#oh yeah and also The Fractals

[lone-pylon]

Took an edible on an empty stomach the other night (mistake) and about an hour in I was sitting on my toilet with my head in my hands because everything was spinning. Then suddenly a giant equine skull manifested in front of me, floating feet off the ground, eye sockets rapidly flickering blue and red as it repeated the same phrase over and over again: "Why do you hide from your fear?", because I refused to ask for help.

#cw: weed #can't tell if this thing was my Weed Demon or some sort of fucked up guardian angel giving me a therapy speedrun in the bathroom #regardless I learned something new about my relationship with vulnerability #I need to stop letting myself get pressured into partaking on an empty stomach. ugh #Because it always ends up with something like this happening #One time it was a small man nestled in my ribcage and poking his fingers through trying to escape #another time was an internal battle with my Evil Shadow Self #pylon rambles #oh yeah and also The Fractals

[dragonpropaganda]

you should talk about your thoughts on rw fanon (looking with huge eyes)

Oh god, there's a lot of major misconceptions have concreted into fanon, mostly around ancient society and ascension.

First things first! Ascension is not death! They are entirely separate things treated entirely separately by the text of the game. I can see where the interpretation is coming from, but it doesn't really align with how the text treats either subject. Five Pebbles may want to remove the self destruction taboo, but from his reaction to the rot it's clear that he doesn't want to die. Conflation of ascension and death only comes up as an offhand possibility that pebbs makes on iterator 4chan, when he's going into the possibilities of scenarios that even the other sliverists are doubtful of! (let me make clear that I am not a sliverist by any means)

Ascension is more of talked about as a form of transcendence, yeah? A Bell, Eighteen Amber Beads talks about their sitution as being "To have grasped at the boundless infinites of the cosmic void…", not as them seeking an end to life.

The beta dialogue goes into more detail, mentioning the "infinities of time and space" and the "boundless fractal planes of spirit and reality...", though this dialogue was cut and it's hard to tell how much it reflects the concept as in the released game.

As for the cultural misconceptions... there's A Lot to talk about, but the first that comes to mind is the common conflation of the five natural urges and the christian concept of sin.

It is true that the negation of urges is mentioned by moon as an alternative method of ascension, but much of what we know about the culture of the people who the fandom calls the ancients (which makes discussion of the depths a mess but that's something for another post entirely) points towards the urges not being seen as shameful.

Even the first urge does not seem to be particularly scorned! Being a warrior is presented as a cause for bragging in the Shaded Citadel pearl, being comparable with being an artist and a fashion legend. The second urge, also does not seem to be suppressed. Multiple sources attribute some level of honour to parenthood! The aforementioned pearl also mentions Seventeen Axes, Fifteen Spoked Wheel as being a "Mother, Father and Spouse" without any hint of shamefulness. Nineteen Spades, Endless Reflections expresses pride about having progeny, mentioning it alongside their owned land and esteem among their peers.

After some peer review, an esteemed friend has told me to add a section on purposed organisms as well! This is not so much my area, so I might be a bit off on some things.

As moon says, the majority of purposed organisms were tubes in boxes, and that the primal fauna of the world are almost entirely extinct. A lot of the fandom seems to ignore the first part, and i can't say I blame them, but the evolution of the creatures is so much weirder than people think.

Concept art for the creatures has this interesting quality to it, where the organic parts of the creatures have an almost... melty quality to them.

In the concept art, the flesh appears as if it's almost defying the machinery to form an animal shape. It's as if it's conquering its own artificiality the way the foliage grows over the (stone, brick and concrete, not mostly metal as some think!) ruins.

Of course, it's hard to really tell how much of this reflects the finalised concept, most of the integration is much smoother in the game, in line with a seamless kind of biomechanical design. There was always an intention of biomechanical strangeness, as shown in this screenshot of the devlog before the term "slugcat" even existed!

That said, the melty nature of the concept art shows a level of wild change inherent the biomechanical nature of the creatures, as if they truly are the result of these "tubes in boxes" almost revolting against their own boxes.

and considering centipedes... some tubes may not have had boxes in the first place!

#rain world #rain world lore #rainworld #rw spoilers #please note! my role in downpour development does not make me an authority on what is canon or not! #my domain is entirely within challenge mode and arena which aren't canon anyway #my lore analysis is just lore analysis with no looks behind the scenes of anything vanilla #downpour was made as a fan expansion and the rewrites were just done directly by james #we didn't get any disambiguation on the lore (and thank fuck for that honestly. analysis is the best part) #though the hills ARE made of bricks #this is canon not because i say so but because it is visibly true in some areas of the game. part of the text and thus canon. weep. #i could go into more detail on most of this! purposed organisms aren't my area of expertise tho so i might be a bit shaky on some of that #anyway if anyone has any fact checking to do. please do so #media analysis is a dialogue!

[attonposting]

Can we stop to talk about the conversation with Atton where he rambles about women and the idea of love? Because good lord can this man project like a movie theater. We're talking fractal projection. Give him a frickin' medal, because it's projection all the way down.

It's a very missable bit of dialogue. You can only get it with a male Exile, and only then if you've cheesed off Brianna by causing her influence to dip 30 points below Visas's. Unfortunately, this also causes Brianna to permanently stop talking to you, so this is something you're only ever gonna see by accident. I only learned that could even happen pretty recently, and that's with maybe 6 male Exile playthroughs under my belt. I guess I'm just very thorough about exhausting everyone's dialogue options all the time.

So. Brianna's permanently cut herself off as a companion, courtesy of Kreia whispering in her ear, and that sucks. But at least your trashman pilot has something to say about it... and whoa boy is it a consolation prize. Atton proceeds to launch into an arm-around-your-shoulders buddy talk that has exactly nothing to do with your problems and everything to do with his personal issues.

Exile: The Handmaiden lost her temper with me.

Atton: Oh, there's a surprise. Trust me, she's a handful - all warriors are. They're not used to dealing with things they can't punch, kick, or break. Look, I know how it is. Me, there's no denying that I'm a good-looking guy. You have it worse, because even though you might not be as good-looking as me, you have that whole tortured past, that command presence. Women want to save you. They think they can help you.

Exile: What are we talking about?

Atton: They think that everyone can be redeemed, and that they're the only ones who can do it. And you don't know if it's you, or the idea of you that they love.

Exile: [Awareness] Are we talking about me or you?

Atton: We're just talking. Like I said, I've never understood women. It's possible they don't love you at all. That they just want to help you... help you hear yourself if you've gone deaf to your own voice. We all lose our way sometimes, and we need someone to pull us back.

Exile: [Awareness] Sounds like you've had that experience before.

Atton: Don't remember. Truth is, I still don't listen to my conscience even when it's shouting. I think there's times I'd rather be completely deaf than hear it. But all this talk doesn't matter. I'm not qualified to give advice. Besides, when I open my mouth, I'm usually lying anyway.

Like. Just. Holy shit, Atton. Yeah, he's clearly talking about the Jedi who tried to save him, but there's so much more to unpack in here. Let's break it down.

“Women want to save you. They think they can help you.” - Atton wants to save you. He wants to be the hero to your story, something he projects at Mical (to the latter's confusion), but which can also be read into a lot of his actions – when he starts taunting the assassin on Telos to draw heat off you, when he runs out on Nar Shaddaa to give you medpacs and do the same thing with the bounty hunters. The hard evidence is on Malachor. If Atton dies, he says it outright: “Did I save you yet?” And if he falls to the Dark Side, he tells Mical that “he wanted to protect [the Exile], to help her” before he lost his chance.

“They think that everyone can be redeemed, and that they're the only ones who can do it.” - Yeah, it's not really about helping the Exile. Atton needs to be the one that 'saves' you, as a balm to his own lack of purpose and self-worth, and he gets real pissy if anyone else does a better job helping you – or god forbid gets close to you. He's constantly insecure, he's unhappy with most new party members when they join up and, and seriously, the only crime Mical ever committed was being a genuinely good dude in a crew full of misfits. Too bad the galaxy's greasiest pilot reads that as a threat.

“And you don't know if it's you, or the idea of you that they love.” - Atton's attraction to you in a nutshell, and that's before you get the question of Force Bonds involved. Like, seriously. Does he genuinely love you as a person, or is he in love with you as an ideal – as someone who could stop running and face the music for their unforgivable crimes, as someone who actually tries to fix the damage they did? As someone who can still find it in them to care about people after the war broke them down? As a Jedi that actually lives up to the ideal both the Council and Revan failed to? As someone he believes he can relate to, because he thinks he knows your reasons for what you did? Are you a stand-in for his dead Jedi and his hundred conflicting feelings over her? Is he just in love with the idea of having a purpose and wants someone he can bury himself in? Is the idea of martyring himself and finally dying for a reason what he's really obsessed with? Pick your flavor, because who knows! He certainly doesn't!

“It's possible they don't love you at all.” - While this has a lot to do with him wondering why the hell anyone would have tried to save him, I also think this is him reflecting on his own confused feelings towards the Exile. They might not be romantic with an M!Exile (or if they are, he's having intense bi denial), but they're absolutely there and he does not know what to make of them.

“That they just want to help you... help you hear yourself if you've gone deaf to your own voice. We all lose our way sometimes, and we need someone to pull us back.” - This has nothing to do with the Exile, the Handmaiden, or anyone who isn't an ex-Sith assassin who had empathy forcibly shoved into their brain after years of progressively more fucked-up descent into all-consuming hatred.

“Truth is, I still don't listen to my conscience even when it's shouting.” - He almost gets away with this one, but Atton's deep in denial here. He doesn't want to hear it, but he can't turn it off, the same way he can't stop feeling things when he used to have total control of his emotions (because he barely felt anything at all.) It's all why he can't go back to who he was, even though he badly misses the certainty he used to feel. Atton is a pro at ignoring his conscience, which definitely has nothing to do with how much he hates himself, total coincidence... but as soon as the Exile gets involved, that goes out the window, because Atton's self-preservation glitches out. Their Force wound tugs on his better nature... or it yanks at his opposite. And if that happens, Atton is very aware of what's happening to him. He succumbs, but he has more to say on the Exile's fall than anyone short of Kreia. And light or dark, his (im)moral compass gets jarred from 'cover my own ass' to 'protect the Exile' and he repeatedly sticks his neck out for no gain, so yeah, I call bullshit here. He's smack in the middle of his biggest crisis of conscience since the Sith.

“Besides, when I open my mouth, I'm usually lying anyway.” Well, at least he admits it.

#kotor ii #kotor 2 #atton rand #disaster man extraordinaire #slaps ribbed jacket #this bad boy can fit so much projection in it #you can also get atton to say she woke him up inside and i cannot possibly react to this in any other way than yelling evanescence lyrics #happy may the 4th! #have some highly specific analysis on a 19-year-old game

[anthurak]

WIP - Finding Your Missing Problem

So doing that one post earlier today got me thinking...

What if Marceline actually FINISHED singing 'I'm Just Your Problem' instead of choking at "Why do I want to...?"

As in, what if we, and more importantly Bonnie, heard what Marceline REALLY wanted? XD

---

The growing lights become a crescendo as the sealed doors of the Door Lords practically explode in a cloud of glimmering sparkles rising up before descending down into the canyon.

And at the center of it all, bathed in a shower of shimmering fractals of light in front of the now-open gateway, floats Marceline the Vampire Queen.

“Oh my glob Marceline! That was AMAZING!” yelled Finn the Human in abject awe as he ran up to the entrance to look up to the floating vampire.

“Yeah! That door said we needed a band, but you busted that thing open all on your own!” Jake the Dog added as he also ran up to join his younger brother.

“Yes! You have proven yourself far superior to our lacking musical talent.” Added BMO.

But Marceline didn’t seem to hear them, or even register what she just accomplished.

She was breathing heavily, her face now drenched in sweat from an exhaustion that wasn’t physical. Her axe that she once held tight as she played her song was supported only by its strap over her shoulder, her arms now hanging limp at her sides. Even her normal energetic floating was now entirely still.

And she wasn’t looking at Finn, Jake, BMO or even the brilliant shower of lights falling around her.

Instead her gaze was locked squarely on the pink-haired, pink-skinned gum princess sitting shock-still on a rock. Whose own gaze was locked squarely back at her. One wide-eyed pair of eyes staring right into another.

Then the pink girl got to her feet.

The princess walked forward in a slow, almost uncertain pace and the vampire queen drifted slowly downwards.

All the while their shared gaze never breaking.

“Come on Princess! Let’s go get our… stuff. Princess?” Finn spoke up, only to trail off as the princess walked right past him without so much as an acknowledgement.

It seemed in this moment, Bonnibel Bubblegum was focused just as absolutely on Marceline Abadeer as the other was on her. Completely unaware and uncaring of anything except each other.

After what was in reality just a few moments but which probably felt like an eternity to the pair, Marceline’s feet finally came to rest on the ground and Bonnibel’s feet came to a halt. The two now directly facing each other so close that the princess’s crown was bumping into the wide brim of the vampire’s hat.

Both of their gazes still locked firmly on the other’s, both of their faces in an unreadable expression, though for entirely different reasons.

Marceline’s face was an unreadable mess of emotions. Shame, longing, guilt, nostalgia, anger, affection, fear, and so many others.

Bonnibel’s face by contrast was an unreadable blank. A complete neutral seemingly devoid of anything.

The pair continued to stare into each other’s eyes for a couple more moments as the shower of lights fell around, which must have felt like another eternity for them. Entirely unaware and uncaring of anything but each other.

Until…

“Bonnie,-MMPH” Marceline spoke while Bonnibel acted.

Bonnie lunged forward, smashing her lips in Marcie’s own, so hard and so fast she knocked her own crown off on Marcie’s hat.

And despite any surprise, it was only after the barest of split-seconds of hesitation that Marcie was smashing her own lips back into Bonnie’s JUST as hard.

Mouths opened, teeth banged together, tongues met and hands began to hold fast to each other as Marcie and Bonnie KISSED.

----

There will certainly be more XD

(To be clear, I have no intention of posting full fics here. Completed stories will still only be going up on my AO3 page.)

#adventure time #fanfiction #writing wip #my writing #anthurak writes #adventure time fanfiction #adventure time AU #marceline abadeer #marceline the vampire queen #bonnibel bubblegum #princess bubblegum #bubbline #trying something new

[anapotatowriter]

You belong with me

Five Hargreeves x reader

A/N: I was listening to “You belong with me” by Taylor Swift in the bus, and the idea for this story just kinda struck me. It ain’t amazing, but it’s what I whipped up in like, 2 hours?

Summary: Y/N loves Five. Five loves Dolores. Dolores loves herself. :)

Contains: Swearing, some spoilers for books, AU where everyone’s a normal teenager.

ALSO, NO SPOILERS FOR SEASON 3 (Though seriously, if you haven’t watched season 3 yet, what are you doing here?)

Requested: Hell nah

“Come on Delores, meet me halfway here!” yelled my neighbor into his phone, loud enough for me to hear in my room on the other side of the street. “It was just a joke!” I heard him defend, the wide-open windows allowing me to hear his side of the conversation. I sighed at his upset expression before turning back to my homework, the blaring questions on chemistry burning my eye sockets. I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers, exhausted by the school week already. It was only Tuesday! The cool autumn air carried Five’s voice through my own window, the chill leaving goosebumps in their wake. I looked back up from my homework to see him listening to Dolores intently, his eyebrows creased in exhaustion. I stared at him longingly, the stress making my own heart sink. Of course, everyone knew who Delores was. She was basically the queen of our school, the whole short skirts, high heels, and cheerleader persona. Five was more surprised that everyone else at school when Dolores asked him, the broody nerd, out for coffee. I remembered that first sting in my heart like it was yesterday.

“Come one Y/N, we have to study!” exclaimed Five, pouring over a math textbook as thick as his face. “I want a nap!” I snapped back, slamming my fist against the table. “Shhhh!” I heard the librarian whisper yell for the fifth time, making me roll my eyes. “If I work for 30 minutes, you let me take a nap. Deal?” I asked the boy. “Deal,” he nodded, before beginning to explain fractals and Newton’s theory to me again from the top as I pretended to listen to his rant. That’s when a distinct sound of stilettos colliding with wooden flooring echoed through the rather large library. “You’re… Five, aren’t you?” an airy voice echoed from behind me, making Five look up from his book and my turn around. There she stood in all her glory, short brown hair framing her sharp jawline and nose, pink clips holding her bangs in place. “I am… why do you ask?” asked Five, trying to appear unaffected, though his confusion was revealed through his indifferent mask. “Just thought… maybe we could go get coffee sometime? I’ve always wanted to try a nerdy boy,” she giggled, twirling a pink string between her fingers. “Uh… yeah, uh, sure! 7 p.m. tonight?” stammered Five, making Dolores giggle and nod before walking away, hips swaying. “... am I dreaming? Or was that my crush just asking me out?” asked Five in a daze as soon as she was out of earshot. I felt a pang in my heart, watching the boy I loved get asked out by another girl. “Sure was,” I muttered under my breath before picking my bag up and getting up to leave. Five didn’t stop me, too involved in his daydream to notice me leave. I left hurriedly, chest aching as my heart sank.

“Y/N?” I heard a voice ask, making me look up from a copy of Wonder that I had probably borrowed from a friend and forgotten to return. “Oh Five. Hey,” I said awkwardly, regretting my choice of clothes, mostly made up of neutral colors. “Hey, isn’t that my book?” he asked. I looked down at the book to turn to the first page where his name was written in black ink. “Oh, yeah. Do you want it back?” I offered, holding the book out to him in a limp grip. “No, it’s fine. I’ve read the book enough times anyway. What do you think of it?” he asked, sitting down next to me on one of the park benches. “Honestly, Miranda is my favorite character. She always feels like a fish out of water, even though Via and August love her so much. She wants that life for herself, not realizing her own worth. It gives me hope that one day I’ll also get to realize the good in me,” I stated, caressing the book while avoiding eye contact with Five. “I think I like Via the most. She seems perfect, with an amazing boyfriend and family, but she has so much missed in her life because of her best friend,” replied Five, looking up at me through his eyelashes, green eyes twinkling with mirth. “Uh huh… does this best friend happen to be the most brilliant person ever?” I replied mockingly, posing outrageously before bursting into laughter, Five quickly joining in the chorus of chuckles. A strand of hair fell onto my face, which Five quickly pushed behind my ear, the light brush of his fingers against my skin making my heart speed up. He relaxed, slouching slightly against the bench while animatedly talking about his science project. “Why doesn’t he see that it’s so easy with me,” I thought to myself as he smiled at me, answering the question I asked about his project.

“Oh, Five! Why are you hanging out with this… loser? Don’t keep me waiting,” I sugary sweet voice called, a car revving to a stop in front of the park bench, making me cringe “Coming love,” replied Five, his face falling. “Five, are you sure you’re fine?” I asked, grasping hold of his hand as he moved toward the highlighter pink car. “I’m fine,” he muttered, trying to convince me with a half-hearted grin. “I know you better than that, Five. What are you even doing with a girl like that?” I asked, making him shake his head and walk away, climbing into the pink car. His dark hair and jeans collided with the princessy attitude of the car. He seemed out of place as the car drove away, and a last glance was thrown my way. I sighed, standing up and abandoning the park bench, the book lying alone on the bench.

I heard a knock on my bedroom window, startling me awake off the bed. I glanced at the clock next to my bed from my position on the ground to read 01:28. Who was knocking at my window at this hour? I swished the curtains of my window open to see Five standing on the ground, his face a few inches below the ledge. “Five? Come on up,” I stated, making the boy clamber onto the ledge into my room, immediately beginning to face the length of my carpeted floors. “Five? What’s wrong?” I asked as I sat on the bed, making him turn towards me, a glossy look in his eyes that only meant one thing.

“Oh no! Sweetheart, what happened?” I asked, making him sit next to me and pull me into a desperate hug. He rested his head on my shoulder, the material of my shirt quickly soaking from the salty tears. “What is it darling?” I asked softly, moving him so he could lay down, his head placed in my lap. “It was a fucking joke. A bet,” he said through sniffles, immediately making my back stiffen. “Do you want me to beat her up? I’m sure one good punch would get rid of all that plastic surgery she’s gone through,” I said seriously, hoping to make the boy smile. The boy chuckled through tears, making me smile as I carded my fingers through his hair, his eyes slowly relaxing. “If you hear a voice, in the middle of the night, saying it’ll be alright, it will be me,” I hummed, making the boy nuzzle his face into my thigh. I continued singing the song, one of Five’s childhood favorites, filled with memories of sugary ice lollies, buttery popcorn, grazed knees, and fireflies. Soon, quiet snores filled the room, just as the song came to a close. I placed a gentle kiss on the boy’s forehead before switching off the lights, shrouding the room ins darkness. I eased myself away from Five, picking up my pillows and moving them to the ground, leaving Five to rest on the bed.

“Y/N, wait up!” I heard a voice yell, making me pause in my tracks to wait for Five to catch up. He joined me and I started ranting about my math professor, who insisted that he would not share any of the presentations he showed in class. “I mean, what’s his problem if we have an additional source? I need everything I can get to prepare for exams!” I complained, the boy nodding along to my complaining. The bell rang, symbolling the end of the school day. “Hey Five,” cut a shrill voice, immediately stopping both of us in our tracks. Dolores stalked towards us, her heels making a thudding sound against the linoleum floors. “I wanted to talk to you… privately?” she sneered in my direction before looking at Five sweetly. “Five, don’t do it,” I disagreed vehemently, pulling at the end of his sleeves to walk away from Dolores. “Go on ahead, Y/N. I’ll see you,” stated Five, gently unclasping my fingers from his shirt before walking away with Dolores. “AGH,” I yelled, kicking one of the lockers beside me, the empty corridor echoing my yell. I walked out of the building angrily, my heart clenched and my shoulders tensed. I slammed my bag into the wall as soon as I walked into my room. Pressing my face into the pillow as angry tears pricked my eyes. “AGHHHHH,” I yelled into the pillow, my voice muffled by the layers of cloth and stuffing. “Y/N?” A voice questioned some 15 minutes later, making me look up at my room’s door to see Five standing there, a concerned expression on his face. “Are you o-” he started to ask before I interrupted him. “No. Five Hargreeves, you will now listen to me. DO NOT go back to Dolores, of all people! I know she’s pretty, smart, and has the perfect looks and the perfect grades, but can’t you see what she is doing to you? Oh, I remember you, driving to my house in the middle of the night, I’m the one who makes you laugh when you know you’re about to cry! I know your favorite songs and you tell me about your dreams… I know where you belong, I know it’s with me!” I said without a pause, before stopping to see Five frozen in place, his lips slightly parted in shock. I breathed deeply before taking a hold of Five’s hands. “Can't you see that I’m the one who understands you? I’ve been here all along, so why can’t you see? That you belong with me?” I stopped myself from saying anything more, biting my lip and waiting expectantly for his response, grasping his hands tightly. “I went to tell Dolores that I don’t love her. That there’s someone else I know, who’s been here my whole life, and who I hope will be there the rest of my life,” said Five, gazing softly into my eyes, his pupils dilated to reveal just a thin sliver of forest green. “It’s you. Y/N, it’s always been you,” proclaimed Five, leaning forward just the tiniest bit. His lips pressed to my forehead, sealing his words into reality. 

#Five x reader #Five hargreeves x reader #tua x reader #dolores x reader #AU #Tua

[sandsorghum]

9/10

shutup i don't know what this is ok i only know i have @sukunasun to blame for this and seeding the idea of morning ritual squabbles with husband!nanami in my brain like it isn't already gnawing on a thousand other scraps and shards of symbiotic insanity. OK? Ok.

"The artificial sweetness is redundant when I'm kissing you," he grumbles, residual morning heat molding at your back as you stubbornly squeeze the last of the peach-tinted paste out.

"yeah, yeah," you yawn, "says the man with a hang-up over his coffee breath and a spearmint addiction."

"If you'd just drink the juice from the fresh oranges I cut instead of the crappy carton stuff-"

"No, Nanami, you'd still taste weird."

The gust of warmth by your nape is half exasperation, half concession, the stern gaze you catch in the mirror offering a whole zero-point-five second long glimmer of affection.

"You're the weird one expecting me to go without a kiss till after 11am."

He presses his hips into you, thumbs notching into the plush of your curves. Despite the hour, or perhaps because of it, you push back into him, the instincts bred in you meeting and coaxing the outline of his own eagerness.

"Think I'm gonna let you renege on our private vows so easily, hmm?"

9 out of 10 orthodontists would be worried about your potential calcium deficit, given the way your knees buckle against your husband's slowly shifting thighs, your legs bent like mangled tubes once promising pearly bright gleams.

At least you've got a white-knuckled grip on the sink's porcelain, even while your reflection flushes red with Nanami nibbling on your earlobe. You realise, maybe - just maybe he had a point about the spearmint, as his breath and smirk is mouthed glacially against your rapidly warming cheeks.

Your clutch tightens uncomfortably around the hard,straight-handled plastic of your cheap toothbrush, after refusing to spring for the ergonomic, silicon-finished one your spouse had insisted was worth the price.

It's too damn early in the morning for your husband to be proving himself right about so many things. You're going to guzzle a whole gallon of Florida's Natural later just to spite him - and also so you don't choke on the pride making its way down your gullet.

"You-you'll have to remind me what they were."

The tenth dentist throws in his recommendation at last - Kento's grin dazzles as he spins you around, arms grabbing your waist to hoist you on the edge of the sink as he slots between your legs.

"Oh, I will, wife."

Defeat is an icy burst across your taste buds, like the first flake of snow of a new year dissolving upon your tongue; spring devouring winter. A fractal flower shivering in its sepals, last of the frost kissing down lush stems, reaching the root of your spine as Nanami's fingers slither beneath the bunched hem of your night gown, to find the crease and crescent petals of you already parted, and glistening.

You find out on that morning, that submission tastes like spearmint.

You're uncertain of what the exact flavor Kento reaps from victory is, licking it from his lips later, but he convinces you the combination of citrus is, in its own way, quite delicious - even well before 11am.

#nanami kento #nanami kento x reader #nanami x you #nanami x reader #nanami x y/n #jjk headcanons #jujutsu kaisen #nanami headcanons #sshhh lemme have this #nanami kento smut #kento nanami #kento x reader #nanami kento x you #nanami kento x y/n #kento x you

[ostrichmonkey-games]

Hi! Do you think it's possible to play Fractal Romance online/play by post instead of with folks physically at the table? My group is very interested but we're not able to be together IRL. Thanks, and I really like your games (:

Oh yeah absolutely! Most VTTs (or virtual tabletop alternatives) should have some kind of "deck of cards" option, which is all the material outside of the game itself you'd need!

Roll20 is not my favorite VTT, but it's easy to setup and also has an easy deck of cards implementation. There's also playingcards.io which I've dabbled with, and is another pretty easy setup.

I play all my ttrpg stuff online these days, so basically everything I make should be doable online!

If you do end up playing, I would love to hear about how your game goes!

#fractal romance

[rathayibacter]

raths ttrpg post

hey yall im rath and welcome to games

im a ttrpg designer and enthusiast who’s been making games since they were a little kid, but only started sharing them with the wider internet around 2019. gonna be sharing a lot more about them in the coming days and weeks as I transition away from twitter being my primary braincrime dumping ground, but I figured to start us off I should share what I’ve currently got for those curious.

if you’ve got any questions or comments, hit me up! I’m always down to talk and listen about games and game design. anyway, without further ado,

first up weve got Disparateum, my weird baby. Disparateum is a game about perspective and identity, set in a city where all possible interpretations of reality exist overlaid on top of one another. if you’ve ever wanted to play a game about wandering through a fractal museum-labyrinth, stealing stories from genre-manifested dragon gods, and running from a cruel man wielding a copy of the role-playing game Disparateum as his ultimate weapon, this is the game for you. currently the first of three Acts is out, comprising forty or so pages, but more is coming.

next up is [BXLLET>, my most hacked game by a long shot. it’s a post-apocalyptic cowboy game about reckoning with the purpose and nature of violence in a world struggling to rebuild itself. the core of the game is simple: bullets are your xp mechanic, but you can also spend a bullet to kill anyone at any time, so in terms of both power and threat bullets are most valuable when not being shot. there’ve been two really successful BXLLET jams, here and here. give the contributors lots of love, they’ve really made some amazing stuff with my humble little pew pew game.

next we’ve got Charcuterie, a collection of smaller, messier projects and prototypes. there’s two volumes of it out right now (vol i and vol ii), and I’m currently messing with the third (which is likely gonna be all poetry and short stories, so look forward to that!)

lastly I’ll list KATABASIS, which I’m slowly putting together a major revision for. it’s a surreal dungeon crawl set in a Brutalist overgrown-concrete afterlife, where you play dead spirits trying to fight their way back to life using weapons and equipment formed from their emotional baggage. in its current state it’s pretty rusty, but if you do decide to take the leap and pick it up you’ll get all future updates for free.

if you’re still hungry for more, I’ve got even more stuff on my itch page, though this covers all the significant projects I’ve released in the last three or so years. thanks for reading this far, hope you find something you enjoy!

oh yeah and, everything listed here has community copies on their itch pages, but I’m also down to send download links to anyone who requests em, no questions asked.

#ttrpgs #Disparateum #BXLLET #Charcuterie #KATABASIS

[raaorqtpbpdy]

The One

For the Phic Phight prompts: Soulmate Au where after your soulmate dies, you can only see in black  and white. As in you see normal colors until they die and then only in  black and white for the rest of your life, so you only ever know if you  had a soulmate once it's too late. Except Character A's (up to you who  you want it to be) soulmate is Danny. While Danny is in Phantom form,  character A's vision is in black and white, but returns to normal color  when Danny is Fenton. Character A is going crazy trying to find their  soulmate who keeps dying and getting resurrected. (from @ghostboidanny) and Wes is the first one to find out Danny's secret. No One Knows AU. (from @murphy-kitt)

Chapter 2: Bathed in Green Light

AO3 Link

[Warning for death mentions and graphic descriptions of pain (the portal accident)]

This was by far the worst moment of Danny's life.

He'd been stupid to hang around in his parents lab. Stupid to go into the portal. Stupid to touch anything. He'd never thought a decision made out of boredom, made because he was lonely and had nothing to do with both of his friends busy for the day, would have such disastrous consequences. He hadn't expected that thoughtlessly putting his hand against the wall in the dark hole which was supposed to be a ghost portal, would result in the worst moment of Danny's entire life... and quite possibly the last.

He could feel the electricity coursing through his veins, pumping millions of volts under his skin. His bones were being fried into brittle black powder. His blood evaporated in his arteries. His eyes practically popped right out of his skull, his organs melted. Then a shock of something ice-cold soaking him through, shredding him to pieces on jagged fractals.

It felt as if he was being torn apart molecule by molecule.

Toxic, radioactive green flooded in.

For what felt like forever, it dominated all of his senses. No scent, no sound, no taste. He could feel nothing and see nothing, except for that horrible, headache-inducing green.

He blacked out.

When he came to, he was on the floor of his parents' lab. Miraculously, he felt fine, until he tried to get to his feet, and realized he didn't have any. He floated up, so freaked out he wasn't even breathing and yet, he also wasn't running out of breath.

A glance in the nearest reflective surface showed him a very different sight than he was familiar with. His once-black hair was snow white, and his eyes that same, sickening green that had been his whole world for an instant and an eternity at once. His white Fenton jumpsuit had turned black, his skin was a pallid gray.

He'd changed, somehow.

The portal had changed him.

It had twisted, and altered, and rearranged his atoms until he wasn't human anymore.

All Danny's life, he'd heard his parents ranting and raving about ghosts, but he hadn't believed a word of it since he was six years old. Never in a million years could he have imagined that he would become one.

Alone in his parents' basement lab at fourteen years old, Danny Fenton had died.

A few minutes later, while he was still freaking out about being a ghost, the door at the top of the stairs slammed open, and in an instant of unparalleled fear, something incredible happened. A white glow passed over Danny, a bubbling, fizzing line of light against his body like a layer of skin was dissolving right off of him, and he dropped to the ground, looking just as human as he'd ever been.

"Dann-o, are you down here?" his father's booming voice asked. "Jazz said she heard screaming?"

"Yeah I... I was just looking at the portal," he said. "It shocked me when it turned on, but I'm okay now." His father's heavy footsteps stopped halfway down the stairs.

"It turned on?" he repeated, then he thundered gleefully down the rest of the way to see, like a kid on Christmas morning. "How? What happened?"

"Oh, I don't know," Danny lied, rubbing his left arm awkwardly. His left had been the hand against the wall, and he could still feel the phantom stings of electricity buzzing under his skin. "Maybe it just needed some time to warm up?"

"Maddie!" Jack bellowed upstairs. His voice no doubt carrying easily into the house, and probably all the way down the street as well. "The Fenton Portal is working!"

It was mere seconds before the clattering of his mother's boots could be heard clamoring down the basement stairs as well. "What do you mean it's working?" she demanded, though she was clearly thrilled to hear it. "How can it be working?"

"Danny here says it just needed some time to warm up!" Jack said, clapping his son on the back. The contact set Danny's raw nerves on fire, but he was quick to mask his pained grimace with a forced grin. "Says it gave him a shock when it turned on though. You're not hurt, are you, Danny boy?"

"Uh... no," Danny said, though it was the biggest lie he'd ever told. As soon as he'd turned human again, the pain came back, muted and faraway, but still there, and agonizing when anything when anything touched him. "No, I'm fine. Just some bad static, I think."

"Are you sure?" his mother asked with a sympathetic frown, but he nodded, fake smile still plastered on his face. "Well, if it's not serious...."

"It's not," Danny assured her promptly. "I'm just excited that the portal works now, I'm happy for you. But uh, I'm gonna, you know, go upstairs and leave you two to your work, cool? Cool." He started out of the basement, feeling with every step as though he was walking barefoot on shattered glass and gritting his teeth to keep from wincing as he ascended the stairs.

"I don't understand," he heard Maddie say behind him. "The prototype activated right away... I mean, it didn't function as intended, but it activated."

"Well, this one's bigger!" Jack responded, as though that explained everything.

Danny didn't hear anything more as he kept going until he reached his room on the second floor, where he lied down on his bed and tried not to move at all until the pain slowly but surely started to ebb away. When it had subsided enough for him to think, Danny considered what he should do.

Honestly, he didn't have the slightest idea. He didn't even really know what had happened to him. One second he was a ghost, and the next, human again. If he could switch back and forth, he had no idea how to do it, and if he was really dead and just somehow disguised himself as a human, he wasn't about to tell him parents that; they'd have a breakdown. And Jazz... Jazz was always going on about how it was her job as the older sibling to protect him. How would she feel if she found out about this? Not good. That much was certain.

And what about Sam and Tucker? He should tell them, at the very least, shouldn't he? Although... on second thought, maybe not. Tucker was always saying how dangerous their lab was and would never let Danny hear the end of it if he found out about the accident, and Sam, goth though she may be, got squeamish about death when it was more than just a word in her poetry. She didn't even eat meat. If she found out Danny had sort of died, she'd have a conniption.

For now, it was best to keep it a secret, at least until he figured out how to break it to them gently.

He was so not looking forward to school tomorrow. Maybe he could fake sick or ask his parents for the day off as a reward, since he was the one who got the portal working and all.

In the end, his parents were so busy running tests on their newly functioning portal that Danny didn't even need to make an excuse. He just stayed in bed, in the pajamas he'd eventually recovered enough to change into, and they never noticed that he cut school at all. If the school called them, they'd probably even ignore it in lieu of sample collecting and data checking.

At around 3:20 in the afternoon, Danny felt a chill and his breath misted in front of him as if the temperature had suddenly dropped a good thirty degrees. Something green and glowing flew up through the floor into Danny's room. Danny knew that color all too well, though it was weird to see it on an octopus, far, far away from any place an octopus would logically be. It flew at Danny, and he threw his hands up defensively, squeezing his eyes shut.

When he opened them, he saw white gloves in front of his face, and a translucent green barrier between him and the ghost.

There was no time to think as he wrestled with the octopus in his bedroom, so he let instinct takeover. Green light shot out of his fingertips, making the octopus recoil. He grabbed the creature and dragged them both through the floor and through the floor again. He stunned the thing by zapping it with electricity and tossed it through the ghost portal and then... Danny decided instincts were a terrifying thing.

His parents backs had been turned to the whole time while they examined some kind of samples. They hadn't seen a thing. Danny flew back up through the ceiling, back to his room, closed his eyes, and willed himself to become human again. It wasn't until he felt his heart start to beat rapidly in his chest that he realized it had worked and he sighed with relief.

Crawling back into bed, he wrapped himself up in his blankets, and tried to magically erase everything that had happened the previous day the same way he'd transformed mere moments ago. Unfortunately, his will alone wasn't strong enough to do that, and it didn't work the second time.

Previous | Next

#phic phight #phic phight 2023 #fic #The One #dp #danny fenton #danny phantom #angst #no one knows au #Jack fenton #maddie fenton #things i wrote

[calypso2511]

Murtagh is so Eye alinged that it hurts

I mean, if the Entities existed in Alagäsia then he would be so so close to actually being marked

It's insane, he wants to Know so badly and I keep yelling at him that it only can end terribly

Oh gods

And the place they went to has so many Entity esque things

Like, I am pretty sure that the patterns he saw in and on the buildings are Fractals and there is an artwork that looks like it "depicts madness itself"

I mean, come on, that so much Spiral that it hurts!

And Bachel herself is.. I mean I am not gonna drop spoilers but I am pretty sure she is either an Avatar of the Web (not literally but I feel like she is something very similar, someone who has spun her own web of everything) or if she is Eye aligned (I am at a point in the story where she says that she has Eye esque powers, but also not quite, but still.. and she calls her little servants her "Eyes" like, come on

And I am pretty sure that Murthag has been "allowed" to go fin the village because he is so courious and the Dreamers know exactly how to get him to go the path they want him to and cause they probably have already been manipulating a lot of strings (well Bachel has, as their Leader)

But I am still unsure if she just Watches (Sees/Knows things and then tells others about said things)

Or if she (also?) Weaves (influences events and people to make her vision an reality)

Like man

I love this book

If this was a fanfiction instead of an actual canon book then I wouldn't be surprised if the author said that they also were a Magnus fan.

Like, I am probably seeing patterns where there are none and stuff

And I know that the Entities don't exist in that universe, but damn

Also, I just remembered:

Bachel has been stated to be like "A Spider in her web" wich is very uh, yeah, I mean, I was thinking that the entire time, like it is obviously not The Web but it feels similarly like someone or something is manipulating the strings of the story

(not talking about the Author (who is obviously doing that, but I mean like in the story itself)

Also, the bird amulets have the ability to block out magic? Wich reminds me of Saleseas Camera from TMA!

I love this book

#Book reading #Eragon series #Alagäsia #tma #the magnus archives #Connecting non existing dots #Couriousity is truly a crapshoot #that cant end well #for anyone #love this book #Christopher Paolini has yet again shown that he is a master writer #Murtagh #Murtagh Spoilers

[blueaiyuice]

number of times zerobaseone has appeared in my fanfics as an important character

if they were mentioned offhand by a character, then it doesn't count. they have to have a presence in the story.

from least to most! (under keep reading!)

9. Seok Matthew

oh matthew i'm so sorry, he only has three fic appearances. he's a main antag in fractals and dominos, a main character in a dais at daybreak, and a planned important character for another gleam in the dark! from motorcyclist, to leader of a country, to peace-loving rebel, i should also probably write matthew more... (his esde character doesn’t count, because he never appears)

8. Kim Taerae

ooo....taerae appears in approximately four fanfics of mine! he's a main protag in god shattering mania, a main character in a dais at daybreak, a side character in our strawberry blonde, and he's a planned important character for another gleam in the dark! spiderman ripoff, cleric, boyfriend, and technical genius all in one...taerae's spreading out his bases here :) i should write him more!

7. Kim Gyuvin

gyuvin has more appearances, at least. he appears as a main antag in god shattering mania, THE main character of chasing for nothing, a main protagonist in another gleam in the dark (one of the big three), a side character in we can be free, and a deuteragonist in cygnus. that’s five! i try to make him a little more serious in my fics, but maybe i should let him loose once in a while.

6. Kim Jiwoong

since i've liked jiwoong since the beginning, i always thought he'd have more appearances, and because i was a 2wooz truther, i kept sneaking them in everywhere, so here he is. he appears as a main antag in fractals and dominos, a side character in even stars die eventually, a side character in when the sun finds you, a planned main character for another gleam in the dark, a planned main character for a dais at daybreak, and a side character in we can be free, so he has six appearances! most of the time he's the caring wise figure, and other times hes just too old for some people's shit, and yeah LOL

5. Han Yujin

yujin is also a character i use a lot in my fanfics! he's a main character in fractals and dominos, a side character in god shattering mania, THE main character of cygnus, a main character in another gleam in the dark, a side character in chasing for nothing, a side character in when the sun finds you, and a main character in a dais at daybreak, so he has SEVEN!? yujin is perfect for filling side roles for some reason LOL

4. Park Gunwook

gunwook has had a huge amount of roles, since i've been biased and also he has a great personality and character to work with from it being revealed often on the show. he's a main antag in fractals and dominos, a main protag in god shattering mania, a minor antagonist in even stars die eventually, a planned main character for another gleam in the dark, a main character in a dais at daybreak, a side character in we can be free, and a side character in waves at the end of the shore, so he has seven TOO!??? what the hell me, i didn't realize i used him so much

3. Sung Hanbin

haobin are actually really evenly tied since they usually appear together. he's a main antag in fractals and dominos, a main antag in god shattering mania, a side antag in even stars die eventually, a side character in when the sun finds you, a main protagonist in another gleam in the dark (one of the big three), a main character in a dais at daybreak, a side character in cygnus, and a side character in chasing for nothing, which tallies up to EIGHT. i am actually a little baffled at how much he appears...maybe i secretly liked him all along...

2. Zhang Hao

zhanghao is also great writing material, and he appears a lot with very important roles! he's a main antag in fractals and dominos, a main antag in god shattering mania, a side antag in even stars die eventually, a side character in when the sun finds you, a main character in another gleam in the dark, a main character of a dais at daybreak, a side character in a honk in the name of love, a side character in cygnus, and a minor antag in chasing for nothing, so nine to nearly match with his lovely soulmate. hao you're killing it here

1. Ricky

are we even surprised? ricky has so many appearances since he makes the perfect side character and since he has the added bonus of being 1/2 of rijeong which is like my enemy ship in my jeongjian fics, he ends up appearing so much. imma just bulletpoint these because yeah...he appears as:

a main character in fractals and dominos

a side character in god shattering mania

a side character in even stars die eventually

a main character in when the sun finds you

a main protag in another gleam in the dark (one of the big three)

a planned main character in a dais at daybreak

a side character in a storm named after you

a side character in cygnus

a side character in we can be free

a side character in a honk in the name of love

a side character in waves at the end of the shore

a side character in chasing for nothing

so ricky knocks everyone else out of the park with TWELVE total fic appears, out of my 21. he's appeared in more than half of them. im proud of him, tbh, you go lovelicky!

#boys planet #zerobaseone #zerobase1 #zb1 #zb1 ricky #seok matthew #kim taerae #han yujin #park gunwook #sung hanbin #zhang hao #kim jiwoong #kim gyuvin #ricky shen #zb1 fics #boys planet fanfiction #boys planet fanfic #this is actually so interesting ngl #really shows who in zb1 i need to write more into my stories

[a-mag-a-day]

MAG 91 - baking apple pie

After being all brave and sassy with Jude Jon definitely has learned a lesson or two about meeting up with avatars, although this one seems a lot nicer. Offering him a cup of tea instead laughing at him and threatening him.

JON "I… Where did you get that scar?" [LONG SIGH AS THE SOUND OF RUSHING AIR RISES] MIKE "And I was trying so hard to be polite." - Well, that lesson wasn't enough though…

MIKE "The air… it doesn’t… leave your lungs like you expect it to." - I hate falling, so I never did anything like bungee or something like that… But sometimes when it's super stormy outside it feels like the storm blows the air you want to breath out of your mouth. Terrible feeling.

"Not unless that’s what happened to your hand, but I’m guessing that burn came from sticking it somewhere it wasn’t wanted. And you still didn’t learn." - Yeah, even Crew knows it..

"The part that always bothered me was how I didn’t remember it. Not really." - Ohhh, does the "not really" flood already slowly start here? I know in S4 there's sooo many of them, and we heard it in S1 and 2 also a couple of times.

"Did you know that Lichtenberg figures are fractals?" / "The thing that chased me, you see, it was an arcing branch of the Twisting Deceit, taken shape to follow me. But the shape it had taken more rightly belonged to the sky. To those same vast unknowable heights that blessed book wanted to take me." - Another one of those edges, a phenomenon of the sky bleeds into It Is Not What It Is.

Daisy is so brutal… Kicking Crew a few additional times just to be sure… And we see some of her apologist nature. Tricking herself into only hunting monsters.

JON "So… so what now? You kill us? …" DAISY "You think he’s going to save you?" JON "What? What, no –" [GUNSHOT] [JON CRIES OUT] - again, Daisy. Is. So. Brutal. She just shot a dude right in front of Jon. Because it's fun to see his fear…

DAISY "One packet cigarettes, Silk Cut. One lighter, gold, spiderweb design. Hm." - Oh hi there you sneaky little thing! Also Jon totally smoking again…

God, hearing Jon gurgling and whimpering is so hard to listen to.

DAISY "You been following me, Basira?" - Basira is Daisy's soft spot… How her voice wavers here.

DAISY "You don’t know what he is. You don’t know what it’s like to have your secrets pulled out like teeth, just because he asked?" - On my first listen I didn't understand what all this "stop asking question" and then they just answer them as all about. This is when it finally clicked.

JON "I thi- I thi- I think it was Elias." DAISY "Yeah. Well he’s on my list too." - Lol, that tone in Daisy's voice.

JON "What about Mike?" DAISY "Who? Oh. Grab a spade." - Can you imagine, fours days ago Jon got his palm completely burned and now this murder cop tells him to dig a hole to bury the person she just shot in front of him or she'll shoot him too if she's merciful or cut his throat if she's not.

Godd poor guy

#a mag a day #tma #the magnus archives #episode asks #mod ashes #tma spoilers #Mag 91 #lycanlovingvampyre

[sometimes-love-is-enough]

Fanfic asks: 1, 2, 3 (does it help you to share ideas?), 34, 43, 50, 76, 78, 79 and 80 (How do you deal with writer’s block?)

I’ve been kinda feeling…creatively constipated, is as best as I can describe it. Ideas and worlds in my head but they stay locked up without a key to free them. So I guess I wanted to pick someone’s brain, writer to writer, see if there’s anything I can try to get myself inspired again. I hope that’s not weird.

1. Do you daydream a lot before you write, or go for it as soon as the ideas strike?

For the most part, I force myself to daydream a lot before I sit down to start writing, because otherwise there's the very real chance I'll sit down and get 3k into it and realize, 'oh. there's not very much meat on this one at all. I don't want to finish it anymore.' There's something to be said for the concept of 'Writing For The Sake Of Writing', but a lot of the time getting a decent length into something and just, not having the ideas or drive to finish it.. it kind of sucks.

2. Where do you get your fic ideas?

All sorts of places, although I tend to draw a lot from real-life experiences and things I'm currently learning about/interested in (e.g. philosophy chapters of Pick A Side, chessboxing), as well as various types of mythologies and lore (Eucat, Melliferous).

3. Do you share your fic ideas, or do you keep them to yourself?

I'm the sort of person who hoards the fine details of my WIPs very close to my chest until I'm absolutely sure that I'm going to stick to writing the whole damn thing. I'm not great at sharing. But also I really enjoy sharing out of context little bits and pieces as I go, and constantly want to talk about the things I write - I'm a contradiction of a person.

34. How much of your personal life/experience do you include in your fics?

Well, when I was 17, I died, went to bee hell, and had to wait for the combined-yet-separate fractals of my personality to come bail me out I don't include an overwhelming amount, I don't think, but sometimes real life is the best source for an interesting story. It gives it a bit of spice and depth. For example, the thing in Syzygy with Thomas blaming his creaky apartment on an 'apartment ghost' and constantly talking to it because he's lonely is something that I do in fact do in real life.

43. Is there a trope or idea that you’d really like to write but haven’t yet?

Yeah, I want to do a thorough deconstruction of a soulmate AU. And/or the hanahaki trope, because neither of those are something that I'm entirely fond of. I'm not sure if this is the right fandom to do it in or not, but I have a feeling I'll end up writing it eventually.

50. How would you describe your writing style?

Absurdist realism and/or magical surrealism.

76. How do you deal with writing pressure, whether internal or external?

Internal pressure is a sign I need to take a break and do something else for a bit, or stop taking myself so seriously. External pressure is a sign that I either need to block a rude commenter, or gently remind people that I'm a human being and I do this for fun.

78. What motivates you during the writing process?

Knowing that at the end of it all, I'll have a finished product that a) I will be proud of in some respect b) that other people will enjoy and c) (hopefully) scream at me in fury about. Getting to that end point where I can actually hit the post button and see something that I made show up in the tags is just the best feeling in the world.

79. Do you have any writing advice you want to share?

Be joyful with it. Writing is a game you're playing with yourself, so play. I recognize that this isn't the most helpful and specific of advice, but I can't stress enough how much you should experiment with stylisms and point-of-view and unreliable narrators and all the rest of it! Pastiche someone else's style! Write in reverse chronological order! Give yourself restrictions and take away your pre-existing restrictions, and BREAK THE RULES.

80. How do you deal with writer’s block?

Writer's block (for me, at least) is my brain telling me that it doesn't want to work anymore. It's had enough. It doesn't want me to work! Which is the point where I close the document, and go do something else that my brain does want to do. Sometimes that's going for a walk or making myself a fancy drink or snack, sometimes it's lying in bed and watching Youtube for ages, and sometimes my brain is just screaming and sobbing and kicking and doesn't want to do anything at all, in which case I just have to gently sit with it and wait for it all to be over. Either way, I'll get back to writing when I get back to it - either whatever WIP I was working on at the time, or something new that I'll enjoy writing. Forcing myself to write when I'm not on an actual deadline or timecrunch never works out well for me, so I try to be very gentle about it.

And I hope you get past that brainblock eventually. I've been there too, and it's the worst place to be in. Hopefully you find that idea or project that makes your brain start singing again soon! I wish you luck, and hope this helps.

#fanfic ask meme #long post #asks

[shinelikethunder]

lads i'm starting to suspect that the ur-daddy-issues - the Alpha Daddy, if you will - might be SPN's own self-consciousness about not being the X-Files

i mean... compelled to mention its dad all the time whether or not anyone asked; insists to the point of petulance that it's Not Dad and Dad's Not Here Now; crushingly aware that it's stepping into daddy's shoes (ecological niche on network TV) and terrified of being too cringe to fill them; also, at the same time, SO terrified of repeating daddy's mistakes that it pre-emptively lampshades sins that have nothing to do with the ones it's actually committing....

....and oh, yeah, after six and a half seasons to find its feet and become its own person, it can't even get through a fun little homage/fakeout like "alien abductions? nope, made ya look, those are just what people's minds invent to fill in the blanks of being Taken By The Fae" without getting excruciatingly hung up on the silliness of its own Evil Fairies alt-explanation plot. like SO hung up that self-deprecating jokes weren't enough, it just HAD to have Dean do a haha-whoopsie honest-to-god literal hate crime about it.

i... fuck, i'm almost impressed. fractal daddy issues with fractally deranged coping mechanisms. as above so below, over and over and over into infinity, because it's dads all the way down.

(i'm given to understand that SPN's other closest ancestor is Buffy and i'll take a wild guess, based on guest-star casting alone, that it also has some buck-wild mommy issues. can't comment on those firsthand, though, because my grudge-aversion to giving Whedon evangelists the satisfaction of ever watching their shit... is SO much older and SO much deeper than my late, lamented, utterly vindicated, decade-plus insistence that i was not going to watch SPN because i knew it would just make me mad.)

#supernatural #clap your hands if you believe #x files #meta #if i DO end up watching Buffy and it's in ANY way motivated by figuring out wtf this show's damage is #then i will cyberstalk the entire SPN writers' room to find out where they sleep‚ and my spirit will not rest #until i've woken each and every last one of them with a pie to the fucking face #shine watches spn #spn s6

[guthrie-odonto]

Whenever you finish the new season of Dead End, i would really love to hear if you still want to compare Fingers to Hooty

Kdjfkrkkdjdld

while watching the trailer, I did notice that Fingers also has a little bowtie eye Diamond looking symbol right below his palmface that kinda resembles the geometry of and is the same golden hue as the colors associated with angels in this show, and based on the one we saw at the end of the S1 finale, that symbol does give Fingers a greater creep factor/air of suspicion than America’s favorite Tyto serpent

Edit: oh yeah. Kinda still Hooty but Hooty isn’t another flavour of Biblically Accurate and also isn’t either a cop or cop adjacent, whichever one parole officer fits into. And nice touch with the attack mode being more fingers in a branching pattern almost like a fractal, which is also represented in what looks like the angelic realm, what with “Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe” and all.

#watching the season 2 premiere and that does seem to be when Fingies debuts #ask #dead end paranormal park #dead end fingers #amber's post

[dyad-of-fate]

please tell us about the evolutionary chain thing

Oh boy. This is a VERY long explanation which we are working on turning into an illustrated series but we can give a brief run down~ (Speaking of the series, to help the process along, we would love to have animal suggestions!)

Basically we are running under two different scientific theories.

Human evolution (based on current anthropological findings)

Convergent evolution

To skip over a lot of complicated and still heavily debated things in the anthropology department, we are running under the assumption that homo sapien was not the one and only "intelligent life" but that it is the last surviving line of the hominins (Neanderthals, homo erectus, heidelbergensis, etc). Taurs are the "okay what if they didn't die out though? What if they not only survived, but continued to form even more branches of the tree of life?"

To help illustrate a little bit we took a screenshot of a very basic version of the evolutionary tree and modified it where the taurs are. [Link]

And from here the species followed this line of evolutionary paths.

You may have noticed that there are not humans/monkeys/apes and the like at all. Those are "facets" vs "taurs." A facet is an umbrella term for a six limbed creatures whose upper torsos are (typically) elongated, the foremost limbs have opposable hands/paws, and somewhat increased problem solving skills. In other words, they are the monkeys, lemurs and apes of this world. Taurs are those who developed more "human" like brains and features. The big thing that's really different is that the homo sapien incident wasn't the only instance of sapient life developing. (We will make a much better/cleaner version with actual taur and facets as we fill out the tree. :)

Convergent evolution then explains why many taurs look very similar but have slightly varying proportions. Generally speaking, hooved taurs have bigger heads and long upper torsos, pawed taurs tend to have shorter torsos and arms comparable in length to their front legs... Though their internal workings are also varied. Like humans, taurs are omnivorous. However, animals that are normally herbivores have common intolerances and allergies to meats. Their carnivorous counterparts require more proteins in their diet...

Why can there be so many variations? For those who don't know about biological anthropology, this is what the most commonly accepted human tree looks like (actually a few are missing from this picture but it gets the idea across) [Link]

Many of them overlap with each other, especially at the 2 million years ago mark.

So yeah! For taurs there was likely a single common ancestor that started to develop a larger brain, which later split their physical characteristics (carnivora, cetartiodactyla, perissodactyla, etc) then within those groups began to fractal into taurs and facets, then back to physical characteristics splitting (canines, felines, equines, mustalids, etc). Bouncing between each change until current day.

...And that's not getting into the difference between "domestic" and "feral" taurs, which is both a social structure and physical characteristics. :)

That is about the most paired down version we can give- also apologies for incorrect information if there is any for the real world stuff. One of us took a few biology classes including one biological anthropology overview, and I like to keep up with current scientific findings but I am not an expert. Take this with a grain of salt and enjoy the fantasy~

#sotcc #siege of the crystal citadel #centaur #worldbuilding