herreviewtidalwave

[herreviewtidalwave]

Would anyone be interested if I put together a post on how to write a scientist/engineer/techy/smart-guy type character? What would y'all want to know?

[herreviewtidalwave]

dragons enslaving humans

[herreviewtidalwave]

Watching the crows outside with mama

[herreviewtidalwave]

We're on a new platform with a totally different audience...we have to prove ourselves all over again...convince a totally new group of people to think we're funny and worth your attention....so allow me to drop some of my "A" material....the funniest thing I got.......here goes....... jeef berky

[herreviewtidalwave]

I think one of the best and unintentionally funniest worldbuilding aspects in Star Wars is the reasoning of why did Bail and Breha adopt Leia instead of having their own children. Leia is first established as the princess of Alderaan before she is written to be Luke's sister. So now we need to figure out how she got to Alderaan. She was adopted because she needed to be hidden and separated from her brother. Bail was placed there to be one of the only people who knew so there would be a reason why it was them who got her. They specifically wanted a daughter. Why? Because Alderaan is a matriarchal society, so they needed a princess. Why didn't the Queen and her husband have biological children? Because they can't. Why? Because the Queen can't have kids. Why? Because she got injured as a teenager and got her internal organs replaced and her body can't handle a pregnancy. How did she get injured so badly? She fell off of a mountain. How did that happen? She was climbing it. Why was the future Queen climbing a mountain in the first place? Because she needed to go through three challenges in order to inherit the throne and one of them required her to go through something physically impressive. Why? Because before that they just held a Battle Royale for all the heirs and the one left alive got the throne and they at some point figured out that maybe they shouldn't be doing that, actually. Oh, okay.

[herreviewtidalwave]

Everyone on Earth needs to see this. It's vital.

[herreviewtidalwave]

there’s this extremely kind soul of a woman on instagram that makes accessible recipes that don’t require standing, chopping, or a stove and she might just have a permanent place in my heart

edit: here's her YouTube account, as well as her TikTok and Facebook :)

[herreviewtidalwave]

The Force: bad things are gonna happen

Jedi: ????? What bad things

The Force: watch out

[herreviewtidalwave]

Back when I was working at the factory years ago, I was living alone, undiagnosed, unmedicated, and stll talking to my family so all in all I was Not Doing Well mentally. Fortunately I had a solid contract and there's an unwavering workers' union, so mental health issues count as health issues and if you think you can fire a worker for health issues and get away with it, the union representatives will find you and eat your liver. Fortunately that does not need to happen particularly often, at least not at my old workplace.

Regardless, struggling to function in daily life also involved struggling to function at work, so one day I got called upstairs to the shift managers' office for some polite questioning of Bitch What The Fuck. And I guess they had expected me to get defensive or something, because it seemed like we were both mutually surprised to find that both sides of the discussion were perfectly willing to aknowledge that I have severe mental health problems.

I told them flat-out that I understand completely what the situation is like from their perspective - an employee is a tool just like any other, and they don't want to have broken equipment malfunctioning on site. And the one absolute sweetheart of shift managers (whom they probably picked for the task specifically because she's so nice with people) went "noooo that's not what we're saying D:" like I had said something horrible.

And I'm like no you are not understanding me. Being treated like a piece of equipment worth maintaining instead of discarding is the closest I've ever been to being treated like something with any value at all. Don't you fucking try to take this from me.

[herreviewtidalwave]

i think it's really fun when a rly specific trope is super popular in one particular medium but in other ones it's just totally unheard of. it's the time knife. visual novel players are suuuuper used to death games but many others encountered them for the first time in squid games. the other day my mom showed me all excited the summary of a super original novel she found and it was about a girl who got reincarnated as the main character in her favorite fantasy book

[herreviewtidalwave]

A video game mechanic of "fucking say it", where you get a random dialogue button in random situations, when you're not even in a conversation or anything, and you have no idea what you're about to say. It's a quick time event, too, so you've got to choose fast whether you're going to say that shit that just popped into the character's head.

There's a 40% chance that the response you get is just mildly negative but doesn't really change anything. 25% chance that it's going to start a fight you're probably not prepared for. 34% of something wildly positive happening because the shit you just said was so funny and clever, or the NPC you just insulted was impressed by your audacity. 1% chance that whoever you said that to will just straight-up kill you.

[herreviewtidalwave]

Looking at urban animals has become a lot more fulfilling after learning to not anthropomorphise them. Like the sparrows in the underground section of Helsinki railway station. I used to look at them mildly saddened, thinking that the poor things must have flown in here by accident and now can't get out. But they aren't trapped, really. They're smart birds, surely if they can find their way in, they could find their way out if they really wanted to. They don't care about human concepts of freedom, or manmade vs. natural environments. They are just as free wherever they are.

Here they are safe from the elements, safe from predators, clearly unbothered by the people. There's plenty of odd random scraps for food, and other sparrows to hang out with, and considering the way they sing, this is a place worth marking as territory. If they were trapped and distressed, I don't think that one would be yelling "THIS IS MY HOUSE. IF YOU'RE ANOTHER MAN AND YOU'RE IN MY HOUSE, FUCK YOU FOR BEING IN MY HOUSE."

They're here for the same reason as I am: less noise, wind, and cars, and easier access to deli ham.

[herreviewtidalwave]

Character concept for an urban fantasy story:

A guy who looks 100% human but is dressed like an orc, walks like an orc, speaks the local Orcish dialect as fluently as a native speaker, and is covered in orc tattoos. One with a more educated eye on the matter could see that the tattoos are not human mimicry of orc tattoos, but the genuine real deal. Orcs do not tattoo anyone outside of their own tribe, and if you ask the guy how he got them, he looks insulted and says that his grandma made them for him. His last name is an orcish clan name.

On a second look, one could guess that he's a half-orc who inexplicably just managed to not inherit any physical traits from his other parent. He is, however, not a half-orc. His little sister is, though. Their mother doesn't have any family of her own, and he was two years old when the two of them escaped from his father. He has no memory of his father, and doesn't care to have a human family - his stepfather's family is their family now.

He doesn't know his biological father's name, where he lives, or whether he's even alive or not. He's entirely unaware that his father died years ago, alone in his home, from a mysterious spontaneous case of Orc Dagger Shoved Down His Throat.

[herreviewtidalwave]

Stories should have in-universe clichés and stereotypes. A teenage dragon rider who gets a dragon who will be his steed for life and is a solid inky black and immediately names her Midnight. He then immediately encounters someone who sees his steed who goes "lmao please don't tell me you're one of those young riders who gets a dark-colour dragon and immediately names it Darkness or Midnight or something, and starts acting like being dark and broody has been their whole thing their whole life."

And he immediately scrambles back like "oh no of course not that's cringe, her name is - uh - Daisy."

Meanwhile the Morbid Broody Dark Gothy One is bonded with a bright dandelion yellow dragon, naming her steed Sulfur and then revamps her whole aesthetic into a black-and-yellow Toxins, Poisons And Venoms -theme.

[herreviewtidalwave]

Something I need to be reminded of often. Yes, I'm very lazy and also have executive problems up the wazoo (the difference? laziness is fun), but the cultural expectation of being productive every waking moment isn't healthy either. And the business of feeding ourselves is especially fraught these days.

[herreviewtidalwave]

seven mighty souls + seven mighty hosts

they exist outside + architects of the game

tighten the binding + free the bound

[herreviewtidalwave]

Characters who were raised by wolves but somehow still learn how to speak and act human despite of having spent the key developing years without human contact are both unrealistic and frankly kind of boring and overdone by now. Imagine a character team where one of them is a (somewhat) realistic raised-by-wildlife grown feral child, and the other one is essentially a glorified handler, who manages all the people-business for both of them.

And the companion is the only other human person that the feral one trusts in any way at all. Better yet, make them clearly be romantically involved with each other. Like

"Wait, she's your wife? ...Uh, with all due respect, but can she like... Can she even consent?" "Look lad. I respect you being worried for her welfare and for being direct about that instead of circlin' around so I'm gonna be straight about it right back at you: She's bigger than me, stronger than me, and frankly, I don't think she spent much time wondering whether I'm consenting."