#Flipside Hats

[montavillanews]

Red Shed Tree Sales and Seasonal Boutique

At 10 a.m., on November 24th, Red Shed Christmas Trees reopened their seasonal Montavillage location in the Vinje & Son’s parking lot near SE 78th Avenue and Washington Street. Shoppers will find a wide selection of Douglas, Nordmann, Grand, and Noble Fir trees ranging from 2 to 15 feet tall. Wreaths and garlands are just some of the extended holiday decorations offered at this outdoor sales lot.…

[comixandco]

my favourite part of season 5 is still the reveal that Gabriel and Tomoe thought Adrien and Kagami made the perfect pair and wanted them to be together because it completely flips their relationship

Kagami and Adrien sneaking around and finding the slightest gaps in their schedule and giving their bodyguards/parents the slip to spend time together and feeling so clever that they’ve gotten away with it their parents don’t suspect a thing

only to smashcut to Gabriel and Tomoe doing an evil pound it because their ship is canon

[cherryfennec]

what are some of your favorite Super Paper Mario headcanons?

I wasn't sure how specific you'd want those to be but I tried to think of a few that I personally enjoy/tend to apply myself!Includes spoilers.

Some general headcanons:

SPM takes longer than than a day/few days (maybe about a month or two)

Flipping into 3D is a nauseating experience and it takes time to fully adjust to it (especially for Mario, he never really managed to get over it).

Pure Hearts emit a comforting aura, a sense of warmth and calm, while the Chaos Heart feels like a thousand voices are whispering in your ear.

Some character specific headcanons:

Mario finds himself confused and lost more than he ever did in his life during this adventure. His usual confidence and grounded attitude are shaky because almost everything in these other worlds makes no sense to him, which is rather frustrating, especially at the beginning of his journey where he's completely surrounded by strangers and forced into the hero role. (Seriously, Mario couldn't even go home if he wanted to because he's stuck not on an island but between dimentions where he was TELEPORTED IN. There isn't really a door that leads to the Mushroom Kingdom.)

Peach's parasol is hardened by steel and enhanced by magic with a sharp tip at the end. She changed her heels to something more comfortable on the Flipside and put her hair up so it doesn't get in the way during travel and unavoidable combat.

Bowser takes his 'marriage' very seriously. He cares more about Peach than Mario in the team so when she's trouble he'll dash to assist her (he can run when he really wants to huh), but if the red plumber's in trouble he'll pretend to not see it or brush it off. (unless his lovely wife nags him about it).

Luigi, after landing is the Underwhere, finds lots of stuff in his pockets that he doesn't remember squirreling away like firecrackers, bolts and a small screwdriver. He is in fact very confused.

Count Bleck isn't very emotional. Most of the time he only has one, sad and dull expression. Any type of larger emotion showing through means that you've REALLY pushed it to the extreme.

The minions know the kind person that the Count is deep at heart so they're not put off by his frown, except for Mr.L. A default reaction that the brainwashed soldiers get as a 'bonus' from Nastasia is the highest respect for the Count, yes, but also fear of him. The fear ensures that they are most obedient but it's more of a failsafe than anything. You can imagine how it looks when Mr.L, an exploding and tempered personality, runs around the castle causing havoc like a brat and then suddenly just FREEZES on the spot at the sight of Bleck.

On the topic of the quirks of Nastasias ability, usually a person only needs to be brainwashed once. HOWEVER due to a certain someone who likes to provoke the man in green and his subconscious she is required to sometimes strengthen the control on Mr.L as she doesn't trust the magician with keeping his mouth shut. At one point she directly orders L to actively stay away from the jester, even forcing him to follow her around when she works.

Dimentios poncho and hat are covered in glitter and his mask is porcelain-esque, also the idea of him being the "son of the magician". I just think this theory is quite fitting and I like the thought of him being actually 3000 years old. He's not very popular at the castle but everyone has a silent agreement to not bother him. He however bothers everyone and likes to stare. When he's intrigued he tends to tilt his head slightly.

Mimi enjoys designing clothes and tries to give fashion advice to her teammates (to absolutely no avail because who cares we're literally ending the world, we're evil and depressed blehhhh). She and Dimentio have an 'annoying sibling' dynamic and she wouldn't hold back against him in battle at all for all the times he's messed with her. She also enjoys filing her nails to be super sharp.

Nastasia is a very strict person who takes her duties seriously but she does have a side for fun. You just need to search for it a little.

O'Chunks likes to spar with Mr.L in his free time. Mr.L is in general one of the few people he can do this with since Mimi says that 'she doesn't want to ruin her dress over such a stupid thing' and Dimentio always finds an excuse or simply dissapears.

Post SPM headcanons:

There is little conflict with the neighbouring kingdoms after the void incident. Peach, Mario and Luigi use that free time to have fun and just relax after everything that happened. They need eachothers support for the time being.

'Team Bleck' still meets up often after everything and hangs out. They don't necessarily talk about the Count but it's nice knowing that there are other people who understand what you're feeling right now. *They've been trying to have a full group reunion with Luigi included for some time now. Things are a bit awkward among them but it's still nice when he agrees to come along.

Luigi inherits some of Dimentios mannerisms which shine through from time to time such as laughing patterns, hand gestures and a rather malicious looking grin... A bit more unrelated and physical change is that his hair tends to turn white when he's around strong sources of power. (Dream Stone and Dark Star levels kind of powerful ykyk maybe Super Star as well or stardust in general cause star child origins) and the eyes somewhat darken.

He's also never really informed about the specifics of his Mr.L and Super Dimentio arc. Mario doesn't really want to burden his brother with something that was in the past and not a necessary in his eyes knowledge since it wasn't truly him.

The Chaos Heart isn't completely gone. It rests, slowly regaining power within it's host, accumulating all the scattered fragments like puzzle pieces. Try all you want but you can never fully get rid of chaos, it's an inescapable force.

I might gather up some more another time but I'd say that's it for now! You might've already heard some of these before but I hope it was at least a good read.

[sharksupermacy]

glided lily

glided lily- minji x 6th member! reader

synopsis: have you given enough?

genre: angst, overworking, intrusive thoughts, reassurance, unhealthy work habits, miscommunication, no good isolation, a bit of fluff at the end, hidden secrets, doubts

you knew that this cycle would have to stop.

exhausted, as sweat was dripping down your nose as you sat down in the practice room alone and looked at your phone. you closed your eyes pinching the bridge of your nose, realizing it was 3:30 am. 72 missed called from all of the members total, 342 unread messages.

but what caught your eye was the latest message from minji, 'can we talk?' those words set something off you making your mind race with thoughts, so you called up the only person you knew that could help you deal with this. your sister.

c'mon... c'mon... pick up, pick up is what you thought while dialing up your sister lily hoping she would be awake.

"hello?" your sister groggily replied as she had been on a schedule for her comeback.

"can i crash?" you said in a uncertain hushed voice as you hear your voice echo in the practice room.

"sure. let me just ask haewon," lily said as she went quiet for a minute and came back on the line following up with, "she said sure. come over and we can talk about how crazy vanilla is for a while since i don't have a schedule tomorrow."

you laughed softly at lily's joke appreciating how your sister always knew how to make you laugh. "thanks lils, be there in 20 minutes. just got to tell my members," you said in a much more certain tone both of you hanging up saying goodbye.

you didn't scroll through the messages of the group chat with the newjeans member just sent a simple text of 'staying with my sister, dw i will see you guys tomorrow at practice.'

not looking at your phone anymore your gathered things throwing on your mask and hat. soon walking out the hybe entertainment in the direction of nmixx dorm and ringing lily again to let you in.

knocking on nmixx dorm door, the first thing you see is lily as the feeling of calm washed over you as collapsed into her arms. "hey. you okay?" lily questioned as she brushed the hair out of your face noting how hot you had felt when she touched your skin. "have you been over working yourself again?" she asks while bringing you into the dorm while you still clinging on to her.

mhm is the response you managed to get to lily as you still hugged her burying your face into her shoulder. that was until you had heard another voice a bit far off into the living room "is that y/n, lily?" haewon yelled from the living room as she was curious if you had arrived. you winced a little at the volume slowly taking off your shoes and walking towards the living room to greet haewon and jiwoo before heading to lilys room where you would crash for the night.

"does your member know about... the thing?" lily probed you wanting to know if you had told them about it.

"no. they don't need to worry over me more as it is. i'm already causing to much trouble for them," you had stated looking down at the wooden floor which you had sat down.

"ok, but please do tell them soon. i'm worried what you'll end up doing to you and your relationship with the girls if you keep this secret away from them," lily responded with a little concern in her voice.

you always hated how lily was right sometimes. "soon," is the word you would always say to your sister when she say something like this as you two settled in for the night.

on the flipside minji would always wondered why you would never talk to her about your family only mentioning that you were sisters with lily, and that you had a younger sister. why you always constantly overworked yourself or whenever you two fought about over anything you would constantly avoided her until she told your sister about it.

she just couldn't understand why you could no tell her anything she was your leader, and your girlfriend. even though both of you had no doubt that you love each other she couldn't help but feel insecure because you couldn't trust her to help you with your problems.

here she laid in her bed as she was still worried of your safety. wondering why you had gone to nmixx dorm again, was it the overwhelming amount of the messages from the girls telling you to get home? no, it couldn't be because the last time that happened you came home claiming you had lost track of time because of your phone dying. was it you being frustrated by the choreo? surely not, because she had just saw you during practice nailing it perfectly; even teaching hyein how to do the point choreo.

she couldn't rack her brain of the possible things that could... oh. the text she sent asking you if you could talk to her, did you mishap misinterpret the text. she only sent that message as it been just a few days that she had last had a alone time with her girlfriend. only phrasing the message incase of an off chance of someone snooping through both of your phones.

these are the thoughts that plagued her mind as she grabbed a pillow from your bed hugging it as she slept. a last thought that came between her mind 'will 'us' really work out?'

it was 11 a.m. when you woke up from the best sleep you had in a while, realizing you had been moved to the couch instead of being on the floor. staring at the floor, blanking out for a bit before calling out to your sibling, who responded with silence. turning to your phone, you realized that there was a sticky note on it that said, 'hey, y/n! its your bestest sibling here; me and the girls have early practice and won't be back until later. haewon says to feel free to stay a bit longer. Make sure you get to practice on time. oh! btw theres a sandwich in the fridge! ;) - lilyyyyyy'  you smiled at the messy handwritten note, going to the fridge to eat the sandwich that lily had made you. you ordered food for the girls and waited until it came, putting it in the fridge before leaving the nmixx dorm. 

stopping at the local cafe nearby, you went in and ordered drinks for your members as you tried to find a way to apologize to them. walking into the practice room 15 minutes before the start of practice, you were met with a figure. minji. "why were you out so late yesterday?" was the simple question she asked with so much authority that it struck fear out of you. 

"i-uh," you always had a habit of stumbling over your words before trying to answer, especially in situations where you were scared. so with the combined pressure of the fear of disappointing minji, and the pressure of her staring down at you, you did the only thing to do when faced with confrontation: run.

a/n: idk it feels lowkey incomplete but i have no idea rn how to complete it. hopefully, i can complete it later... but no guarantee. anyways the fact get up is 30 second long is a crime. oh, pt 2 of k. coming soon.

[actualbird]

do you think the nxx ever cries or just… don’t deal with their emotions in a healthy way? they must be so emotionally repressed!

im so sorry but this is worded in a way i find absolutely hilarious omfg. do they cry or do they suck it up til the end of time? KJAHVSJFHAVSLFSFKJA

i like to think they Do cry, but my god it takes a Lot. this goes for All of them. like, we've seen in canon when the nxx boys and rosa cries, and it's usually during/after very high stakes or very emotional situations. some examples off the top of my head are

marius cries in SSR Unconcealable, the card where mc gets KIDNAPPED and then both of them get TRAPPED IN A FREEZER FOR A HOT SEC

mc cries in SSR Peaceful Place because she thought luke got shot and DIED,

luke cries in his Blossom Chapter Personal Story 4 because he thought mc DROWNED AND DIED

artem cries in SSR Two Hearts as one because he got so emotional acting like he was choking mc

vyn cries in...well, several cards like SR False Tears and SSR Neon Melody but those were 1) not exactly a "healthy" way of dealing with emotions or 2) caused by pepper spray KJHVSKJDF. im behind on vyn's cards, idk in which ones he cries honestly due to genuine in distress

so like, they DO cry. but it seems to take rather a lot to get them there. the flipside is that they also cry when overcome with immensely positive emotion (like, mc was on the verge of tears when luke finally proposed in SSR Orange Scent) so at least theres that!!!! but it's not much, chief....

all members of the nxx team all are IMMENSELY repressed. i think the most emotionally healthy of the team is DAVIS, which isnt a good sign, given that hes not even human

anyhoo this ask inspired me so

here are some misc headcanons on the nxx team and crying

i hc that luke as a kid was Such a crybaby. he'd cry over everything: when he saw a sad movie, when he saw a happy movie, when he saw a dog being walked but the dog was so dang small, when mc cries and his high empathy kicks in to make it Our Cry Session, just...he cried over IT ALL. he was just a very emotionally sensitive child, even to emotions from others. he eventually got emotionally steadier as he grew up but i think there are innocuous movies that, due to him crying over them as a kid, still make luke cry as an adult

[nxx movie night]

marius: man i love this movie, absolute classi---WHY ARE YOU CRYING??

luke: because ANYBODY can COOK!! EVEN A RAT!!!!!

mc, silently glaring at marius over luke's shoulder as if to say "Don't You Say A Mean Word To Him Right Now": O_O

(yes, they were watching ratatouille)

-

vyn has mastered crying on cue and can do it at the drop of a hat, but when he REALLY TRULY ACTUALLY is hit by the genuine need to cry for any reason, be it positive or negative, he cannot stop it at all until its run its natural course.

which is just AGONIZING for him, surely, but this is the price he has to pay for the power of being able to cry on command: not be able to stop when it's for realsies

marius: HAHA, CRYBABY

vyn: //throws a book at him because just cuz he cant stop crying, doesnt mean he cant attack

-

it slightly pisses everyone off a teensy bit that artem can cry artfully.

like, the single tear. the lines of silent tears streaming down his face. even the more desperate sobs. doesnt matter whether theyre stage tears for another play or if theyre during high stakes situations, artem seems to naturally cry in a cinematic manner

artem: //shedding a few tears because of the stress of an nxx operation or something

luke: hey it's okay, everyone's alright

luke internal thoughts: why is he so pretty while crying?????? .....wait what

-

and lastly, marius can hold back tears like nobodys business. like luke, he was a huge crybaby as a kid. but unlike luke, he held it back so much that when he DID cry as a child, it was REALLY CRYING. like wailing, like sobbing. it's heartbreaking to watch

so via his Entire Life Of Repressing Weakness And Related Emotions, he became rlly powerful at holding back the need to cry. it only happens during VERY EMOTIONALLY INTENSE scenarios ORRRR

during horror movies

because hes such a horror weakling and he gets so spooked that tears literally come out

mc: how did that jumpscare make you tear up but not the intro scene to Up

marius, hiding behind a pillow to avoid any more jumpscares: im a man of endless mystery, miss

thank you for the ask :D

[mostlysignssomeportents]

1900s futurism

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in TUCSON (Mar 9-10), then SAN FRANCISCO (Mar 13), Anaheim, and more!

I'm profoundly skeptical of the idea that the future can be predicted, and doubly skeptical that sf writers are any kind of prophet. The former grotesque fatalism (if the future can be predicted, then what we do doesn't matter); the latter is tragicomic hubris.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

That said, few people have been more consistently useful in understanding and anticipating (and yes, building) the future than my friend and colleague Karl Schroeder, whom I've known since I was 16 years old. Karl was the first person I heard say the world "internet." Also: "fractal," "World Wide Web," "ftp," and numerous other touchstones of the future just over the horizon.

Karl is, in fact, a futurist ("foresight consultant") who approaches the work with the same shrewd insight, wild imagination and humility that he brings to his fiction. In a new essay written with both his futurist and sf writer hats on, he nails down the toxic shadow cast by the 20th century sf, or, as he calls it, "The Science Fiction of the 1900s":

https://kschroeder.substack.com/p/the-science-fiction-of-the-1900s

Karl starts by describing the odd "double vision" of the future of the 1900s. On the one hand, many of us (myself included) were convinced that nuclear armageddon was inevitable. Unlike the unhinged architects of the nuclear arms-race, realists understood that a nuclear war would effectively end the future. As Einstein put it, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

But the flipside of that certainty that the future would end with the first nuclear strike was the belief that if we could just somehow walk the tightrope over the chasm of nuclear holocaust, we'd emerge in a future worth looking forward to: "a new era of peace and prosperity for all."

Contrast that with the existential dread of today's polycrisis: environmental collapse and political decay up to and including fascism. These aren't the binary proposition of nuclear annihilation vs Utopia – rather, they're a continuum of worse-and-better outcomes of every description. As Karl writes: "It’s not that simple. Our future now is an exhausting spectrum of scenarios, each with its own promise, and its own problems."

For Karl, we have entered a new epoch, but we've dragged in the long-expired way of imagining (and hence creating and navigating) the future with us. What makes this a new epoch? For Karl, it's the kind of future on our horizon. He cites Charles C Mann’s 1491, a superb history of the Americas before Columbus:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107178/1491-second-edition-by-charles-c-mann/9781400032051/readers-guide/

1491 radically reframes "the patchwork of propaganda and inference" that makes up the received narrative of the so-called "New World." It describes a land of flourishing cities, art, science and culture "in the Americas while Rome was just getting its act together." Contact with colonizing Europeans was a disaster for First Nations people, who call this period "The Invasion." It was an epochal break.

Futurism is an inextricably historical discipline. The willingness of some settler-colonialists states to consider this epochal break forces us to reframe our literal place in history, the story of the land under our feet. At its best, this futuro-historical work can begin the long work of reconciliation, as with the Canadian government's promise of $23b in reparations for the First Nations people who were kidnapped as children and sent to murderous "residential schools" before, during and after the Sixties Scoop.

The sf of the 1900s is no longer fit for purpose, if it ever was. It's a literature that was steered by open fascists like John W Campbell, who explicitly saw the literature as a means of inculcating a societal narrative of the triumph of white, corporate technocracy over all other forms of government:

https://locusmag.com/2019/11/cory-doctorow-jeannette-ng-was-right-john-w-campbell-was-a-fascist/

Karl isn't the first sf writer to try to overturn this orthodoxy – indeed, it was continuously challenged by radicals within the field, as with the New Wave, personified by the likes of Samuel Delany and Judith Merril (who both mentored and introduced Karl and me):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/13/better-to-have-loved/#neofuturians

The cyberpunks took a good hard run at it, too. For plenty of writers (including me), Bruce Sterling and William Gibson's 1981 story "The Gernsback Continuum" was a wake-up call:

http://writing2.richmond.edu/jessid/eng216/gernsback.pdf

Not for nothing, William Gibson has long insisted that his 1984 classic Neuromancer should be read as utopian: after all, it depicts a future in which the inevitable nuclear war only reduces a few cities to radioactive ash, sparing the rest of the planet.

Bruce Sterling once paid me the supreme compliment of describing a 2003 story I wrote about the ways that algorithms will enshittify self-driving cars as "making everybody else in the business look like they live in a dark basement growing on the mulch from old STAR TREK scripts":

https://craphound.com/stories/2005/10/12/human-readable/

Schroeder – along with today's new radical sf writer cohort – wants to fashion a fictional futurism that is fit for this world and its crisis: "in our modern technological society, science fiction tells us what to spend our time and money on." The fact that our mediocre billionaires are mired in the sf of the 1900s means that we're getting some decidedly old-fashioned futures.

For Karl, Musk is a poster-child for this profoundly conservative, backwards-looking vision: "He’s fighting the intellectual battles of the last century, a 1900s hero dropped into the 2000s with an unlimited budget to reshape the future to fit the era he’s from." Musk's obsessions – "Space flight. Settling Mars. Cyberpunk-style brain-computer interfaces. Artificial Intelligence. Self-driving electric cars. Humanoid robots." – are 1900s science fiction.

Ironically, much of this fiction labels itself "hard sf," despite the fact that interstellar travel is utter fantasy – as is mass-scale, near-term interplanetary civilization:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/09/astrobezzle/#send-robots-instead

Karl wants "a future for the 2000s." He points to some efforts to make this happen, like Neal Stephenson's Hieroglyph anthology, edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer:

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/hieroglyph-ed-finnkathryn-cramer

The "Hieroglyph" is Stephenson's shorthand for a recognizable, tangible, meme-able gizmo or other touchstone for a 2000s-era vision of the future – a replacement for jetpacks and flying cars. Karl's story for the anthology, "Degrees of Freedom," focuses on an abstraction (governance: "the single most important thing humanity can focus its creative energies on right now"), and by Karl's own admission, it's not quite the hieroglyph Stephenson was looking for.

But Karl did come up with a hieroglyph in a later work, the "deodands" of 2019's Stealing Worlds – a software agent "that believes it is some natural system, such as a river or forest, and acts in its own self-interest, that being the preservation and thriving of that natural system":

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/06/18/karl-schroeders-stealing-worlds-visionary-science-fiction-of-a-way-through-the-climate-and-inequality-crises/

(My own contribution to Hieroglyph was very gadget heavy – "The Man Who Sold the Moon," about autonomous lunar 3D printers. It won the Sturgeon Award):

https://memex.craphound.com/2015/05/22/the-man-who-sold-the-moon/

I've been impressed with Karl since the day I met him in 1987. There's no one whose thoughts on the future I'm more interested in hearing. I don't think that's a coincidence, either: Karl is an autodidact who was raised by a Mennonite TV repairman – the first TV repair shop in the Canadian prairies. If you want to understand the future, try being raised by someone who takes that kind of deliberate approach to which technology to adopt, and how.

Name your price for 18 of my DRM-free ebooks and support the Electronic Frontier Foundation with the Humble Cory Doctorow Bundle.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/07/the-gernsback-continuum/#wheres-my-jetpack

[dailyadventureprompts]

The Daily Adventure Prompts Masterpost

After several years of running this blog, it’s become more and more evident that I need some central reference where people can access all my different DM advice posts, important tags, and ongoing series. Sharing my ideas with people and helping to improve the art and craft of being a dungeonmaster was always the point of DAP after all, and its of no help to anyone if the answers to important questions are buried under a hundred or more pages of my rambling.

To that end, I present this post as an ever expanding catalogue of my thoughts. Something that you can page through at your leisure in hopes some of my hardwon lessons will be of use to you.  

DM Advice: The go-to tag for all my rambling on how to improve your d&d game, with some highlights presented here,

My Process

Getting Organized

Basics of Campaign writing

Railroading & Rollercoasters

The “more than you can chew” universal d&d story structure

Ghosts on the Horizon: not getting bogged down with overplanning

Mapmaking 101

Writer’s Block

Better Random Encounters

Better Loredumps and Exposition

Writing Adventures to Make your party care about your world

Series of Interest

The DM Starterpack: Focused on first timers or those who want to re-learn d&d from the ground up this series of posts is intended to give you an idea how to come up with a campaign concept, write a first adventure, run a session zero, and slowly pivot into running a larger campaign.

Tableskills: While a lot of my work focuses on how you can write better stories, these posts talk about being a better storyteller focusing in on the performance art of DMing.

Mechanics: On the flipside, sometimes you need to put on your game designer hat and focus in on ways to make the underlying engine of the game run more smoothly to better facilitate fun and storytelling.

How to Run...: there are certain types of adventure that need more thought put into them then the average monsterhunt or dungeon delve, and so I wrote a series of articles to not only help you write/design them but to pull them off at your table.

Wilderness Exploration

Heists

Naval Combat

Infiltrating a fancy party

Mystery

Airship Adventures

Political Intrigue

Mythology style epic labours

The Loot Overhaul: A series of posts where I focus in on different aspects of d&d’s treasure and item

An overhaul to player wealth & The Economy

Better Loot & Treasure Hoard generation

A case for magic item shops & Item focused treasure hauls

Shopping trips & Group Inventory Management

Making Identifying & Attuning to Items interesting

Crafting Overhaul pt 1: Weapons & Armour

Crafting Overhaul pt 2: Magic & Consumables

Monsters Reimagined: My ongoing delve into d&d’s bad monster lore and how it can be improved. Sometimes it’s because a cool monster is just underwritten, sometimes its because how they’re used in the narrative just doesn’t make sense, sometimes its because there’s decades or even centuries old pro-genocide talking points that we need to unpack.

Footnotes on Foes: For those topics that don’t warrant a full “monsters reimagined” but I still want to give my take on. Fun stuff in there, especially with lesser known monsters that could use a revamp.  

Heavy Topics: Where I deepdrive on the nuance of particular topics, ranging from uncomfortable touchstones in history that are important to my writing to sensitive subjects that you’ll want to discuss with others around your table.

Bad Opinions: Sometimes a take so awful lands in my inbox that I need to hold it up infront of my audience and perform a vivisection. Its part media study, part bloodsport.

Dungeon Design: An attempt to do what the creators of the game have put off for decades (despite being half of the title) and actually provide a coherent framework for step by step dungeon design. After nearly twenty years of banging my head against a wall, it finally seems to have worked.

Planescape: Where I try to add cool new (or revamped) destinations to the tapestry of d&d’s multiverse.

Special mention to “Why I don’t use the Great Wheel Cosmology” as it underscores a lot of my overall problems with d&d’s cosmic lore and its weird moralistic claims.

Deities: A collection of new/overhauled gods focusing on making them represent ideals that people would actually believe in as an embodiment of ideals and narrative themes.

How to use the divine in your game: a story first view of how to use faith, religion, and gods in your campaigns aiming for things more subtle and thematic.

Outer Gods: For when you want to get lovecraftian

Religion is the tag I use to talk about the concept of both faith as a theme in writing, as well as how the organized religion serves as a worldbuilding tool

Adventures by Type: not a comprehensive list

Press Start: Opening adventures for those who want a solid start for future campaigns or adventures

Campaigns: For those who’d like a larger story framework to play with

Adventure Compendium: If you’d like a lot of ideas on the same theme

Dungeon: Need I say More?

Monsterhunt: Facing off against a powerful enemy that has some tricks

Villain: In both Quantity and Quality

Player Home: Every party needs a place to rest their head

Ally: They’re here to help, usually

Patron: Benefactors of the shady and non shady verity

Mystery: Put your Sleuthing Hat on

Thief: Time to steal something

Faction: Larger groups the party can join

Adventures by Environment

Lowland

Swamp

Field

Desert

Wasteland

Highland

Cave

Mountain

Forest

Seaside

Ruin

Settlement

Village

Town

City

[darkclouud9]

I love making symbols so I decided to make a bunch for each area of Super Paper Mario bc no matter what it won't get out of my head.

Flipside and Flopside's symbols are partially based on Tippi and Undertale's deltarune (mainly about the angel part, and Tippi's the angel.)

Lineland is based on the trees there (even though most of what we explore there is desert)

Gloam Valley is based on Merlee's Mansion. kind of.

Bitlands doesn't really have any reference. this one may change later. not proud but I don't really have anything I want to make for it. maybe something to do with Fort Francis

Outer Space is kind of based on Fleep (the shape of the exterior) but mostly on Squirpina (crown and star shape. notice the very top of the image.)

oh wow I wonder what the Land of Cragnons is based on. (Primordial Fruit.)

Sammer's Kingdom has no reference either. it was meant to be based on any kind of weapon, but it ended up being claws, and then I wanted to add a crown because of Merlumina's sister being Sammer's wife or whatever but King Sammer is literally just a crown- there was no thought process okay

Underwhere and Overthere are both from chapter 7 and they both have their significance.

the exterior of the Underwhere was just. poison cloud (<- thought process anyway). and the inside is the fountain right at the beginning. (it heals all your health back up)

the Overthere is clouds bc its literally in the clouds and the rainbow is the bridge that leads to Grambi. the hearts in both symbols represent Luvbi, though the Overthere's second heart more represents the Pure Heart.

Castle Bleck... wow I wonder. more Tippi-Angel idea, hat shape is Count Bleck's hat. double heart is the Chaos Heart.

Trials? no real thought besides oooo fancy!! final challenge. multitude of hearts could represent the murals in the background of both the Flipside and Flipside Pits of 100 Trials.

Fracktail mural ^ though there are more than that. notice he is holding a Pure Heart.

[honourablejester]

Okay. So I saw a giftset of Werewolf by Night, and it’s the first thing Marvel has done in a decade that actually interested me. I’ve never read any of the associated comics, but it looked really fun. So I borrowed my sister’s Disney+ account and watched it. I’m a sucker for a good Universal-style horror.

And it was a good Universal-style horror. I actually enjoyed that. A lot!

Spoilers and more detailed (long) reaction under the cut:

I can see the Wolfman and King Kong influences, definitely. There’s also a distinct House on Haunted Hill/Clue vibe as well, and a bit of Tales from the Crypt/The Abominable Dr Phibes for Ulysses Bloodstone. And a fair bit of Young Frankenstein for the ‘will reading’ and the choice of black-and-white. I also got a bit of The Breed from the cage scene, but I doubt that one was intentional, just where my brain went. All round, a fabulous selection of classic screen horror influences.

Also. Jack Russell. Is adorable. I have so many questions. How did this idiot manage to infiltrate a secret organisation designed to kill him while apparently fucking YOLOing it the entire fucking time. He somehow got a medallion for entry (off a hunter?), he got explosives, he got explosives he doesn’t know how to use, and just … strolled up and figured he’d come up with a plan as he went? Ted! Ted, you can’t let him out alone like this!

(Apparently Ted is exactly as bad, Ted is a danger magnet, Jack YOLOs shit all the time because Ted is always getting captured, I cannot with these two. They’re idiots. And adorable)

Like, Elsa lands in the middle of this idiot convention, and hats off to her for rolling with it spectacularly.

Of course, from Jack’s perspective, he’s landing in the middle of her idiot convention. I fucking love his expression during the ‘will reading’, like trying not to glance around during the animatronic corpse recital all ‘what. the fuck. is this normal for you? do you people live like this?’. I love when you hit the first reveal of Ted, and you realise that this is not Jack’s scene, and from Jack’s POV he’s infiltrated the weirdest collection of psychos on the planet. Like he rocked up without a plan, to a society dedicated to killing people like him, and now there’s a wind-up clockwork corpse and a flaming tuba and five psychos trying to kill each other (and him, and Ted) over a rock. He’s so hilariously awkward trying to fit in, but like … how do you roll with that sight unseen? He did pretty good for a guy with zero preparation who walked into that.

(To be fair, the other hunters were also perturbed by the whole animatronic corpse thing)

Sidenote: Harriet Sansom Harris is having a ball as Verusa, and more power to her. If you’re going to be the vindictive, crackpot widow of the Abominable Dr Phibes, you might as well go all out.

And Elsa? You turned out surprisingly well, considering. Well done girl.

Also? Further question on Jack, with his cover story of a 100 kills. Did he … pick that number? Was he just brainstorming ‘what’s a good, round number of monsters for a hunter to have killed’? Did he mean to be the most apparently prolific killer there? Was that a real number? I have so many questions on how the hell he figured out where to rock up, how he got access to this event, did he kill a hunter to get here, did he just make a cover story up off the top of his head, did they verify his story at all? Like, how did he get here? What was the time frame from Ted being taken to Jack rocking up with his snazzy suit and his medallion and his explosives to get him out?

This werewolf boy is amazingly competent for such an absolute idiot.

On the flipside, mind you, this collection of psycho hunters are amazingly incompetent for a group of elite hunters dedicated to slaying monsters.

Poor Elsa. She’s pretty much the only relatively sane and competent person there. Which is amazing, given that that’s her dad’s talking corpse up there making death puns.

That being said, she does fully roll with the ‘fight each other to the death’ part of this ceremony as completely normal, while poor Jack is over here going, again, do you people live like this?

I adore Jack’s reunion with Ted in the maze. Like, the pair of them chiding each other for getting into trouble, and comforting each other, and being completely blasé like, this is fine, no problem, we’ll get out of this no trouble. Absolute idiots. I cannot. Who let them out alone?

This is followed immediately by a hunter overhearing them and Jack getting chased into and locked into a crypt. Because, again. Who let them out alone?

Whereupon he finds Elsa injured, and immediately offers to help, because she’s the only one who didn’t attack him on sight, and he’s just soft that way. He’s adorable. And more than Elsa can deal with, because who let this puppy into this death match? He takes off his snazzy tie to bind her wounds, and she already cannot with this man. He’s supposed to kill her, that is the entire point of this whole ritual bullshit, but he doesn’t know that, because he’s only here to rescue his friend (family) and these people are actually insane, and Elsa is just … okay. We’re doing this. I will help you save your friend. The monster. Named Ted. Because you are actually insane, but why not. Sure.

I love how she rolls with it. How despite being raised as a hunter by actual psychos, she immediately is onboard with nonlethal negotiation and taking the monsters at their word and putting her weapons away to deal with them. (I love this so much later, when she gets the Bloodstone before werewolf!Jack can get up, and then she puts it away, even though he’s just messily slaughtered an entire room, because him remembering her might work, and she’s willing to risk her life on that rather than hurt him unnecessarily. She’s visibly shit-scared during the entire cage scene and battle scene, but she takes her life and her nerve in her hands for his sake, despite having only just met him and the fact that he’s been secretly a monster. And her, a hunter and a hunter’s daughter)

They’re amazing, that conversation they have in the tomb, finding common ground, taking chances, thinking each other absolutely insane but in, like, a good way. She hands him down bits of her aunt’s corpse while she looks for keys, and he’s just … righto. He tells her to call Ted by his name and she’s all … the monster is named Ted, okay then. Family, right? Families are just like that.

Ted? You have a lovely name. Elsa! Because she’s also a bit of an awkward idiot at times.

Also. I absolutely cannot get over that Jack didn’t know how to use the explosives. He turns it on by accident. He’s running around with a hot grenade because he’s a fucking idiot who brought explosives that he didn’t know how to use. And the wall. Getting the sticky bomb in the crack in the wall. I cried. Buddy! Buddy! Just put it in the crack. Holy God. How? How is he alive? How is Ted alive? What is keeping this pair of morons in one piece? Aside from divine fucking providence.

I love Elsa’s giddy smile at seeing Ted run to freedom as well. Like, being polite to him worked, and he treated her right and sanely as soon as she did the same to him, and she’s legit happy that he’s free, monster or no monster.

And then Jack tries to return the favour, tries to pick up and give her the Bloodstone, and he’s a werewolf, and the mystic hunter artefact immediately lays him flat and exposes him for a secret monster too, and her whole face just falls. Not so much at the monster part, I think, and more because he fooled her, and now she doesn’t know how much of what went previously was real. Is he a lovable idiot who’s casually gentle with her, or did she get suckered by something more sinister yet again?

Also they’re both about to die, so there’s that. And he’s going to kill her.

The whole cage scene, her being locked in to be killed as a traitor by the monster she aided, really did jump my brain back to The Breed, just for the scene of Steven Grant being locked in with his vampiric and starving partner who he’s only shakily beginning to trust. I like what I like, okay? This is a good trope, I like it a lot.

And he’s still calm as anything, I’ve got 5 days until the full moon, we’ve got plenty of time to figure shit out! Honey. You’re in a cage, in a society of monster hunters, and they know you’re a werewolf. Could you maybe be a little bit worried? Does this man have any survival instincts?

And his first question is if Elsa is okay. And she still cannot with him. He is a monster, and he’s going to kill her, can he not with the sweet idiot thing? And he’s trying, because he knows he’s a monster, and he’s trying to control the harm he does, and he is essentially a sweet idiot. Who happens to turn into a ravenous monster once a month.

But he’s in the hands of different monsters now. And Elsa knows how they work. And she knows he’s going to be forced to kill her no matter what controls and systems he has.

And there he turns serious. There he turns afraid. Not that he might be hurt, but that he might actually be forced to hurt her. She’s taking it with desperate sarcasm and equanimity, but he’s suddenly deadly serious. Willing to beg. Willing to plead. And desperate to try and protect her from himself.

A tiny thing about the sniffing scene? Where a werewolf lunges across the cage, a strange man, and starts wrapping himself around her and smelling her? She’s a hunter. She’s a training fucking hunter who disliked the ritual on moral grounds but still saw nothing particularly weird about a ritualised fight to the death for a rock, and who has brutally killed one person and thrown down with several more so far. He lunges over and starts sniffing her, and she doesn’t kill him. Or even flinch, really, just asks what the fuck. She … very clearly, already, instinctively, wants to trust him. Even when he’s being really fucking weird and possibly deadly. You’re a woman in a cage with a strange man who you’ve only known for like two hours, and he jumps into your space and starts smelling your hair and skin, and you just … you roll with it? You let him? You immediately grok what he’s trying, and you just ask him if maybe it’ll work?

She’s trying to trust him. Despite him really not earning it yet. She’s trying to hope, not in her family, who she knows will betray her, but in a strange kind monster that she’s known for twenty minutes. She asks him if it will work. Does it work.

And he says … Once. One time. One time this saved a life, my wolf knowing someone’s scent. Once.

And then he stands up and begs not to be used against her, to be killed as he is, the only casualty of his idiocy.

I love when werewolves get the proper Universal Wolf Man treatment, the proper tragedy and desperate fear and hope for your loved one’s safety from your own monstrosity. Of all the classic horror tropes y’all could have picked, you picked a good ‘un.

But he’s also, the second he knows this is for real, immediately planning to fuck shit up for the assholes who’ve put him there. He’s looking around the room and planning. If they going to turn him against his will, he’s going to try to keep Elsa safe, and he’s going to fuck them up. He tells them to kill him as a man, or there will be no mercy, and he means it. As a man, not just as a wolf. If they want to open that box, okay. He’ll open it with them. He was planning. Where he’d hide. Where he’d strike. Before ever they turned him, he was planning how he’d kill them for it.

They are incompetent. I know they didn’t expect a werewolf to crash the party, but this hunter society are absolute morons who apparently have no idea what a werewolf can actually handle and do. They put him in a cage that can’t hold him and deliberately wake the monster. And then stand close enough to be mauled for it. Like. That is 100% on you, babes.

I love that Elsa is visibly terrified the entire time in this scene. She’s covering it with brittle sardonic asides, as best she can, but it’s clearly a faltering cover. And I don’t … I don’t love that she’s terrified because it’s a throwback to the damsels of classic horror, I love it because it isn’t. She’s terrified because she’s trapped helpless with a creature who will tear her limb from limb, and it’s her family that have put her here, and there’s no way not to be afraid of that. She’s terrified because she’s going to die, at the hands of a monster.

And despite that terror, despite that clear, scene-long agony of fear, she still makes the decision to trust him. She takes the risk of putting the stone away. When she gets it. With a rampaging werewolf on the loose, she takes the lessons he gave her with Ted, how terrifying things will treat you with respect and dignity if you only do the same for them, she takes this thing that goes against everything she’s lived and been taught and learned, and she risks her life on it. To avoid hurting a man who was only there to save his friend. He said he might remember her, even as a werewolf, a one in however many hundred chance of him not killing her, and that and how he’s treated her are enough for her to risk everything she’s terrified of.

I love the terror because it’s so clearly the groundwork for her absolute courage later. Her attempt to repay dignity with dignity, even at the risk of death.

Courage is not necessarily taking a weapon and facing a monster. Sometimes courage is dropping the weapon, despite everything you’ve ever learned, and trying to reach the monster instead. Not blindly, but because he did his best to reach and protect you as well, and because he and his friend have consistently showed what kindness and dignity are worth in the little time you’ve known them.

She’s a fucking good one, Elsa Bloodstone. No better black sheep to be caged with.

Also? Congratulations to this show on a good old fashioned monster scene. An excellent shadowy transformation and then a bloody, brutal fight scene. In which the two most brutal kills are Elsa’s, if only because we actually saw them, while Jack’s are mostly covered by blood splatter on the camera. She can fight. She could have fought him. She could have hidden behind the Bloodstone and just put him on the ground as Verusa did. But she didn’t. She saved him and put her weapon away to speak with him instead. Even with a werewolf straddling her, claws at the ready while she shakes with terror, she just holds his eyes and gently touches his face. Dignity for dignity, gentleness for gentleness.

And because of that, he recognised and spared her, even as a maddened, injured wolf among enemies, and Ted fucking swoops back in to save her life from her step-mother. Ted the tree monster, who can incinerate a person with a touch, crashes back through the glass fucking ceiling and saves her life. Because she helped out him and his bro.

They are morons, and I love them.

And then we finish to ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ as the scene shifts back from the black-and-white of Ulysses Bloodstone and his ritual deathmatch, to the warm colours of Elsa picking up the pieces, and Ted and a werewolf-hungover Jack continuing their exhausted bromance-slash-marriage in the woods.

I wanna say congrats to the boys for surviving the Bloodstone family madness. And I wanna say congrats to Elsa, for surviving their idiocy.

I enjoyed this. Deeply. Like I said, it’s the first thing Marvel has done that I’ve enjoyed in a solid decade. Granted, a good riff on classic horror movies, while avoiding most of the MCU continuity, is likely cheating, but still. This, and only this, I would like to save and have on DVD. It was good.

And, to reiterate, who is letting Jack and Ted out alone? They’re idiots.

For the love of god, learn how to use your explosives. Before you accidentally set them off. Mother of the good god.

[multifandomthoughts]

What kind of music do the Straw Hats like?

Luffy:

I feel like Luffy is one of those people who can listen to anything as long as it has a good beat.

The genre that you most likely will find him listening to is pop or rock. He specifically likes songs that he can sing along to, or songs that he can force his crew mates to sing with him.

He doesn’t really like anything slow paced, so I find him less inclined to like classical (even though some of it can be fast) and country.

Generally one of the most agreeable in terms of music.

Zoro

Zoro likes almost anything heavy. It goes with his persona, and it often pumps him up while lifting and doing other exercises.

Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, maybe even some rap. It has to do something for him, like the aforementioned pump up music. Despises Yacht rock and album oriented rock.

However, Zoro has a guilty pleasure in a lot of pop music. He doesn’t know the words, or even the names of some of the songs, but you can hear him humming along to the beat. He doesn’t want anyone to know because he thinks it will make him look weak.

Generally not very agreeable when it comes to music.

Nami

Nami’s music choice is not something you would expect. Besides pop, Nami really enjoys Jazz and Blues. It helps her relax after a stressful thieving session.

Nami doesn’t like anything too heavy, as she doesn’t want to be reminded of the hardships that she’s faced. It also can get grating on her ears really quickly so she’d rather not listen to it.

When Nami is feeling particularly angry, she’ll even listen to grunge. It’s perfect for helping her get her anger out without taking it out on others. (Aka smacking them)

Nami has her preferences but is moderately agreeable when it comes to music.

Usopp

For some reason, Usopp strikes me as the type of person who would like Ska and pop punk. He enjoys the upbeat melodies while also liking that the music often has stories underneath them.

While working, Usopp usually has some old school hip hop and rap going, and even may have a little bit of reggae playing. It’s mellow and helps keep his mind focused.

Like Nami, he doesn’t like anything too heavy. Not for the same reason, however. He’s a normally anxious and worrisome person, so he doesn’t want his positive and calm vibes ruined.

Will vibe to almost anything.

Sanji

Sanji loves girl bands, particularly k-pop and j-pop bands. He loves all the choreographed moves that the women have, and finds all the women so talented!

He secretly likes disco music, and if you’re lucky you can see him in the kitchen grooving to it. It’s got a good beat, and most of it is about love so he can dig it.

He doesn’t like any music that degrades women, so hair metal and rap really turn him off. He doesn’t like that women in those genres are usually treated like objects so he objects.

He’s in the middle with music agreeability

Chopper

Chopper enjoys classical music. It helps him focus and keeps him calm when it comes to helping patients and other comrades.

However, on the flipside, he does not like pop music while he’s trying to work. It makes him want to sing and dance. Normally it’s all well and good but when he’s saving lives, it’s a no-no.

Will sometimes go over to his other crewmates to see what they’re listening to, and learn more about the music.

Another one of the most agreeable in terms of music. Only disagreeable while working.

Robin

Robin likes a wide variety of genres, from Heavy Metal, to Opera to Gregorian chants. Nothing really bothers her.

With all the years she’s been on the run and spent time with the Strawhats, she’s very tolerant and accepting of other styles of music.

She doesn’t like anything that is just mindless or noisy, it has to have a bit of meaning behind the music. She isn’t a big fan of rap music for that reason.

The most agreeable person when it comes to music.

Franky

Franky adores two genres in particular, electronic and classic rock. For that reason alone, he adores the music of the 80s.

However, that does not stop him from liking more guitar oriented bands, or new music that is primarily made from a computer.

Is curious about the other members of the crew’s musical interests, and tries to get sophisticated answers. With most of the crew he gets simple ones.

Somewhat agreeable.

Brook

Brook absolutely loves both rock and classical music. He also likes music that combines the two, specifically neoclassical.

However, after being away from living people for so long, he is intrigued on what kind of instruments are used to make music, and what different genres were created.

Because of this, Brook is open to almost anything! He doesn’t like any bands that are labeled as noise bands, as they confuse his ears. (Or they would, if he had any ears!)

Second most agreeable.

Jinbe

Jinbei is also very new to music, as the genres at Fishman island were very different from the ones above the surface.

Jinbei does like a good sea shanty, and can be heard singing one from the helm at times of danger. He feels that it can bring morale to the crew and keep them from panicking.

Jinbei doesn’t like anything that is particularly high or low. He isn’t used to it, and it hurts his sensitive hearing.

Jinbei is undecided.

[sweetescapeartist]

Bardock's Wish Saved Goku In The DBS Manga Continuity. Saiyan Resilience Saved Kid Goku In The DBS Anime Continuity.

According to the DBS manga continuity, Bardock's wish protected Goku until adulthood (link to Herms' tweet). But, events of the DBS manga continuity DO NOT apply to the DBS anime continuity.

So, when speaking about the DBS anime continuity, take the wish that DBS manga continuity Bardock made out of your mind when re-reading/re-watching DB & DBZ.

TLDR; Saiyans are just built tough. We've seen this over and over in Dragon Ball. They'e built for combat and survival and thats why they are a warrior race. They are capable of surviving from things that are fatal to other aliens & they recover faster from damage and get zenkai boost. So, what would be considered deadly to an Earthling/human, is not as deadly to a Saiyan.

And here are examples in DB that relay this info to us verbally & visually.

SAIYANS ARE BUILT FOR SURVIVAL:

The Galactic Patrol have tried & failed to kill off the Saiyans with something called "The Extinction Bomb." Saiyans can withstand something that kills most other aliens.

GOKU'S "GRAMPA" SAVED HIS LIFE:

This one is not an example of Saiyan resilience. This is Goku being metaphorically & literally saved by keeping his "Grampa" close to his heart.

Goku viewed the 4 star ball as his Grampa.

So, when Goku is saved by the 4 star ball, he says his Grampa saved him. (He even makes sure to catch it after he makes a wish on Shenron. The ball is special to him. So much so that he puts the 4 star ball on the hat of his son who he names after his Grampa.)

The 4 star ball saving Goku's life was meant to be foreshadowing of Grampa Gohan returning. Goku kept his Grampa in his heart & kept the 4 star ball (his "Grampa") over his heart. It's like spiritual protection. Then, Grampa Gohan appears in the next arc.

GOKU'S HEART TEMPORARILY STOPS:

There have been examples of Goku's superhuman feats, but this example is one of the first near death instances that shoe of his Saiyan resilience.

(One I left out is Goku drinking the super god water which was poisonous, but Goku survived it.)

Goku's heart is temporarily stopped by King Piccolo then he breathes again later. This is simply due to him being a Saiyan (another example later). Toriyama even stated that during the King Piccolo arc is when he decided Piccolo & Goku were not from this world. This is foreshadowing that Goku isn't human.

A SAIYANS' LIFE FORCE KEEPS THEM ALIVE LONGER THAN EXPECTED:

More Saiyan resilience is displayed when Raditz & Goku were pierced by Piccolo's attack. There was a hole in their chests yet they still talked and were alive for a minute or so.

VEGETA'S SAIYAN RESILIENCE:

Vegeta survives getting a hole blasted through his stomach as well. He even walks around and talks before collapsing. This is some insane life energy Saiyans have. Saiyans are truly built for survival. Even if they are dealt a fatal blow, they still may be able to kill their opponent when their back is turned before they die.

Due to Saiyan resilience, Vegeta was able to talk for a while before dying instead of dying immediately from getting shot through his heart.

Also, in Chapter 256, Vegeta says that his enemy underestimated his recuperative abilities when they thought he wouldn't gain consciousness until a half hour later. Yet another example of Saiyans being built for survival.

THE RESILIENCE OF EARTHLINGS & SAIYAN/EARTHLING HYBRIDS:

Non-Saiyans get holes in their chest and cannot speak afterwards. Meanwhile we see Goku, Raditz, & Vegeta retain consciousness longer while having holes in their chest and are still capable of speech.

On the flipside, Earthlings and a Saiyan-Earthling hybrids are not as resilient full-blood Saiyans. Yamcha getting a hole in his chest and Trunks getting a hole in his chest. (Although it was a combination of Yamcha's ki being drained + getting impaled.)

A full blood Saiyan would've survived a little longer than Trunks and been able to speak. Hybrids have the physicality of Earthlings but the power and abilities of Saiyans. Saiyan bodies are just more durable than a hybrid & most other aliens & humans.

So, that's why I say that Goku was not protected by a wish in the DBS anime continuity. For now at least. And I hope it stays this way. The series itself explains why Goku sirvived dangers when he was a kid. We don't need some wish from Bardock to protect him. And the inclusion of Bardock was Toyotaro's idea, not Toriyama's. Toyotaro said so in an interview.

And that inclusion resulted in a poor retcon, dumbing down Goku & Vegeta, as well as trying to change what Saiyan pride is. Toyotaro doesn't even know what Saiyan Pride actually is. So, I don't take the DBS manga continuity seriously. The DBS anime continuity understands the world and characters far better than Toyotaro ever could.

[nichuuu]

Any tips on writing? Planning on giving it a try

When it comes to starting your writing journey, it's important to find your own voice. What's the overall aim of the story? How am I gonna get my ideas across in a unique way? These are some questions you can ask yourself.

When I saw "unique", I don't mean that you have to actively go out of your way to make your stories different. What I mean is--find a style of writing that suits you, a style that allows you to convey your character's thoughts and emotions comfortably. Feel free to gain some inspiration form other writers.

For complexity and poetic prose, I'd recommend reading @capslocked's fics. He's a god at poetic-ahhh smuts. I can only aspire to be like him. Departure is a must-read.

For simplistic and straight to the point writing, I recommend reading some of @writerpeach's fics. Love how straight the point he can be while incorporating vivid descriptions to enhance the overall feel. The first smut I ever read was from him.

And of course, make your sentences coherent. One trap that I myself fell into was using these long windy sentences. They're really tiring to read sometimes, and it can make someone feel breathless afterwards.

For instance: I walked over and place the hat on her head before gingerly removing my scarf and wrapping it around her neck and then I pulled my jacket around her.

Pretty tiring to read right? Now on the flipside:

I walked over to her and placed the hat on her head. Then gingerly, I removed my scarf and wrapped it around her neck before pulling my jacket around her.

Much easier, and much more pleasant to read. To be honest, these types of things are a personal preference. This is just my two cents on the matter. If you know how to capture a reader's attention with these types of sentences, go right ahead. If not, do your best to stay away from it.

Another thing that I found useful was varying your dialogue structure. I used to write in such a way that I'd get a full paragraph worth of "xxxx," he said. Learning to mix things up makes it easier on your readers and on yourself while you edit.

Don't be in a rush to get your story published. Sometimes, taking it slow is the way to go. Take your time to edit, read, re-read, maybe re-write the whole fucking plot, and then get it published. Being in a hurry will affect your quality of writing, so be sure to be patient with yourself as you write. If you want to, you can get someone to help you read through your first draft, then you can get some feedback and improve.

As for smuts... I'll quote caps on this one.

"Don't be afraid. Copy shamelessly and something something something..." (this is all I remembered I'm sorry)

Feel free to draw ideas and inspirations from other smuts, just don't copy them wholesale. Being descriptive in smut writing is one thing, but you also have to focus on the emotional, physical and psychological aspects, making it pretty draining to write a smut. My advice is to get the first draft out, get rid of the horny and fatigue, then go back an edit. It works wonders.

This is my take. Be sure to gain the opinions of other writers as well! The more advice the merrier.

Wow! This was long.... But thanks for the ask! Have an Eunbi:

[rainbowspinch]

SPINCH STUFF MASTERLIST

BATIM COMIC:

Prologue:

PR 1

PR 2

PR 3

Chapter 1 - Friendly Reintroductions:

1 - 11:00 Is Pretty Late…

2 - Play It Cool

3 - Where am I?

4 - No Hat?

5 - G’mornin’ Sunshine!

6 -???

7 - Friendly Reintroductions

8 - Bit Green In The Gills?

9 - Eating You From The Inside Out

10 - Do You Feel Guilty Yet?

11 - Are You With Me?

Chapter 2 - Digging Deeper:

Chapter Card

1 - After Some Deep Breaths…

2 - Somewhere Old…

3 - …Someone New

FNAF AU/DESIGNS

TITLE POST

FNAF 1:

Main Band

Golden Freddy

FNAF 2:

Toy Band

Broken Mangle

Withered Chica

Withered Bonnie

Phone Guy (FNAF 2 ERA) concepts

FNAF 3

Springtrap

FNAF 4:

Fredbear, Springbonnie & Security Puppet

Afton Kids + Charlie

Diner Staff

SISTER LOCATION:

Funtimes

Lolbit + Ennard

Early Ennard Doodles

PIZZA SIM:

Helpy, Lefty, Chica, El Chip & Candy Cadet

SECURITY BREACH:

Glamrock Band

Other Bots

Sun and Moon

Extras

SB Humans + Ruin characters

MXES

Glamrock Interactions Chart

MapBot sketches

Early Bonnie sketches

Headcanon Text post

THE FLIPSIDE

X,C,P,R

OTHER:

Jessica (Book Trilogy)

Freddy, Foxy, Chica video

Monty Gets a Banana Video

Golden Days (First time drawing SpringBonnie)

Cassie Animation

Scrapped Toy Foxy Concepts

Bits and Lolbit

FNAF 2 Doodles

Lolbit Original Ref

House Tour

[bubblesandgutz]

Every Record I Own - Day 784: Neutral Milk Hotel On Avery Island

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea knocked me off my axis when I first heard it in 1998. The music alone was like discovering a whole new planet, and to then discover that the Neutral Milk members were a part of a collective of bands under the Elephant 6 Recording Company was like discovering a whole new universe. It was tough tracking down the other band's records in that pre-internet era, but I grabbed what I could. While there were certainly fascinating things happening in that solar system, I kept gravitating back to Neutral Milk Hotel.

On Avery Island didn't reprogram my brain the same way Aeroplane did, but maybe that's because I was already on the Elephant 6 wavelength when it came into my collection. While it didn't instantly floor me in the same manner, if you had asked me which NMH album was better back 1999, it's entirely possible I would've answered with On Avery Island. I remember dubbing this LP onto a cassette that I'd take with me to my summer job of cleaning up campus housing at my college back in May '99. On the flipside of the tape was the final mix of Botch's We Are the Romans, which we had just finished tracking up in Seattle. As I was going through all those students' houses, cleaning up the junk they'd jettisoned in the rush to leave for summer break, I'd switch back and forth between this strange little world concocted by a bunch of weirdo college kids on the opposite end of the country and our own little musical vision from our lonesome corner of the Northwest.

While I've familiarized myself with Aeorplane to the point where I've drained it of a little bit of its magic, I still feel immediately transported back to that summer of 1999 whenever I listen to On Avery Island.

I owe a hat tip to @axelrod for reminding me about the Elephant 6 documentary yesterday, which I watched last night. It was an inspiring movie that reminded me of all the beauty and excitement of being at that age where you're out on your own, free of larger adult responsibilities, and finding your tribe of like-minded artists. The Elephant 6 collective did an amazing job of creating their own little universe, both in terms of the psychedelic music they made, but also as far as cultivating their special cultural enclave. One thing that kept coming to mind while watching the movie was how that specific kind of magic will likely never happen again. It was an era of cheap rent where you could work a part time service industry job and survive. You didn't have a cellphone to distract you, so your social time involved hanging out with your friends. You weren't bombarded by entertainment, so you and your friends were constantly making art with no hopes of a larger audience other than the people you hung out with on the weekends. And even beyond that, your access to music was so limited that you were actively engaged in your local scene and listened to your friends' records over and over and over again.

That last point was one that really stuck with me while watching the documentary. My listening habits have expanded dramatically in the last twenty years, and that craving of new music has increased even more in the era of streaming. But I worry about losing some sense of forming a deeper connection to new music and creating that mental bond where an album can transport me to some other time and place, keeping me tethered to some aspect of my past. Will I ever listen to a new record as much as I listened to the two Neutral Milk Hotel albums? Do I have that kind of bandwidth considering the volume of new music coming out in any given week?

I must have listened to On Avery Island hundreds of times, and it's fully woven into my synapses in such a way that whenever I hear it, I'm twenty-one again, just finished with an academic year with the whole summer ahead of me, with a new album by my band all wrapped up, feeling nothing but optimism for the future. And it's ultimately that kind of connection that I want out of all music.

[hellotherekenobi]

☆ CHANGES TO THE BLOG. PLEASE READ! ☆

If you’re new to my blog, my deepest apologies.

A while back, I mentioned that eventually I would stop posting fics on this blog (due to the fact that I am satisfied with what I’ve made & now wanna focus on other things.) Now that I’ve written all the old requests I was sent and am posting the Robert Fischer fic on a schedule, I’m prepping myself for tipping my hat and leaving out the side door.

When? Jan 2023. So, I’ll be here for the rest of December. Everything on my to-do list is scheduled to come out this month, so I’ll still be posting before I leave.

Soon, I will host a little event on my blog where you can request some blurbs & other fun things, sort of as a last hurrah. I hope you will enjoy it and I want to thank you all for supporting me throughout my time here. It really means a lot, even if you weren’t here from the start. I have lots of lovely memories and all the stories I’ve written will always stay near to my heart.

If you want to keep in contact, you can follow me on my main blog @karasong which is just memes & random postings. This blog will become an archive so all my stories will still be available for you to read (remember, there’s always my ao3!)

Again, thank you all so much for making this blog a comfort space for me. It definitely helped me through some irl things that were happening.

For now, I’ll catch you on the flipside!

Tagging some moots: @dameronology @megmeg-chan @harghoes @anakinni3 @bb8sworld @compassgenius @stargazingcarol @obirain-remade @interwebseriesfan24 @justrunamok @hellolitty @darthkenobii @princessxkenobi @moonlight-prose @kyber-crystal @star-whores-a-new-hoe @ramblingwritings @morganas-pendragons @immoral-rose @penfullofwordsaheadfullofstories @the-mandalorian-clone-lover @normanbates-coveredinblood

I also don’t know who would genuinely like to be tagged for this information, so feel free to circulate this.

If you have any questions, hit me up.

[spookberry]

That shirt you drew Sam in... Is there a specific term for that kind of shirt? It looks cool ngl.

Also your art is amazing and I really love your art style. Unrelated, but do you have any fashion/hair headcanons for Danny, Sam, and Tucker? I would love to read them!

It's a bell sleeve! I agree they look very cool.

Hmm, I dunno, i don't think the boys are all that interested in fashion so they tend to have more basics and repeatable wardrobes. Especially Tucker, idk I can just imagine him being the type to own like four of the same exact shirt just cuz he likes it. As evidenced by his signature red hat and his desire to "have a thing"

All three of the trio can both be a bit shallow in different ways, but Danny especially is willing to adapt to trends if he thinks it'll make him fit in better. So overall I kinda imagine his fashion as More generic than Tucker's? Tucker knows what he likes and he wears it even if its the same thing over and over. Danny' is more interested in how other's will perceive him than how much he likes it. That being said Danny DOES own a lot of nasa and space pun stuff, he just doesn't wear it to school much.

For Sam's clothes I kinda like leaning more towards androgyny at times? For one I just find it fun to draw on her. But I also think it highlights her distain for femininity more, ya know? Also pants. Theyre just more practical, and I think she'd like that.

While make-up and hair are definitely a part of fashion, they aren't avenues I'm as well versed in ngl. When it comes to Sam I actually like the idea that she dyes her hair, in the past I drew her dying her hair from blonde to black. But Idk sometimes I also like the flipside argument that its her parents who bleach/dye their hair to lighter colors and Sam's hair is naturally dark. I like making the underneath of her hair purple though so that parts definitely dyed regardless.

For the boys Idk I kinda just draw whatever's easiest. I do like the idea that Danny grows his hair longer hair as he gets older.