onespecificseastarfish

[onespecificseastarfish]

Elrond: I NEED THE LEECHBOOK.

Elros: you don't need the fucking -

Maglor, poking his head in through the door: that sounds really bad without context, I need you to know -

Elros: it's not any better with the context.

[onespecificseastarfish]

your treacherous and cowardly knight just fucking kissed me

[onespecificseastarfish]

[onespecificseastarfish]

Gale points to his right eye: Back on the ship you too were on the receiving end of a rather unwelcome insertion in the ocular region, were you not?

Second panel also shows Gale

Astarion: Couldn’t have phrased it more repellently myself.

Gale: No use sugarcoating it, is there?

Third panel shows a white-haired elf and has no text

Meeting Gale as Astarion (ღ˘⌣˘ღ)

[onespecificseastarfish]

[onespecificseastarfish]

The median and modal spiders are coin-sized. The mean spider is plate-sized. Actually, the meanest spiders are sheep-sized.

one of my favorite lotr facts is that gondorians speak sindarin as a first language and yet when faramir was talking to frodo and sam about cirith ungol he was like “we don’t know what’s in there.” like faramir. cirith ungol is sindarin for “pass of the spider.” do the math

[onespecificseastarfish]

The Heterodyne’s Muses and Van Rijn’s Sins

So I got back into Girl Genius recently and as my mind does I got to thinking.

What if it was the Heterodynes that made the Muses and Van Rijn who made the Deadly Sins clanks.

Like say to celebrate the union between Euphrosynia and Andronicus, one of the Heterodynes makes a set of nine clanks as a betrothal gift to the new Storm King. They’re called The Muses.

This being the Heterodynes, these clanks are not the delicate, mysterious and subtle beings we know in cannon. The Heterodynes could not resist the urge to add in built in death-rays, concealed blades, and other nasty surprises. Add in the Heterodynes own direct nature, their taste in aesthetics, and what things inspire them, you get a very different set of legendary clanks running around. For example, Moxana has a map table in front of her instead of a card table, complete with everything you need to map out a battle. Not to mention a massive concealed death-ray within her chair.

Instead of these ethereal, graceful clanks standing behind Andronicus in the pictures, the Storm King is flanked an honor guard of armored horrors with fanged grins and a large assortment of weaponry.

However appearances are deceptive, and despite their appearance the Muses are advisors, and they advised the Storm King. Andronicus, finding himself more and more surrounded by sycophants and intrigue, comes to value The Muse’s direct manner, straightforward advice and blunt opinions. Much to the worry of the rest of the court, who fear the Storm King is falling more and more under the sway of the Heterodynes.

When Andronicus’s empire collapses, many try to destroy the muses as Heterodyne abominations, dismantle them to see how they work, or seize them for themselves. Not only is it quickly discovered that not only had the Heterodynes given the Muses free will, but it is also forgotten that nothing made by a Heterodyne will just stand passively by while someone tries to take it apart. Those that try are quickly reminded. From there on the Muses drift where fortune takes them, they split, reunite, and split again. They serve many different rulers, and even disintegrate a few when said rulers don’t react well to assessments they don’t want to hear.

Eventually we get to the present where Otilia is serving Klaus, looking after the education and well-being of the future rulers of Europa; a long-lost Heterodyne heir has been found; Tarvek proclaims his right to the Lightning crown before Tinka and is tested in a way many Heterodynes would find very familiar; and everyone discovers the Muses also share the Heterodyne’s opinions on Monogamy. (Especially when it comes to uniting three powerful political factions.)

Now on the other side of the board. During his life Van Rijn made seven clanks for Andronicus who danced for him, played music, ran messages, and acted as his personal servants. They faded into the background, rarely noticed or remarked upon as anything other than as another curiosity made by Van Rijn.

Van Rijn called them the Deadly Sins. They were supposed to keep Andronicus’s hands clean, by doing his sinning for him. They were assassins and killers, designed to protect the Storm King and eliminate his enemies. They were made to blend in, to avoid notice, and to kill with the greatest subtlety and secrecy. They could pose as servants, delivering poison to where it was least expected. They could turn allies against each other and play on people’s desires and emotions to get them to do the killing for them. They were silent knives in the midst of a crowd, and brutal murders in places people thought they were safe.

They did not fare so well. Their own mandate of secrecy prevented them from revealing their true purpose, even to protect their existence from those that went after them trying to learn the secrets of Van Rijn. Those that survived the collapse of the empire slipped into the shadows of anonymity. With no clear candidate as Storm King, and thus no master to serve, they scattered across Europa killing as whim and circumstance warranted, watching, searching, waiting.

Now the candidates have narrowed. Aaronev Tarvek Sturmvoraus and Martellus von Blitzengaard are the two best candidates to become the Sins’ new master. The games of the Fifty Families become even more deadly as the Sins work to protect their two potential kings. As to who they will ultimately serve, the Sins agree. Whichever boy survives, will be the one worthy enough to wear the Lightning Crown.

[onespecificseastarfish]

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

[onespecificseastarfish]

Circe, responding: Live fast, die young, and leave behind a yummy corpse.:

Circe: Live fast, die young and leave behind a pretty corpse. That's what i always say.

Odysseus: You should say something else.

[onespecificseastarfish]

Adventuring seems more military than religious, although you do get clerics as adventurers… I’m thinking clerics and monks might be third sons and most other adventurers could be the spare (second son). Paladins could be either, and daughters can be either runaways or women with no other way to get a dowry doing something with more panache than midwifery or sewing, unless it’s all gender-neutral.

"But how can you justify a player character with a (non-disinherited) noble background in a dungeon-crawling fantasy game" well, the most obvious approach is a fantasy setting whose nobility practices cognatic primogeniture where, instead of "first son inherits, second son goes into the military, third son becomes a priest", it's "first son inherits, second son goes into the military, third son becomes an adventurer". From the player's perspective, it handily explains why the title comes with little material support from the family; from the family's perspective, there's an unspoken understanding that most of the spare heirs will be eaten by a dragon (or whatever), thereby simplifying the inheritance situation, and the few survivors will become great assets.

(There is, of course, the possibility that a surviving third son, having grown powerful and understandably harbouring some slight resentment, may return, kill his elder brothers with dark magic, and take over the dynasty, but in practice this almost never happens.)

[onespecificseastarfish]

ao3 turns 15 today

reblog if youre older than ao3

(there's a lot of people asking about this, but the legal age to use social media is 13, except in few countries. so yes, there are people here under 15)

[onespecificseastarfish]

Helena: Got my data, got my boys. My work here is done.

Felix: We are not her boys!

Vance: Yes we are.

Felix: Yeah, we are.

[onespecificseastarfish]

Poor Tinu! To face such a threat in his old age and be ignored

Later Celebrimbor will remember this: the cat leaps up from her place in the windowsill and scampers up, into the attic above the forge, as though spooked by the hunters and their hounds. The dog, too, rises from the his spot by the fireplace and comes to stand in front of Celebrimbor's knees, growling lowly then barking, the sound resonating in the hollow walls.

He is a huge dappled-brown dog, named Tinu for a startling white spot in the center of his forehead. Fourteen years ago he was gifted to Celebrimbor by the dwarves of Khazad-Dum, for he is among the rare breed of mine-dogs that venture deep beneath the earth, and bark only to warn of landslides and of the ill black creatures that live where no light touches.

For a moment Celebrimbor imagines the ceiling might fall in. Then he shakes himself out of it and goes to quiet the dog. "Tinu," he says, "Tinu, you have lost your mind in your old age. Tinu! Oh, I beg you to pay him no mind, lord. He is never like this."

And the dog barks, and barks, and barks.

[onespecificseastarfish]

A document alteration spell with the variables preset in a certain way. Still a bad idea.

Spell that puts elves on the endangered species list

[onespecificseastarfish]

Lady Galadriel: Happy. Halloween.

Elrond: Merry Christmas!

Gil-Galad: It's October.

Elrond: Merry. Christmas.

Gil-Galad: You're a menace to society.

[onespecificseastarfish]

Elrond’s part-human. He might get sick if he doesn’t drink enough tea, or he would have to resort to beer.

Elrond: Demon

Gil-Galad: All I said was to cut down on the tea, Elrond. You're developing a problem.

Elrond: Foul servant of Morgoth.

Galadriel: You don't touch a Peredhel's tea, Gil-Galad. It's sacred. You should know that by now.

[onespecificseastarfish]

I know that he means that Nelyo is missing, but Finno is missing Nelyo so much!

He is talking to himself jajajjs

my contribution to our talk jsjjsj.

@stellavesperis @dfwbwfbbwfbwf The repost were very long so im putting this here lol