#is the one with the 'for the love of god not all scifi is like that heres a bunch of scifi reading recs' addition 😭😭😭 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rhyaxxyn · 3 months

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a writeblr resurrection

my name is rhyannyn, and i'm looking to get more involved into the writeblr community after a lengthy hiatus of getting myself and my works in order. i'm always willing to follow new people, and reconnect with writeblrs i knew a few years ago when i was consistently on tumblr (going as kennedy :b)

if you write any of the following, are intrigued by any of the following, or just want to hang out and rip my OCs apart (i've got a list of where you should start, by the way) please feel free to follow and I will follow back. i'm really looking to find writeblrs right now who blogs are focused on writing, as i always love finding new things to read, and new stories to support :)

tragic characters--characters who see no way out, characters who are icarus coded and sisyphus coded AND antigone coded, characters caged by their duty and love and faith and it destroys them

in turn, complex characters with really rich backgrounds

stories influenced by slavic cultures (polish heritage plays a large part in one of my fantasy cultures)

queer fantasy stories by queer voices

FANTASY! CONTEMPORARY FANTASY! SCIFI FANTASY! DARK FANTASY! HIGH FANTASY! URBAN FANTASY! I WILL SCROUNGE THE FLOORS FOR FANTASY AND GORGE MYSELF ON IT!

stories that are anti-colonizer. i like seeing indigenous people win, and i love stories with irish, native american, sammi, and kurdish influences. i like seeing characters cling to who they are and old gods and kind ways while colonizers try to take it away, and i like seeing indigenous people prevail.

worldbuilding with a major focus on family values, religion, and magic.

any and all things dark

slowburn lovers, slowburn friendships, slowburn found family. make it teeth-gritting and loving and heart gouging. i will devour it.

characters who are hurt and traumatized and it isn't the end. characters in the dark who keep going even when there isn't any light in sight.

all things divine and demonic and grimy. i have a taste for violence as long as it serves a purpose to the story and isn't done just for fun

this is a list of things i write, and what i particularly love to read in literature, but i'm willing to follow any writeblrs and hopefully connect with some new and old accounts!

again, i've been off of tumblr for an official two years now (yes my bad, but alas i had the strangest hyperfixation on the job i despise and totally disappeared), but i am holding myself by the throat and forcing myself to resurrect because i am trying to publish a book right now!

oh and my wip page sucks. please avoid it at all costs while i try to edit it :3

#writeblr #writerblr #writing community #oc #worldbuilding #fantasy #fantasy writer #authors of tumblr #my teeth are rotten and my name is changed and I'm clicking my bones back in place #but i am resurrected #new writeblr #ish

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fahye · 9 months

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book recs: august '23

(I want to try and do these posts more frequently because I DEARLY miss yelling about books, txitter is [poop emoji]-ing, and bluesky is promising but I don't have much of an audience there yet)

ok! stuff freya has read recently and enjoyed:

A FIRE BORN OF EXILE by aliette de bodard -- did you enjoy nirvana in fire? this is for YOU. it's a revenge story set in aliette's xuya space opera universe, with a pile of complicated characters with mixed or obscured motives, a sapphic romance, and just really incredible use of worldbuilding and politics.

THE SLEEPING SOLDIER by aster glenn gray -- I am an enormous sucker for aster's historical m/m romances, and this one was incredible. a union soldier goes to sleep in 1865 and wakes up in 1965, and his new college roommate has a series of gay crises about it. sweet, exuberant, well researched. both a wonderful romance and an absolutely fascinating examination of male friendships and homosexuality in two different historical time periods.

A DEADLY EDUCATION by naomi novik -- doing a reread of the first two scholomance books before I dive into the third. these books are so disgustingly tailored to ME, a huge fan of magical academia stories with a truly deliciously unnecessary level of worldbuilding detail about how the magic works (and how the school is trying to kill you).

BATH HAUS by p.j. vernon -- a man goes to a gay bathhouse, cheating on his partner, and narrowly escapes being murdered. things get worse from there. I can only recommend this to you if you enjoy thrillers that STRESS YOU THE FUCK OUT, which I normally don't; I nearly put it down a couple of times, but I HAD to know what was going on. it's a masterclass in propulsive tension and does some really cool things with unreliable narration.

HAVEMERCY by jaida jones and danielle bennett -- seven hundred years late to this party, but OH MY GOD. this is the completely gay political/military fantasy of my dreams (the YEARNING), plus there are magical-mechanical dragons. I will be devouring the other books in this series in short order.

EVERY VERSION OF YOU by grace chan -- a beautiful and fascinating literary scifi book about humanity and family and love, and being given the choice to upload your consciousness to a digital paradise as the planet dies around you. unsurprisingly it deals with some heavy stuff, but it's fantastic. and australian!

A THIEF AND A GENTLEMAN by arden powell -- another m/m romance in arden's flos magicae series. the title alone is probably enough to tell you why I enjoyed it, but I especially liked the way it kept subverting my expectations in favour of more chewy emotional honesty and complexity.

STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER by fern brady -- a memoir by a scottish comedian about being diagnosed with autism in her thirties, and her life up to that point. funny and chaotic and an all-around amazing read. I loved fern on taskmaster and I love her even more now.

#book recs

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teawitchy · 2 months

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An Introduction :)

I'm hoping, maybe, this gets me somewhere on my writing progress, so here goes nothing.

Hi! I'm Hanna (she/her)

I'm on the verge of twenty-seven

Demi and hella bi

Give me all of the tea

New Hampshire born Canadian

I am an avid fan of whatever piques my interest (livin that ADHD life)

Crochet, video games and reading mostly in my down time

Love writing in the realm of science fiction and fantasy--seldom horror which is funny because I am a HUGE Stephen King fan

Grew up writing fanfiction, floated back and forth over the years

I live in BC with my fiance, our shepherd, and two lil leopard geckos

I currently have...oh god, too many stories on the go

I finished NANOWRIMO in 2022, and that is my primary work at the moment

Likely going to post a little bit of everything, really hope to one day get something published!

WIPs (at least the ones w/ decent progress)

Dead Embers

Scifi/fantasy/military-ish

Futuristic post apocalyptic

Powered superhumans and aliens

Variety of queer folk

Going for a Destiny meets FFVII type thing

Themes: Alienation and belonging, Love (romantic and familial)

Hiraeth

Contemporary romance

Three musketeers friendship

Childhood friends to strangers to lovers

Small town romance

Themes: friendship, forgiveness, love

Music inspired

#writers on tumblr #writeblr #writer stuff #on writing #writing

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ceilidho · 4 months

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hi hi hi ceil! I hope you're doing well. My new year's resolution is to read more books, and I was just wondering if there were any you would rec? I really enjoy the stuff you right, and wondered where you get the inspiration from

hi hi!!!! im doing great actually, i had a nice day :))

oh i have SO many!! these are just my personal favourite and i read a lot of literary fiction and non-fiction and 'weird' lit, so hopefully something on this list sounds fun to you:

glass, irony, and god by anne carson [poetry - although i would recommend absolutely anything by anne carson]

half-light: collected poems 1965-2016 by frank bidart [poetry - honestly one of the poets you MUST read if you love poetry in my opinion - bidart, carson, dionne brand, louise gluck, paul celan, maggie nelson, adrienne rich, rainer maria rilke, t.s eliot, jan zwicky, kahlil gibran]

rings of saturn by w.g. sebald [literary fiction - unnamed narrator takes a walking tour of suffolk, england, and the book is about the encoded meaning found in everything; i love sebald so so much]

house of leaves by mark danielewski [architectural / weird horror; cult classic; spooky and eerie in the best way; high concept, a bit complicated to follow but worth it]

drive your plow over the bones of the dead by olga tokarczuk [fiction / thriller, a bit - read this last month and this book hooked me oh my god, it was so good]

severance by ling ma [apocalyptic / post-apocalyptic - possibly one of my fave books in this genre]

the overstory by richard powers [environmental fiction - multiple different narratives that sometimes converge, sometimes don't; truly had me weepy at points] (also, if you like environmental books, the golden spruce by john vaillant)

the complete cosmicomics by italo calvino [strange literary fiction, short stories - oh these are so delightfully strange and zippy and weird, they feel like eating starbursts or something!!!]

underland by robert macfarlane [non-fiction - this consumed me for days when i read oh my god. all about underground structures, catacombs, caves and caving, mines, radioactive waste disposal, etc]

the lonely city by olivia laing [non-fiction - a sad book, but still hopeful; she has such insightful commentary on art and queer history too]

the library at mount char by scott hawkins [weird fiction - so cool, SUCH a cool fun book oh my god. very interesting premise and executed to perfection]

some other names i'd recommend: eileen myles, maggie nelson, rebecca solnit, and ursula k. leguin (for your scifi/fantasy needs)

#book recs

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canmom · 1 month

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Ping-Pong The Animation: eps 1-3

So Masaaki Yuasa [AN12, AN28, AN150] can do no wrong, right? OK, well, I'll admit Ride Your Wave was kinda mid, and Devilman Crybaby goes hard as hell at the beginning and end but sorta treads water in the middle, but... generally speaking! No-one does it like Yuasa.

For reasons I don't really remember, I didn't get very far watching Ping-Pong The Animation some years ago. It should be entirely my shit: Yuasa pulling in a gang of wildly creative animators to put their unique spin on something. However, the first episode didn't entirely hook me, and I never got round to trying the second before something else punted 'watching Ping Pong' out of my brain. ADHD, y'know.

This is a shame because even the very next episode seriously goes, as does the one after that. But also this anime isn't entirely what I was expecting (crazy sakugafest full of Yuasa weirdness). Not to say it doesn't do a lot of really unique stuff with its cinematography and animation, but these first episodes at least are more about like... dissociation! ennui!

But more on that in a mo. First I wanna continue the thread of 'how do you animate sports'.

So, ping-pong, or table tennis. Not a sport I know much about, I'll be honest. (To be fair I don't know a lot about sports in general outside of some very specific niches. The sports I've pursued so far are rather eclectic: swimming, fencing, tai chi chuan, and roller derby; I never got particularly far in any and it's been years since I've done them.)

I'll inevitably be drawing a lot of comparisons to The First Slam Dunk, the other sports anime I've watched recently. I do think it's a productive comparison though! Both of them bring something of the visual language of manga into their presentation in unique ways. I have not yet read the Ping Pong manga, but it's by Taiyō Matsumoto, otherwise known for scifi manga like Tekkonkinkreet (god tier movie, still need to read the manga) and Number Five. So that's a pretty impressive track record!

If you go take a look at some scans of Ping Pong, what will immediately jump out is the shaky, rough line style and unusual camera angles and compositions.

The stylisation is also very different from a lot of manga. Noses are fully drawn, eyes are realistically small, and in contrast, lips and mouths tend to get the emphasis - as well as hands.

Knowing this makes a lot of the creative choices in the anime make sense! It also adopts a shaky lineart style, and makes use of heavy line weights and spotting blacks to add definition. It also has a lot of crazy closeups and layouts, and it loves a visual metaphor. But most of all, the most striking element of this anime is how often it loves to split the picture up into little panels...

...which [eli]'s subs do a really good job of typesetting, incidentally, moving the dialogue to fit naturally into the split composition. And while this shot with 7 smaller shots is perhaps on the extreme end, splits of three or more are pretty frequent. It's a really interesting way to evoke the effect of seeing a whole page of manga

So, as you proooobably know, ping-pong is a game of bouncing balls off a little table and directing them into places the opponent will find it hard to hit them back. From watching this anime I picked up that there are a number of styles of holding the racket (e.g. 'penhold grip' and 'shakehand') and approaches to hitting the ball (e.g. 'chopping'). A lot of this pretty much went over my head, but honestly it didn't matter, since the narrative significance was pretty much always evident.

Compared to basketball, though, ping-pong is a pretty tricky sport to make visually interesting! Sure, you have the players running to and fro, and that can lead to some interesting poses, but how do you get the drama and tension into this?

Ping-pong additionally is all 2D, it doesn't have the sort of resources that Toei could throw at making the best looking 3DCG basketball game ever. It is limited to a TV-feasible drawing count. So it has to make use of clever limited-animation tricks to get the most impact out of fewest drawings.

Let's take an example sequence from episode 3. A minor character is about to get his ass kicked by Tsukimoto. Tsukimoto is something of a pingpong prodigy, and yet he is very emotionally closed-off and even standoffish; he doesn't particularly seem to like the game very much, and doesn't particularly feel inclined to flex on other players and get into the status games. But other players, like Wenge, have heard about him and want to see what he's got.

First we have the setup. Other characters are observing and discussing the game. Since ping-pong tends to involve very rapid exchanges, it can follow the classic shōnen model where there's a lot of talking, flashy fight sequence, more talking...

The cut happens in two steps, maintaining the vertical dividing line. This approach to cutting is used a lot in Ping-Pong, and it's quite a creative way to keep visual interest when it's using a lot of largely static shots. The panel on the right is more animated than the panel on the left, a naturalistic depiction of bouncing the ball off the table.

Things start moving faster here. A rapid pan on the image on the left disguises the fact that this anticipation pose is actually not moving at all. This then goes into a rapid, explosive moment as this guy serves.

The final pose is held for a couple of seconds while the voiceover line discussing his intended move finishes. This sort of elasticity of time is a very Osamu Dezaki type of move - it's something that Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata actually really disliked.

A sound effect hits as Tsukimoto appears on the right in silhouette, anticipating his reaction, and setting up the next shot which leaves the split picture and hides the background for just a moment, as if to put us in Tsukimoto's shoes: he only sees the ball.

Tsukimoto follows through and holds this pose - the ball is the only thing moving here. The ball moves mainly on 2s while Tsukimoto moves on 3s and 2s, and he and the ball move on alternating frames. He holds the pose as the ball zips off to the right (bouncing off the corner of the table), with a speed lines-like effect. At the end of the shot, the ball freezes in the air for the moment while the sound echoes.

The actual table-tennis round lasts just seconds, and the drawing count involved is pretty minimal, but it does a lot with those drawings.

We go back to voiceovers and reactions in the next few shots, returning to the split video as Tsukimoto's opponent thinks about how he'd really rather be at the beach...

Often, these comic-like compositions will change one panel at a time, and while one panel is animated another panel will be still, naturally moving your eyes across the screen. It is an approach similar to some experiments I've seen in 'animated comics' viewed in a web browser, where the panels do not appear all at once, but enter with some animation.

So this is the sort of animation technique that Ping Pong uses. It's effective! Elsewhere the cuts are used in a less direct, continuity-editing way and more in a juxtaposition/montage way. For example, Wenge's desire to return to China is symbolised by match cutting/fading to shots of an aeroplane.

And there is a recurring image, which I'm sure will be expanded on, of Tsukimoto hiding in a cupboard and wishing for a tokusatsu hero to come save him from his isolation. As Tsukimoto's feelings about himself change, the toku hero is replaced by a robot. At this points it starts to feel like an outright Ikuhara anime.

There is occasionally a little bit of CG, mainly when Tsukimoto uses a different type of racket surface, and the way the ball and racket make contact is the crucial thing that the shot is trying to convey...

It gets the job done, but I'm glad they stuck with 2D for most of it.

So I went in the first time expecting like, crazy elaborate sakuga - and to be fair, the OP, animated by none other than Shinya Ohira, delivers on that front - but if anything what I've seen so far in Ping-Pong is actually a triumph of storyboarding and limited animation techniques. I think back then I didn't have the eyes to appreciate it in the same way.

OK, that's the film nerd stuff, but what about the story? Ping Pong follows two school friends, Makoto Tsukimoto aka "Smile" (right), and Yutaka Hoshino aka "Peco" (left). Smile is defined by a flat affect and a standoffish persona. He's just going through the motions. He's very good at ping-pong, but to him it's just a way to pass time, and he's scornful about the idea of caring all that much about it. Much like Shinji with his casette player, Tsukimoto is pretty much always staring at a handheld games console rather than make eye contact with anyone.

Peco on the other hand is the more childish one - playful, kinda arrogant, very much an 'emotions on his sleeve' kinda guy. He sulks when he loses and gloats when he wins, and is constantly seen with bubblegum or other kinds of candy. He provides a lot of our commentary when he chats with the other players.

日本語上手 readers probably noticed the tsuki (moon) vs hoshi (star) symbolism thing they've got going on here!

High-school table tennis in this story seems to be a rather 'tough love' kinda world. Most of these players tend to look down on those who can't meet their level. Going easy on someone is seen as weakness, or cultivating bad habits, by almost everyone. Tsukimoto doesn't play at his full potential because he isn't as invested in winning as all these weirdos, but it seems that might be starting to change...

The coach is interesting. He's an old man and fairly disdainful of the club at large, and prone to speaking English randomly with a heavy accent. But he gets excited at the prospect of getting Tsukimoto to unleash his full potential, in terms that are repeatedly metaphorically compared to romance/marriage.

And when Tsukimoto gets sick of it, he challenges him to a game, with the stakes as...

Cue Makima/Beatrice images here I guess.

Tsukimoto de facto wins when the coach collapses, but this episode marks a change of heart. He starts to think of himself as a robot - the affect of a robot replacing the affect of the toku hero in his fantasy. And in this way he does what people seem to want and plays ping pong with mechanical precision, expressed once again in visual metaphor (shot here from a cool transformation sequence)...

What if I just dissociate harder? This is gonna end well.

So it really is one of those kind of like 'ennui of being a teenager' kind of stories - c.f. say FLCL. 'Boy with complicated emotional landscape' is Yuasa bread and butter, but the particular variant here seems a little unusual for him - they tend to be a little more earnest. I'm curious to see how Tsukimoto develops.

I am definitely enjoying the arrogant Chinese player Kong Wenge. Dude's got a lot of screen presence, and while I'm sure he'll get shown up sooner or later, he makes for a very fun antagonist of sorts.

In comparison to Slam Dunk... one thing that's significantly different about table tennis is that it's an individual rather than a team sport, which means it's harder to have an ensemble cast all contributing to the protagonists' eventual victory - instead it's about a lot of individual arcs interweaving with each other, individual duels. Besides that, it does seem like it will be following a similar arc of a character in an emotional hole (grief for Ryota, depression for Tsukimoto) finding new meaning and purpose through sports - though I can't be sure how things are gonna go for Tsukimoto here!

The tone however is quite different. Even when it's silly, I feel like Slam Dunk is a very sincere story. There's little detachment or irony, or false consciousness - with perhaps the major exception of Ryota's mother, who lets her own grief and trauma get in the way of understanding her son. But ultimately 'why would you care this much about basketball' is not a question that anyone would ask in Slam Dunk. Even the judo guy in the manga who's trying to recruit Sakuragi is just as hot-blooded about his own sport of choice.

There's a difference in like, general affect about the players as well, which has something to do with the sport itself. Yeah, Sakuragi's superpower is his 'genius' ability to predict rebounds, and there is plenty of strategising in Slam Dunk - but basketball is still a sport that very much emphasises physical power, and as much as Slam Dunk will work hard to sell you on a clever trick pass, the visuals are also emphasising the speed that players are dashing, the height they're jumping, their physique. Table tennis by contrast seems to be a sport that's more about prediction and mind games.

That said it is equally just like Matsumoto's style being different from Inoue's. Now I know it's by the guy who wrote Tekkonkinkreet, a lot about this series falls into place! There's a sense of tension here, of being fundamentally at odds with the world. The autismfeels. This is reflected also in the drawings - the characters don't entirely seem comfortable in their embodiment.

So if that's what I'm getting from just three eps, I'm very excited to see what the remaining 8 have to offer. This series is probably too long to cram into Animation Night format, but we'll see...

#anime #manga #ping pong the animation #masaaki yuasa #animation

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grendel-menz · 1 year

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i already liked caravan and i started listening to (and have almost finished) girl in space after seeing your fanart do you perhaps have any....other podcasts you might recommend .... (also i love your art)

Aaa thank you!! Also yes, I do! Podcasts are the main things I’m into honestly :,D!

Mirrors: Three women throughout three centuries of time find themselves haunted by ghost. A story about reaching to your family through time to help them live a beautiful life. Sci-Fi, anti capitalism, reality bending, family love.

Alice Isn't Dead: A lesbian trucker drives across the US in search of her wife who she thought was dead. It's a poetic horror about anxiety and distance and state violence. One of my favorites, if you're only ever going to listen to one podcast listen to this one. Horror, grief, making pizza with your wife and trying to forget what she's done to you.

Ars Paradoxica: A genius female physicist creates a time machine and changes the history of the cold war. Scifi. Very clever. The nightmare of war and its effects.

MABEL: a nurse caring for a dying old woman in a strange house. The nurse keeps trying to contact the old woman's missing granddaughter as the old woman becomes worse. CORE LESBIAN PODCAST. Fairy horror. Love that devours.

Limetown: A town built for a small number of scientists suffers a strange but unknown catastrophe. An investigative reporter searches for answers as to why limetown destroyed itself and what exactly was happening there. female narrator. Conspiracy horror. weird weird science.

Unwell: lesbian gig worker visits her small hometown after years away to help out her mother who has spiraling health. Cozy southern gothic horror. gay, ghosts, general creepiness.

Within the Wires: Lesbian podcast about an alternative history after a war where culture and family has been destroyed for humanity's ‘safety’. very unique approach to story telling. every season is a different theme with a different narrator. Scary governments, forbidden love, lots of talk about art.

Old Gods of Appalachia: As a rural person this one is very dear to my heart. It’s a southern gothic horror, but the horror element isn’t just focused on the nightmare monsters alone but the destruction and poverty brought to the Appalachias by companies. Very well researched podcast that tells stories of sex workers and minorities.

The White Vault: A collection of recordings and documents going over strange tragedies and occurrences in cold places. It’s a language rich horror with a complicated story. Snow storms, scientists, people in the wrong places at the wrong times.

That’s all I can think of for now! I have a really soft spot in my heart for women and horror so there’s a lot of that on here :,0.

Here’s some old posters I made as well!

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aalas-f-wings · 7 months

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LISTEN

AU COLLEGE(? IDEA

Prismo was like astronomy major, aja????

Scarab was law or business, prob both, and he was bitchless/broless

Prismo was like party God, so charismatic, everyone loved him, and he had a lowkey crush on his roommate Scarab, but Scarab hated that everyone liked him for "no damn reason"

But they actually get to get along bcause they both like some weird niche nerdy thing, right????? And even get to call each other friends

They kinda date, but have a fallout/break up and Scrabby is the one that moves out of the dorm and only leaves Prismo a note on his desk

Prismo keeps that note forever until he meets Scarab again years later, Prismo is a writer now and Scarab a lawyer, and is leading a case against Prismo, (copyright or whatever idk, something to do with his stories/books) and obvs he's upset over it

Prismo wins the case and leaves, they meet each other at a bar named Cheers (hell yea) and talk all out, turns out Scarab is being let go by his company bcause capitalism, and this was his chance to prove himself to the boss, and is close to being homeless now, so Prismo helps him out and theyre roomates again

Also like, Prismo writes scifi in space or smthing like that

#au #scarab the god auditor #adventure time fionna and cake #prismo x scarab #prismo the wishmaster #prohibited wish #prohibitedwish #prismo #scarab #the scarab #au college #college au #modern age au #au modern age

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ojirocardigansniper · 11 days

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Terra Ignota fucked up my whole brain (positive). I think it's either the deepest or most pretentious (more likely both) works of fiction I've ever encountered. Ada Palmer is my new god. These books are so gender and strange and interesting and horrifying and political.

My favourite genre is Scifi Where Your Favourite Character Is A Queer War Criminal (or other monster beyond comprehension) (Machineries of Empire, The Locked Tomb, etc). In this area, Terra Ignota is a holy book.

Canner and Sniper are my precious innocent friends who can do no* wrong.

*all

(I deeply love these books, I'm just very insane about them)

SAME SAME SAME SAME SAME SAME SAME. YOURE IN SUCH GOOD COMPANY. i first read too like the lightning in 2017, promptly shoveled seven surrenders in my mouth, got the will to battle for christmas, and then spent the next three-and-change years rereading them multiple times and collecting a small cadre of weird friends i could convince to attempt it. perhaps the stars permanently rewired my brain on first readthrough. terra ignota kinda one of the lenses through which i see most things cus it came to me at the right time. touchstone of my brain and heart. also MASSIVE UPS FOR MACHINERIES OF EMPIRE AND LOCKED TOMB ASWELL LETS GOOOOOO!!!!! also off the top of my head i'll point to ann leckie's imperial radch & related books, kameron hurley's stars are legion, seth dickinson's exordia which im reading rn, and on the fantasy side of the same trope we got seth dickinson's traitor baru cormorant, n.k. jemison's broken earth trilogy, fuckin, don't feel like going upstairs to remind myself of more but yeah. i slurp compellingly fucked up people with strong motivations/principles with a straw. And good god if you like those terra ignota has like fifty of them ! Yay! christ i love these books. if you want to marinate your brain in thoughts about them i have a "ti tags" tag which is a lot of stupid memes and also some very juicy thoughts..... things to rotate... i have been rotating it all for so many years in my mind

#chat #asks #terra ignota #ti tags

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ahungeringknife · 5 months

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slightly new and improved Writeblr intro

About me

I'm bb (bibi, and BB are fine but not Bb, that's a writing signature not mine), 30+, queer, she/they, and I like to write.

My fave genres are fantasy, scifi, and romance. Sometimes with historical fiction and slice of life thrown in too.

I have a probably unhealthy amount of OCs and I want all of them to kiss.

I write both fanfic and original stuff.

I mostly post my own writing, writeblr games, and posts that give me crazy OC thoughts to be tagged. I don't reblog a lot of writing advice or self deprecating writer posts because honestly? Couldn't be me.

I did a HUGE writing challenge this year that was an attempt to write 365 1-shots. One a day. I failed but that's okay. I wrote like 200 of them and that's great and I'm proud of myself.

This is a side blog. I follow from @xaz-fr

I love asks and tumblr messages. I do writeblr games but I could really use some writeblr friends to tag in the ones I do get :,D

I'd love to look at your stuff. You should def show me your writing in a reply or reblog :3

Main tags (that aren't WIPs)

#365 - the big year long project. It has some original stuff, and some fanfic. Lots of adult themes. Lots of original spooky stuff. Lots of 'horror and love are the same thing actually'. Things that are Very Adult are posted on AO3 with a link.

#Fey Alliance - catch all tag for my main setting, the Fey Alliance

#rattling - headcanons, world building, story thoughts, character questions, commentary. Mostly any original posts that aren't writing.

WIPs

The Zealous Servant - Dark high fantasy with lots of magic, necromancers, gods, and political drama. The main character Spayar needs to help his friend the crown prince kill the entire royal family before they turn around and do the same to him in order to claim the throne. Very queer, and is written for an adult audience not YA.

Entropy - My main fanfic WIP from the Destiny 2 fandom. Follows my OCs on their journey to bully the fuck out of Shin Malphur; resident Worst Guy Ever. Along the way he gets a hot girlfriend and I force him to have some actual friends because his lone wolf shtick is tired and stupid lol.

Lonos [working title] - This is a backburner one I need to really hash out a bit more. So I'll probably be posting a lot of rattlings about this one. Vaguely middle eastern appearance in setting about a traveling circus where all the players are also mercenaries for hire. Post a massive plague that wiped out almost all the magic users on the continent and the ones that are still around are viewed as cursed or unclean. (I swear I had this idea before the panny :,D) Gonna be a big long gay slow burn. For adult audiences.

Witchbane - Another backburner one I need to churn out some rattlings about. Steampunk set in a country called Ravthica where everyone thinks magic isn't real. When Spencer's parents go missing he's got to start believing in magic real quick when the hag that lives on his family's property tells him witches kidnapped his parents and the only way to get them back is to kill them. But witch hunting isn't exactly easy and he needs the help of some Wild things to find the witches that want his family and their witch hunting dogs all dead. For YA audiences.

#writeblr #writblr #writeblr intro #writers on tumblr #writerscommunity #writers and poets #creative writing #writers

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landwriter · 1 year

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Do you think Hob would read Douglas Adams? Oh god what if he didn’t like scifi I’d cry

I feel like if Hob was into reading that kind of Literature, he might not be so flabbergasted when he learns about Dream and the endless, he might be like “oh like in stories but real!”

gdjdjagsjdkagag dream being thrown for a loop when hob says “Oh! Gijinka. Got it.”

Wait, no, what - I'm obsessed with Science Fiction Nerd Hob Gadling??? Have we talked about this yet? As a fandom?

I love a Hob Gadling that adores speculative and science fiction. Hob Gadling going to like, Trekkie conventions in the seventies and eighties. Hob Gadling buying zines and writing his own dreams for the future.

Hob Gadling not just having read Douglas Adams, but having heard Hitchhiker's Guide in its original form as a BBC radio comedy in 1978 and having to pull over because he was laughing too hard to drive.

I totally see him as being minimally flabbergasted because he doesn't strike me as a very flabbergastable sort, and if he ever was, he got it mostly out of his system by the 17th century. I feel like he's probably spent a fair amount of time speculating on who his stranger might be, and I think one of my favourite headcanons is that he, for at least a century, had completely convinced himself that Dream was a vampire. Next to all the sixties and seventies scifi is just like, six shelves of vampire novels. Vampire horror. Vampire romances. Vampire mysteries. Vampire erotica.

#asks #hob meta #the sandman #hob gadling #dream of the endless

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alpaca-clouds · 10 months

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Solarpunk Fiction and Conflict Pt. 2

Let's continue to talk about conflict in Solarpunk fiction and stories we could easily tell there. You can find part 1 here.

The second category of conflict in Solarpunk fiction I see, is conflict with the environment. Something that can happen in a very literal way or the more... traditional way.

Let's talk about the traditional ways: Environmental Catastrophies and Survival Stories.

Human vs environment has always been a staple conflict in fiction and even though the Solarpunk movement is an environmental movement... Well, us being on the side of the environment does not mean that the environment is gonna be on our side, if you get my drift.

For one you can all Roland Emerich and tell a story of an Environmental Catastrophy. You can very well have a Solarpunk world, in which the current issues from climate change have not been fixed. So either you could have scientist just deal with trying to fix those issues... or you can tell stories about the climate catastrophies going on and about the people who try to survive it - or those trying to save the survivors. Again: You can go all Roland Emerich, but just have it in front of the backdrop of a Solarpunk world.

The other classic one can be a classical Survival Story. Look, even within a Solarpunk world people might get stuck in situations, where they gotta survive. Maybe they went out there into nature on their own volition because they are scientists and get lost. Maybe they live out there and a storm cuts them off. Or maybe it is a classical case of a ship or plane wrecking out in the wild. In fact, this could be a super interesting story to be told within a Solarpunk setting, given that a person, who grew up on Solarpunk values, might have different view points - and also different technological skills. (Also, look, SciFi survival stories are fun af!)

One less traditional kind of story to be told in a Solarpunk setting and that I would love to see, is what I am going to name Species Survivalism.

Let me let out my inner geek. Because maybe this is too science for even most Science Fiction nerds. But currently there are scientists all over the world battling to keep certain species important for the environment alive - or in fact reestablish a population. And while this would be really a geeky kind of story... It definitely could make for an interesting story. Trying to fix the world in a small way, after a Solarpunk Utopia has been established.

And then there is the last way. The Studio Ghibli way, if you want to.

See, often times Solarpunk is thought only as a SciFi genre, but technically speaking there is no law saying it cannot have fantasy elements. Especially given that one of the largest influence on the genre have been Studio Ghibli movies like Laputa and Princess Mononoke.

So lastly, for this type of conflict, I present you: Nature's Willing Revenge: Yes, sure, we have established a Solarpunk society, but we kinda messed up nature before we got there. Now the nature spirits/gods have reawakened and they are pissed. Will the protagonist have to fight them or try to establish some sort of peace with them?

#Solarpunk #Lunarpunk #Solarpunk Fiction #solarpunk worldbuilding #climate fiction #science fiction #conflict #writing #writing advice

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watcher0033 · 5 months

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WHAT IN THE EVER LOVING FUCK OHMYGOD THIS IS MY MOST INVESTED SCIFI SHOW SINCE DARK AND TRAVELERS HOLY CHICKEN NUGGETS I NEED FUCKING ANSWERS OHMYGODOYGOD

GUYS WATCH SILO IT. IS. SO. FUCKING. AMAZING.

I beg of you.

Pure awesomeness for 10 episodes.

Main Character is GIF above and she will awaken every sapphic bone in your body. She’s certainly awaken mine and I’m bloody asexual.

Rebecca Ferguson is so hot as Juliette in this even when she’s being an asshole. I’m like I can completely understand darling lemme lay down my life for u. Yall the pull of her is sooo 😚 my beloved feral alley cat

Actually I think this is a very carnal love letter to all ITs and engineers out there with how attractive every casted Mechanics are lmao

It’s a murder mystery with red level type of fascist regime conspiracy and the pacing is managed so fucking well you’ll never get bored and may at times cursed out loud of pure annoyance when the intro show itself and maybe break your phone just to hit the skip button immediately

It’s so good you’ll keep gasping like a toddler like you just watched the twists the first time though said twists has been already established few episodes ago and a constant cloudy backdrop to every interaction/conversation/literally every fucking scenes

Me: Oh my god. We’ve established this already. Please inform the other characters WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TIME. Go, GO GO

Characters, being informed:

Also, Me: *gasps with them*

The tension is so fucking good. You will not tear your eyes away.

All the adrenaline of excitement and frustrations with the fucking questions that keep piling up and cry-inducing cliffhangers are all fucking worth it because the payoffs are literally everything. I am madly hyperfixating. This is love.

Official summary: *crying because it barely eclipses the sheer fucking genius of this show but also cant think of something better because it feels like trying to wiggle in a tiny room surrounded by electric fences. Electric fences being spoilers*

Give it a shot it’s so worth it. I just clicked on it on a whim just to play it in the background while working. And now here I am at midnight rambling like Im high.

Best scifi shows of the fucking year. 👏🏼 Maybe one of the best scifi shows ever. It certainly is in my top 3.

Say it with me: TRUTH BEFORE ORDER.

tw‼️ CLEAN 💀

That ending. That ending. That fucking ending. SEASON 2 COME OUT.

#i am not ok #this is one of the best shows ever #and im having the time of my life #gods that fucking ending #I AM SO DESPERATE FOR SEASON TWO PLEASE #silo #silo apple tv #silo series #fandom #multifandom #shows #series #rebecca ferguson #juliette #silo juliette

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northern-passage · 11 months

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hey whats up!! i'm someone who is writing my own if, and i'm doing bad over here 😰😰😰 i really need help developing my world, and the northern passage is so so super cool, i've never seen anything like it and i love tnp soooo much. do you mind sharing how you did your worldbuilding, or any tips you have (for the worldbuilding or just in general i have no idea what i'm doing any of the time) or anything you think might be helpful at all in any way please i'm doing bad i'm doing so bad

oh this is funny anon i was just ranting about worldbuilding to some of my friends the other day lmfao

firstable i will send you over to brandon sanderson's lectures on worldbuilding (two parts, lectures 5&6, it's a little over 2 hours)

i assume you're writing a fantasy but i know worldbuilding is also pretty significant for scifi and post apoc settings as well, and kind of an integral part across all 3 genres. so i won't get too specific since idk much about your story but i'll tell you what i did for tnp

so tnp's setting is one that i've kinda been kicking around since like.. high school... but it's changed a lot since then, as your writing from high school always should. but the most basic thing i started with was the environment. i knew i wanted it to be cold and i wanted the ocean to play a significant part in the story, which led me to making it a significant part of the culture, both in the religion as well as the economy.

if it's cold and mountainous then what exactly would sustain the people there and how would their economy function? i already wanted the ocean to be a part of the story, so why not make a port city an important location? the north would focus on trading, fishing and whaling and animal husbandry while the warmer southern areas were perfect for farming. the backbone of Adrania is their port cities and trading across the country between the north and the south.

i'm not really one to get super into this kind of worldbuilding, especially since my story is not focused on this aspect of the world, however it's still important to feel out the basics, imo. you want to have a general idea of what day to day life looks like and how it is this country/kingdom/colony/etc functions. and in a broader sense it's a way for me to find roles for my characters to fill, like as an example: Merry works in tnp because maritime trade is very significant to the two countries present, so of course there would be pirates.

from there, my focus shifted to the story itself: the hunters. when i look back, i didn't really ask myself these questions word for word at the time, but i think this is a good general idea of how i started feeling things out:

1. what are hunters?

2. what is their role in the story and in the wider world?

3. how exactly do they fit in? what effect does their existence have?

4. why are they needed?

5. how do other people feel about them?

you can substitute whatever you need in that first question in place of hunters and apply this to just about anything. those 5 questions will get you pretty far, and will lead you to more questions, too. if hunters exist to stop monsters, then where do the monsters come from? they come from the vel. what's the vel? it was put in place by the gods to confine humanity to one plane of existence. well, who are the gods? and how do the monsters still get through? the gods are xyz and they did a bad job so the vel can be weakened. how can the vel be weakened? because it's blood magic. what's blood magic? are there other kinds of magic, too? on and on and on and on....

if you have a magic system, i once again point you to brando sando. if you don't want to watch the full lectures, you can still check out his 3 laws of magic essays on his website. tnp's magic system is something i'm still kind of figuring out (this is a first draft, after all) but i knew i wanted it to be elemental based +blood magic and i knew i wanted it to work alongside alchemy. i've made changes since then to allow for enchantments and other cool stuff i have planned later down the line, and i know it's something that i'll need to refine in the first 2 chapters at some point. so i honestly don't have too much advice on that one... so go read the essays ☝️ i also feel that these 3 laws can also be applied more broadly to like, how the technology works in your scifi/cyberpunk story as well so i still recommend reading them even if you're not using magic.

when it comes to worldbuilding, the biggest thing you want to do is look at your story and ask yourself... "does this make sense?" which sounds very silly but let me use an example (and also continue the rant i was on about the other day lol)

i was watching a review for fourth wing and i'm sorry to anyone that likes this book but it's a good example of very bad worldbuilding. the rundown is that this is supposed to be a very militaristic society, they force people into military training academies for the sole purpose of funneling them straight into The Military. however. for some reason... they just Kill anyone who doesn't "pass" the super elite training courses....? this doesn't make sense. why would they not just delegate them to another role within the military? why not just use them as cannon fodder? what about the logistics-- who is cooking meals for this military, is there a functioning quartermaster, what about people that just take care of the dragons (they have dragons in this book. we could say horses, too, or any other animal, really)? a military consists of more than just Super Special Elite Soldiers.

you want your choices and story to make sense within the society you've created, whatever that society may be. fourth wing gets compared to the hunger games, but it's not the hunger games. the hunger games had in-world reasoning for the kids to die during the games. there was a society that was built around the games and it functioned in a way that made sense. there is no reason for the kids to die in fourth wing except for the author to make an artificial conflict for the mc that doesn't make sense.

so if you already have your story, and you know what you want to do with it, you need to build a society that compliments your story and that actually allows it to happen. they have to hold hands and get along.

anyways that's a lot of rambling... i hope this helps, at least a little bit! worldbuilding can feel very daunting, but honestly i encourage you to start small like i did - something as simple as the weather and the terrain, and that will lead you on to more and more and more.

#godspeed o7 #also if u have more specific questions feel free to send in more i like talking abt this stuff lol #if you can't tell.....#writing #ask #anonymous

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liesmyth · 1 year

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do you have any book recommendations? anything like the locked tomb or just fantasy/science fiction in general? :)

Hi anon I LOVE GIVING BOOK RECS!

Unfortunately I haven’t found anything quite like TLT, but when you break it into main themes some other series come close. So, if you liked The Locked Tomb for…

Morally ambiguous lesbians and oppressive empires? Try The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. I love Baru as a character and I love and what the book does with themes of cultural assimilation and how the road to a righteous goal is paved with moral compromises until you’re not sure you’re still on the right path. Content warning for institutional homophobia, which affects the plot and the main character. It’s never gratuitous, but it’s pretty much the opposite of TLT under that point of view so heads up.

Unique worldbuilding, queer characters, distinctive sense of place in a land that was once Earth? Try The Fifth Season by NK Jemisin. This isn’t to everybody’s tastes (usually people love it or hate it) but it does some VERY cool things with scifi and deservedly won a Hugo.

Intricate worldbuilding, necromancy, gothic vibes? Try The Bone Orchard by Sara Mueller. This definitely hits the same “confused and confusing female main character who doesn’t know her own mind” vibes as HtN, which can be good or bad depending on your tastes, but the necromancy bits are fantastic.

Oppressive planetary empires and queer characters? Try A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine. This too is about cultural assimilation and has a main murder mystery plot. Space opera about a young diplomat in a precarious position who is sort of sharing her mind space with someone else. Bonus: fun scifi worldbuilding based on some lesser-known historical empires.