marchthemonth7

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In the wise words of the ever-charismatic Jeff Goldblum- er, I mean, Chaos Doctor Ian Malcolm- Life, uhhhhhh, finds a way. Only for the very cleverest of creatures, this charcoal grey t-shirt features all the nostalgia I’ve been feeling lately about laser lights, space wizards and giant islands full of genetic crimes against nature. So moonwalk your way down to the mall and rent a classic VHS, because this t-shirt is gonna make you radical, dudes! also;

Announcing a new brand of shirts available at Unicorn Empire! Comfort Colors garment dyed t-shirts are a premium line of t-shirts that we are so excited to be adding to our lineup! Comfort Colors are made from pure cotton and offer unmatched softness and uniquely rich color with a wide variety of new color options to choose from. [Available here]

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Terrible Character Ideas:

A monk based on a European Christian archetype. They have sworn a sacred oath to defeat the giant snail plaguing the countryside.

A dragonborn desperately trying to convince the party that they’re really an aarakocra with a skin condition that made their feathers fall out.

Your standard horny bard, but they play a washboard. 

A sentient hat piloting a mannequin.

A dark elf who’s afraid of the dark, and terrified of spiders.

A peasant farmer who joined the adventure because they’re going through a midlife crisis and want to ~find themself.~

A druid who got involved because they’re the party’s weed dealer.

A werewolf who doesn’t believe in the moon.

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Reblog the writers’ fortune cookie for luck!

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Okay, buckle up buckaroos, because today I met an honest-to-goodness cryptid.

I was out running errands and I made a stop at Intimate Books (…for a friend), and on my way out I realized that the bookshop next door was open.

This bookshop has existed for more than a hundred years, and in all my life it has NEVER BEEN OPEN. I mean, I assume it has to be open sometimes, but never at any normal, reasonable hour. Everyone says it’s a front for the mob or something.

So what do you do when the weird mafia bookshop is open? You go the fuck inside.

The first thing I noticed was the smell. You know that smell when you accidentally leave your towel on the bathroom floor all day and you come back to that mildew funk? The shop smelled like that times a thousand. I expected to see stuff growing on the walls, but the books were pristine. We’re talking first editions, rare editions, weird Bibles and books inscribed to really famous dead people. Librarians would weep for the chance to accession this place. In the first two minutes I found a signed copy of The Crucible and what I think was a first edition of Blake’s Book of Thel.

Then a clerk showed up out of nowhere—honestly nowhere. He looked EXACTLY like a bookseller should look, kind of fluffy and bewildered and really, really gay.

“Are you lost?” was the first thing he said to me.

“Nope. Just browsing, thanks.”

“Browsing, I see. Erm. How do you feel about snakes?” he asked. And without waiting for me to answer, he just walked away and vanished around a shelf.

I figured it was a metaphor, or a code phrase for the mafia. Until I turned a corner like ten minutes later and found a little reading nook. It was really pretty, although I feel like that particular window should have been on an interior wall? Anyway, curled up in an armchair in a patch of sunlight was the biggest fuck-off black snake I have ever seen.

Like, I don’t mind snakes in general. But in their normal context, right? Outside. On the ground. Not six feet long and sitting on a threadbare velvet armchair like it owns the place.

I was about to turn around and leave, but I saw a gorgeous first-edition copy of Leaves of Grass on a shelf, a little too close to the snake for comfort. But I had never needed anything so badly in my life.

So I went back to the counter to buy it, but the clerk was nowhere to be found.

While I was waiting, I noticed a collection of pictures hanging on the wall behind the counter, dating back to the very dawn of photography. A couple were of this rock-star looking guy from the 70s that I should probably have recognized, but there were authors and landscapes and stuff, too. There was even an old tintype portrait of Oscar freaking Wilde, sitting in this very shop with a guy that I would ACTUALLY SWEAR was the clerk from before. Like, I know my family all has the same nose, but this guy had the same everything.

After approximately one year of waiting, the clerk came back out to the desk. By now I’ve realized that he’s too bad at his job to be anything but the owner of the shop.

“I saw your snake,” I told him.

“Did you? Was he behaving himself?”

“He was sleeping.”

“Yes, he enjoys that.”

“Does he just stay out in the open like that? What if he gets out?”

He shrugged and smiled. “He always comes home again, the dear boy.”

Right, a homing snake. That’s totally normal.

Then he cleared his throat and asked, in a weirdly reluctant voice, if I was going to buy the Whitman.

“Yes, please,” I told him. “I saw it on a shelf by the snake, and it was just too tempting.”

He sighed. “Oh, yes, I expect it was.”

When I started to hand him my card, he went all fluttery and said that they didn’t take cards.

All right, fine. I had some cash on me, but I told him that he’d sell a lot more books if he got a Square or something.

He got this scandalized look on his face and went, “Why would I want to do that?”

Oookay. I handed over the cash and he popped open the ancient till and started making change.

In shillings. Shillings! I swear to god I saw Queen Anne’s face on one of them. The silver value of the coins was probably as much as I paid for the book.

But I had to have proof that this happened—at that point, all I had was a book in a plain brown wrapper, not appreciably different from what I bought next door. So I asked him for a receipt.

He looked delighted and wrote one up for me.

By hand.

With a fountain pen.

And that’s the story of how I met a bookseller cryptid and his pet snake.

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worldbuilding: problems

there’s no place where everything runs smoothly. every country has it’s problems. that might be poverty, weak government, fake news, gun violence, or abuse of magical abilities. it could really be anything. so what’s wrong with your world?

what could go wrong:

poverty

corrupt government (a few infiltrations? biased officials? a dictator?)

discrimination/persecution of any kind (sexism, racism, religion, anything that makes someone unique)

violence (gangs, guns, magic, sexual assault)

failing economy

counterfeits (money, expensive products, anything)

drugs (fake drugs, very real and dangerous drugs)

weak government (ie. the government isn’t necessarily corrupt, but no one listens to them and they have no real power at all so everyone just runs amok)

environmental crisis

relations with other countries/regions

war

fake news (can be something smaller like what goes around on the internet today, or something as horrible as the propaganda the axis powers fed their people about the allied powers)

scarcity

terrorist groups

stereotypes (remember, even seemingly positive stereotypes can be damaging)

manipulation/using people

there’s a whole lot more, get creative! as saddening as this will be, scrolling through news articles will give you some good inspiration because our world is pretty messed up

how to choose which problems to include

what is your world like? as obvious as this probably sounds, your world’s problems are directly related to the things in your world. choose pretty much any element of your world, however small it may seem, and there can be made a problem out of it.

in a world of magic:

magic can be abused

magic can be faked (ie. in harry potter, around exam season, students sell items that “enhance your brain” or whatever when it’s really pixie poop, i’m not even kidding)

discrimination between magical and non magical people (muggleborns vs. purebloods)

people rely too much on magic and become weak (a great example of this is the Renegades series, where the non prodigies depend on the prodigies way too much)

non magic people using magical people (or magical people using other magicals, ex. grindelwald/percival graves using creedence to find the obscurial)

really, the problems for a magical world are endless - you can use regular real-life problems with a twist. the magical government lies to the public, buying out the main news source? people of pure magical lineage are somehow better than those related to non magical people? harry potter is a fantastic example of magical worldbuilding, steal stuff from jkr (but don’t make gay characters who are never actually gay)

in a world of science:

i’m a big fantasy nerd, much less sci-fi, so i don’t really have any good examples from books/movies, but here are some ideas anyway

the people who live on a different planet are starting to run out of resources and take over the earth (literally the plot of the Lunar Chronicles series)

the government is testing out new sciencey techy stuff and they accidentally make superhuman demon things (Incredibles, but they’re nice guys, not demon things, except maybe jack jack but he’s a cutie don’t hurt him)

terrorist groups steal a smart guy to make weapons for them (Iron Man)

the world is dying 

two + planets are fighting over something

technology/inventions/whatever can be abused

wow these are terrible i’m sorry i need to read more sci-fi

again, you can take regular real world problems and put a sciencey twist on them; a gang that kills people with laserbeam contact lenses, a new invention that uses a very rare element that’s important to the ecosystem and is starting to destroy the planet, the little robots we send to mars become self aware and build a colony of robots. go off sis

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This is the employment Steve, reblog for bountiful job opportunity.

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#063

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in case you ever wanted to know what mambo number 5 sounds like with all the instruments (including the drums) replaced with bike horns 

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ok universe, i’m ready to feel good things. make me feel good things.

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maybe its maybelline. maybe its goblin magic. those are the only two options

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If you're ever bored, here's a list of Studio Ghibli films you can watch for free.

Castle In The Sky (1986) Grave of the Fireflies (1988) My Neighbor Totoro (1988) Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) Only Yesterday (1991) Porco Rosso (1992) Pom Poko (1994) Whisper of the Heart (1995) Princess Mononoke (1997) My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999) Spirited Away (2001) The Cat Returns (2002) Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) Tales from Earthsea (2006) Ponyo On A Cliff From The Sea (2008) The Secret World of Arrietty/The Borrower Arrietty (2010) From Up on Poppy Hill (2011)

If any of the links stop working, please let me know so I can fix it.

For Castle In The Sky, wait for the free user button to be clickable and it will send you to the video.

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ah yes they call me “No Queue” Jones because I post everything I reblog at once with no breaks in between and then vanish into the night for extended periods of inactivity

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I took over 900 pictures at the Unraveled show and that’s a lot to sort through, so here’s a theme set 

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Okay maybe mama did raise a fool