How to catch high-level monsters. Stuff like that.

But there had to be… Something.

Anything.

Poems. Records of battles. Entertainment hiding among all the educational grind.

I decided to ask.

“Are there any… You know?”

“Exciting inclusions?”

I nodded.

“Well,” Anna glanced around the library. “This place is my dad’s, and he’s a history buff, you know, but…”

Her eyes fell upon a shelf near the back. It didn’t seem as tall as the others, it barely overshadowed us. The little sibling.

Each row only held about seven or so tomes.

She sped-walked towards it. I trailed after her.

“... I think… We have a few.”

It held about seven or so tomes, but…

She knelt down, skirt pooling around her.

She pulled one out. The cover was black and smooth. I could see a symbol, think a hexagon inside a tree. It shined beneath the lights.

Upon glimpsing it, my head started to hurt.

… But the tome was thick.

Thicker than the telephone book. Than all of the textbooks I’d carry in my backpack at school, combined.

It swayed.

She stood up.

I don’t know how. From how heavy it looked, she couldn’t have been able to breath. Her spine should’ve cracked.

She spun around. Not a hint of sweat on her face.

She handed it to me. “This?”

I weakly nodded.

“Read the cover page.”

I did.

Knights Of Valor: Ithyca’s Greatest Heroes

I looked up.

Prepared to demure. To explain that by “exciting,” I’d meant fiction.

She fanned herself, both cheeks achieving mass criticality. The air between us had warmed by several thousand degrees. Her eyes were wider than dinner plates.

Sparkles shot off her like fireworks.

“That’s a personal favorite.”

I looked back down.

Shrugged.

“Thanks.”

Before I could walk out the door, though—

A hand grabbed my sleeve, pulling me to a stop. I turned around to see Anna shaking her head.

“What?”

She smiled. “I almost forgot.”

I tucked the eight-to-twenty brick equivalent of a book underneath my arm.

“Forgot wha—”

Movement. The world spinning around me. Shelf, door, shelf, door, shelf, door, shelf, shelf, shelf, shelf, shelf, until—

I landed in an oversized armchair.

And KOV:IGH landed on my chest.

Anna leaned over me, hands on her hips. She looked deadly serious. Like that drill instructor in Tin Foil Jacket.

“Here are some ground rules, Juby.”

I waddled and shook. It wasn’t comfortable, being in such a position. My back hurt a lot more than it did after being rammed by a Obliterod.

And I’d been slammed by a Obliterod many times. Too many times.

The book shifted, ever so slowly. My eyesight grew dark. I couldn’t see Anna any more, just her silhouette.

Then… Finally, the book fell into my lap.

Ah. Fresh air.

How I missed you.

I looked up at her. “O—”

“RULE NUMBER ONE,” a finger in my face. “You can’t take any books outside this room.”

“Why?”

“Because Daddy— er, I mean, Father doesn’t let me.”

“Fair enough. What’s ne—”

“RULE NUMBER TWO,” the finger poked my aching chest. “No food or drinks allowed in the library. Many of the books are zero editions. Which means… No other copies exist, in this world or any other.”

I blinked.

“Wait a minute. That makes no sense. If it’s a zero edition, then it can’t even exist in the first place, si—”

“RULE NUMBER THREE,” the finger tapped the cover of KOV:IGH. “If you need a bookmark, ask me. I’ve got tons.”

I opened my mouth to say something. I don’t remember what exactly. It might have been a question.

Or a “thank you.”

I’ll never know because, before I could…

“Scootch over, please.”

Anna spun around, then plopped herself down.

I scrambled to make room.

Too late. She nearly struck me with an elbow.

Strands of hair whipped my face. Before I could speak, though, the strawberries hit. Sweet and fruity.

Any and all objections died a quick, humane death.

She wiggled, waggled, until she fit neatly into the chair. There was plenty of room. The back was high and curved. We were both dwarfed by it.

“Excuse me.”

I gulped.

My heartbeat was going kilometers a minute.

—

Good thing magical girls can’t have heart attacks.

—

Anna simply smiled at me, sitting upright. Her posture was prim and proper. Befitting of a Princess.

One of her eyebrows arched.

“Well?”

I blinked.

“Go on! Open it! There’s one you might like, in Chapter eight-thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine.”

Ch-chapter… 8,759?

Chapter 8,759?!

The blasted thing had eight thousand chapters?! Seriously?! Why was every book in this world so gosh-darn long?!

Ok.

Whatever.

It doesn’t matter how long it was. I’d read one of Stephanie Queen’s magnum opuses before, a 600 pages long behemoth that took me five months to finish. And I’d managed to survive.

How bad could KOV:IGH be?

I took a deep breath. Then breathed out. Some of the tension floated free. A lot remained trapped inside my chest.

I began reaching for the front cover. My hand shook harder than the Cascadian seduction zone in 1700.

That was when Anna leaned in closer. Her knee met mine, but by complete accident.

I bit my tongue to keep from jumping. No sense scaring the ever living daylights out of the Royal Princess.

The knight’s would never forgive me.

My hands shook as I gripped the cover.

I opened it.

I found the table of contents, itself requiring a table of table of contents.

I flipped to Chapter 8,759.

Anna peered over. “My great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great—”

Just then, a faint knock.

We both looked up. From behind the door came a low coughing sound. Creaking metal.

A familiar voice.

“Uh, Your Little Highness, dinner’s rea—”

“OCCUPIED!”

#evanthenerd83's storytime #this magical girl isn’t a hero #short story #comic fantasy #magical girl #isekai #litRPG #parody #november 2023 #creative writing #original writing

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authorofdragons · 1 year

Text

hi folks welcome to my hell hole, here you will see my oc art and only that bc idk how to draw anything else other than the two goofy men in my head. these are the men

Bonehill is the edgy one and Zerako is the red one. If you like the intellectual x himbo, emo x sunshine, ice x fire, chaos x chaos ships but with a queerplatonic aroace twist. boy howdy youll love these motherfuckers. theyre from my webcomic Skull & Pyro which you can read here on tapas or webtoon. Its a silly good time

I only draw cozy sweet shit, funny shit, and action shit so if your soul is weary from IRL angst, this is the place for you bc if my boys cry I cry harder. For my romance repulsed friends I only draw smooches on da head and cheek, these two dont mouth kiss much (they do once in the comic in ep 12 and i dont plan on it again tbh). they much prefer to headbonk each other like a bonded pair of cats. otherwise you wont find anything mature content here other than cussing to offend god BDKFJDKDKKDD

but did you think i only draw them? absolutely not I want these fuckers to transcend my brain in every medium so you will see their crochet forms in the various genres of cheesy couple photos

I love making them miniature shit and since Im a Christmas starts in October person, run now bc its only going to get worse

Unlike drawing, I do crochet more things than just my OCs, but not by much. I just make whatever my brain grabs onto like a feral moray eel

like rn the brain eel likes elemental mushroom gnomes so Im making those

Otherwise I reblog aroace posts, memes, sloths, and other ppl's art but I want to limit how much I consume this app so it doesnt become Twitter 2.0 for me so hopefully I wont do that Too much.

Click/tap on these hashtags on this post to find the specific things I post:

#oc art - Basically all art of mine LMAO

#crochet - Any crochet works I do

#lifes shit come make something with me - Series in which I do comedic retellings of crafts I make to make my mental health more bearable

#skull & pyro - my "official" tag for anything relating to my webcomic, including memes I reblog that remind me of the boys

Enjoy your stay :]

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definitelyy-not-a-vampire · 7 months

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ASK GAME SPAMERO AYO! (ahem)

Let's see #s 1, 7, 8, 13, 15, 18, 25, and 30 :)

(yet another artist friend who is gonna have to deal with SOO MANY QUESTIONS haha, sorry not sorry, I AM ENDLESSLY CURIOUS AND MUST KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT MY ARTIST FRIENDS AND THEIR PROCESS AND SUCH! 🎊🎊🎊

PLS DON'T APOLOGISE, ASKS MAKE ME V HAPPY INDEEDY! 🥰☺️

This is much more… ex-art student orientated than character design/TSC/CS/ML orientated, I'm sorry! But it was quite nice to reflect on my uni degree and the body of work that I produced during that period of my life!

To make up for it, however, here are a couple of doods :D — a rather surly-looking Jack (wip; you can just about see Lucy in there too) and an adult!Fiera! (I need to update her design, this is just a prototype!)

Art programs you have but don’t use. Adobe Illustrator! I learnt to use it at uni (I studied Illustration and Design) but am much more disposed to Photoshop and Procreate.

A medium of art you don't work in but appreciate. Like a physical medium? Hmm… I’m going to say pastels. There are very few mediums I don’t work in (when I’m actually producing art, that is, lmao). I love oils, acrylics, charcoals. Pretty much everything. But pastels… I’ve never really taken the time to get to know them. Maybe I should!

What's an old project idea that you've lost interest in? During my final year of uni I wrote and illustrated my own children’s book. I am, to this day, quite proud of it and hope to one day finalise the illos. …Maybe. Possibly. I wouldn’t therefore say that I’ve “lost interest” in it, necessarily, but it’s certainly fallen to the wayside (it has after all been four years).

A creator who you admire but whose work isn’t your thing. This is very tricky bc I’m hard pressed to think of any creators whose work isn’t “my thing”. If it’s artsy then I’m gonna enjoy it, no matter what! With that in mind (and if it’s okay?) I may have to amend this to, “a creator who you admire but whose work you could never emulate”, and that creator is Georgia Lowe (@georgialowpapercuts on insta). She makes the most sublime paper cut outs — stunningly intricate, extraordinarily delicate! I adore them! I’m not sure I could ever have the patience to make something that time-consuming.

*Where* do you draw (don't drop your ip address this just means do you doodle at a park or smth). In my flat. Typically while sitting (pretzel-like) on my sofa. I’m very boring! Although I have been known to take a sketchbook to the V&A or the Tate Britain, every once in awhile. Or on a walk around Hyde. It’s not a common occurrence, though. I don’t like to draw in public spaces lest someone ask to see what I’m working on! I’m extraordinarily shy about my work.

An estimate of how many art supplies you’ve broken. Countless, lmao. I am a clumsy bean and shit happens. The most frustrating was when I tore a newly bought canvas. A very big canvas at that. Oh and when I dropped a bag full of chalks and charcoals — makes them so much harder to use! I also snapped a paintbrush once, because I didn’t realise how badly I was bending it while pouring over an exam piece.

Something your art has been compared to that you were NOT inspired by. One of my editorial pieces was once likened to Escher's work, which — while enormously flattering — had not been my intention!

What piece of yours do you think is underrated. Looking back, there are several pieces I submitted as part of my overall body of coursework which I deeply disliked at the time (having been staring at them for months) but am now fairly fond of! One charcoal image of a horse, in particular, springeth to mind.

#TYVM Dani!#This was a lot of fun 🤩#askbox games #art #I'm so sorry for how behind I am in posting Various Things That I've Mentioned Over the Past Few Weeks #I promise it's all coming #reviews #sibling hugs!#life's just a wee bit hectic atm!!#tsc #the santa clause #jack frost #character design

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deramin2 · 9 months

Text

Playing Raji: An Ancient Epic again and I'm so blown away at how it blends ancient storytelling mediums with modern videogames to tell a Hindi epic fantasy story.

It's a Indian game about a brother (Golu) and sister (Raji) who are orphaned and perform as acrobats with in a carnival. When Golu and other children are kidnapped by demons, Raji chases after to rescue him. Sure it's helped by the deities Goddess Durga and Lord Vishnu who also serve as narrators.

The cut scenes are all done in the style of traditional Indian shadow puppetry with Durga and Vishnu telling the story. The game design is based on pahari paintings with architecture designs inspired by medieval Rajasthan.

Along the way are status and reliefs of mythological figures that you can look closer at and hear/read who they are and briefly what they are known for.

There are also mural series with symbolic depictions of story elements. You can examine them and as Vishnu tells story, the figures are highlighted to show who or what each is in the same way a teacher would point to them. It's a super cool way to be introduced to the mythology.

Because she's an acrobat, Raji's fight style revolves around tumbling to avoid damage between attacks. Combat is mostly about figuring out the gimmick of the enemy to dodge them and effectively damage them. The main challenge is getting your hands to do it. You get up to 4 different weapons through the game that favor different fighting styles and you can quickly switch weapons to vary within a fight.

The puzzles aren't very challenging (most are clearly not intended to be), but they do serve to tell the story and highlight specific elements. The disk puzzles reveal Raji's past memories. There cursed tree rotating puzzles symbolize dispelling the evil. They're another way of using traditional art styles to bring the tale to life.

There are also platform challenges where you put your acrobatics (and maneuvering abilities) to the test. Again these aren't particularly hard if you're competent but I personally fail and die frequently doing them and it's just one click below being frustrating for me. I know I CAN do them, I just have to not get turned around.

They're are easy, normal, and hard game settings on Switch, plus story mode (no combat) and one hit kill modes on different platforms so you can really set your experience. It's about 10-12 hours of game play, so long enough to really get into it, but short enough that it won't consume your life. There really isn't any filler. It's a mostly railroaded story with locked perspective telling a specific series of events. It's meant to feel like you're at the feet of a master storyteller telling a well known epic. But that's brought alive with the technology of videogames in a wonderful way.

Do note that you NEED a controller to play this game. The mouse and keyboard controls are much harder and clearly secondary. The controller has aim assist and the mouse and keyboard don't (but it's almost harder to aim manually on the mouse and keyboard). The attacks don't have a good hand feel on mouse and keyboard but a great feel on the controller. I actually bought a controller for my desktop to play it. I'm playing it again on the Switch now and it feels better. Playing it on a TV also really helps you feel the sheer scale of the architecture.

The soundtrack is really cool and never gets old. It really captures the meditative feeling of exploration or the intensity of battle using traditional Indian styles and instruments.

It's currently 66% off on Steam until August 10 for $8.49. Normally $24.99 on all platforms. There's also a demo that lets you play the first level. WELL worth the money.

This is a wonderful indie game with a lot of heart and it's incredibly refreshing to see fantasy that isn't European at all. It's very firmly an Indian story about Indian mythology told using Indian story telling arts reimagined for a more interactive medium. Still hoping one day we get a sequel the door was left open for.

#video games #raji: an ancient epic #indie games #Indian games

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