#I've played over 800 hours

[aimzicr]

I'm coming to live a new town, tired by the life I've led behind but tethered by obligation to family I barely know. "Take care of this place," he told me, on his deathbed, "It's important to me." I've been thinking the whole bus ride over what might be important to me, and I come to the conclusion that there isn't anything. It used to be my health and happiness, but my dead-end job kind of robbed me of that. I don't really have anything else for myself, except a couple of suitcases and a long road ahead of me.

I'm met at the bus stop by the small town's mayor, and he takes me to a shack in an overgrown plot. The town carpenter tells me she's fixed the place up, making it livable. But they left the land to grow wild? Did my grandfather ever matter to these people? They offer me some seeds to get started, and call me 'farmer'. What a joke. I can barely keep a potted succulent alive.

But what else is there for me?

Unpacking is easy. I barely brought anything and the shack is tiny. What isn't easy is dealing with my future here. It takes hours for me to clear the weeds and rake away the topsoil and plant a neat row of packet-seeds. I'm exhausted, shaking, sweaty. It feels like a full day's work but it's barely lunch time. I have nothing in the kitchen. I wash up, and walk to town. The place feels stiff, still, empty.

The prettiest girl I've ever seen criticises my appearance as she walks by. The doctor wishes me a tentative welcome from the door of his clinic, but there's something about him that makes me so uncomfortable I walk by quickly after my hello-back. A cute guy tells me I can't play football with him because girls can't do that. There's a pub and a grocer's in town, but the prices are more than my strained wallet can handle, so I cross the river and buy from the convenience store. I take my instant noodles to the beach and it helps, for a little while, to sit and listen to the waves. As I go home, two small children and their babysitter stare at me, and two mothers gossip speculation after I pass by. It feels just like being at home: being alone, being tired, and being talked at or about, rather than to.

The night's a rough one. The bed's uncomfortable, the sheets are scratchy, the whole house groans and creaks in protest about my presence and the renovations done to it. I can hear creatures in the woods, bats and owls and possums and who knows what else. I'm just as exhausted waking up as when I went to sleep, but now my muscles ache from yesterday's attempt at living up to the name 'farmer'.

When I find the first early shoots have been decimated by crows and insects, I want to cry. I do, for a little bit, but then I take out my frustrations on the weeds and the rocks, and even a couple of the stubborn old trees. I eat more instant noodles, and look at the patch of bare earth in front of the house.

When I finally grow the parsnips, it feels like a blessing. I can sell them in town and get myself something to eat that doesn't come from a packet. The pub owner doesn't smile at me until I produce enough cash to make him realise I'm not just here for the free water. It's good to have a hot meal.

There's a sign in the grocer's the next day. "Fresh-grown local parsnips." I hear the grocer say he grew them himself. I buy more seeds, and I leave, and I won't be back until next month if I can help it. I won't be selling anything else from my land to him.

People come by to see me, now and then. But they never ask how I'm doing, if I'm struggling, can I help. It's always about what I can do for them: bring them something, grow them something, harvest something from the wild, give them lyrics for a song or an idea for a novel, pick up trash or mend a bridge. I don't know these people, or why they want nothing from me but my labour. Why they want what I can do and what I can make instead of who I am. It feels like I never left my dead end job.

The woman from the next property brings me a dog, scrawny and snarling. "He likes you!" He doesn't like me, I'm not a dog person, you just want him off your property so your chickens aren't in danger. I fill his water dish and leave him scraps, letting him stay fox-keen in the wilderness that should have been a farm. He stops snarling when he sees me, but we never grow close. I envy that about him: the people in this town keep coming to me with their problems and their demands. Perhaps I should start snarling, too.

I've cleared the ground, and built my own fences. I grow my own food and cook my own meals. This place was important to grandpa, but now it's all I have, and it's mine, and the work here feels right for me. Maybe one day the people in town will stop asking me to fill the various voids in their lives, but I doubt it. They let my grandfather's land fall into ruin as easily as they neglect their own lives, so. Not my problem. I have work to do.

Anyway. Stardew Valley.

[thevioletcaptain]

🙍🏽‍♀️🐷🪷 (i scrolled and picked three random emojis pls enjoy)

“You wanna run that by me one more time?”

On the other end of the line, Patience lets out a long-suffering sigh — as though Dean’s the one making unexpected phone calls at quarter past three in the morning — and says it again. The words don’t make any more sense than they did the first time.

“In fourteen hours and — now seventeen minutes — a pig in Lotus, Illinois is going to die, and unless you save her life, she’s taking everyone in a 50 mile radius with her. And yeah, before you ask me to say it a third time, I am acutely aware of how stupid this sounds.”

“And when you say pig, are we talkin’ Babe, or—?“

“My visions aren’t symbolic, Dean. It’s an actual pig. Her name is Princess.”

“Right. Just… wanted to be sure before we started trailing all the cops in uh, where’d you say? Lotus?”

“Yeah, you wouldn’t find one there anyway. Internet says it’s an unincorporated community — looks like there’s maybe three farms there, total.”

“Looks like?”

“Satellite images,” she says.

“Right. Hey, hold on a sec.”

“‘Kay.”

Rubbing his eyes with the heel of his palm, Dean pushes the rest of the way out of bed and throws on the same jeans he took off two hours ago. Switches out the ratty t-shirt he’d been almost-sleeping in for a fresh one, and yanks on his boots.

For once, he’d been planning on sleeping a solid seven hours. He was going to make maple bacon with blueberry waffles in the morning. Jack was going to help him mix the batter.

Depending on how things shake out with Patience’s vision, he might never be able to enjoy bacon again. Or for a few months, at least.

Fully dressed and heading out into the hall, he puts his phone back to his ear.

“I’m back,” he says, making his way toward the kitchen. He thumps twice on Sam’s door as he passes it, barking out a gruff hunt in response to Sam’s bleary huh? “Please tell me you’ve got some idea of how exactly Peppa’s gettin’ popped so we can try to do something about it.”

“I have no clue.”

“And you didn’t see anything else? Any details at all. A barn, a farmer, anything? Because this is…”

“Impossible. I know. But that’s all I’ve got. The pig just keels over, then bursts in a blinding flash of light, and ten seconds later Illinois has a brand new crater the size of New Jersey.”

“Okay, well — that’s something.”

“What?”

“The light. What color is it?”

“White, mostly,” Patience says, then hums a little to herself. “But… huh, actually, there is a bit of purple. Right in the center. Right before it goes supernova.”

“Purple light usually means witchcraft,” Dean says, approaching the kitchen. He can see the light on; can hear the telltale sound of Cas stirring sugar into coffee. “Maybe the pig is the final ingredient in some kind of magic bomb?”

“Could be,” Patience agrees. “But hey, listen, I gotta try and get a couple more hours sleep — huge test in the morning. But if anything else comes to me I’ll call you, okay?”

“Yeah, sounds good. And uh— thanks. And good luck.”

“You too.”

The line goes dead just as Dean steps into the kitchen, and Cas looks up at him from the table, where he’s reading an article in one of the Men of Letters’ old issues of The Farmer’s Almanac. He frowns at the sight of the phone in Dean’s hand. Frowns harder still when Dean heads directly for the coffee machine with nothing but a brief brush of a hand over his shoulder.

“Is something wrong?”

“It’s a day ending in Y,” Dean says with a sigh, pouring a cup from the thankfully still-hot jug. “You up for a road trip?”

“Of course. Where are we going?”

"Illinois," Dean tells him, leaning back against the counter as Sam arrives, his hair sticking so far out to one side that Dean suspects it’s generating its own electric charge.

He eyes it over his mug and has the grim thought that all that static electricity might be the thing to light Miss Piggy's fuse. Oblivious to Dean's train of thought, Sam lets out an explosive yawn. Dean bites back the kind of mildly-hysterical laugh that can only come when sleep-deprived and preparing to drive toward impending danger.

"What's in Illinois?" Cas prompts him, and Sam yawns again as he waves a hand for Dean to explain, and Dean takes a long sip of his coffee as he searches for a better way to put it than Patience had managed on her first try.

He's not sure that he succeeds where clarity of substance is concerned, but as far as style goes? He thinks he's nailed it.

“Short version? Royal rescue mission, but the Princess is a pig."

Cas squints at him.

“I think,” he says, looking over at Sam, who is blinking slowly as he tries to parse Dean’s words, “We’re going to need the long version.”

[written for this prompt game] [find me on ao3 as imogenbynight 💚]

[quick-drawn]

gonna try to be here in a little bit, — but anybody playing ranked this season ?

[txttletale]

Saw a tweet that said something around:

"cannot emphasize enough how horrid chatgpt is, y'all. it's depleting our global power & water supply, stopping us from thinking or writing critically, plagiarizing human artists. today's students are worried they won't have jobs because of AI tools. this isn't a world we deserve"

I've seen some of your AI posts and they seem nuanced, but how would you respond do this? Cause it seems fairly-on point and like the crux of most worries. Sorry if this is a troublesome ask, just trying to learn so any input would be appreciated.

i would simply respond that almost none of that is true.

'depleting the global power and water supply'

something i've seen making the roudns on tumblr is that chatgpt queries use 3 watt-hours per query. wow, that sounds like a lot, especially with all the articles emphasizing that this is ten times as much as google search. let's check some other very common power uses:

running a microwave for ten minutes is 133 watt-hours

gaming on your ps5 for an hour is 200 watt-hours

watching an hour of netflix is 800 watt-hours

and those are just domestic consumer electricty uses!

a single streetlight's typical operation 1.2 kilowatt-hours a day (or 1200 watt-hours)

a digital billboard being on for an hour is 4.7 kilowatt-hours (or 4700 watt-hours)

i think i've proved my point, so let's move on to the bigger picture: there are estimates that AI is going to cause datacenters to double or even triple in power consumption in the next year or two! damn that sounds scary. hey, how significant as a percentage of global power consumption are datecenters?

1-1.5%.

ah. well. nevertheless!

what about that water? yeah, datacenters use a lot of water for cooling. 1.7 billion gallons (microsoft's usage figure for 2021) is a lot of water! of course, when you look at those huge and scary numbers, there's some important context missing. it's not like that water is shipped to venus: some of it is evaporated and the rest is generally recycled in cooling towers. also, not all of the water used is potable--some datacenters cool themselves with filtered wastewater.

most importantly, this number is for all data centers. there's no good way to separate the 'AI' out for that, except to make educated guesses based on power consumption and percentage changes. that water figure isn't all attributable to AI, plenty of it is necessary to simply run regular web servers.

but sure, just taking that number in isolation, i think we can all broadly agree that it's bad that, for example, people are being asked to reduce their household water usage while google waltzes in and takes billions of gallons from those same public reservoirs.

but again, let's put this in perspective: in 2017, coca cola used 289 billion liters of water--that's 7 billion gallons! bayer (formerly monsanto) in 2018 used 124 million cubic meters--that's 32 billion gallons!

so, like. yeah, AI uses electricity, and water, to do a bunch of stuff that is basically silly and frivolous, and that is broadly speaking, as someone who likes living on a planet that is less than 30% on fire, bad. but if you look at the overall numbers involved it is a miniscule drop in the ocean! it is a functional irrelevance! it is not in any way 'depleting' anything!

'stopping us from thinking or writing critically'

this is the same old reactionary canard we hear over and over again in different forms. when was this mythic golden age when everyone was thinking and writing critically? surely we have all heard these same complaints about tiktok, about phones, about the internet itself? if we had been around a few hundred years earlier, we could have heard that "The free access which many young people have to romances, novels, and plays has poisoned the mind and corrupted the morals of many a promising youth."

it is a reactionary narrative of societal degeneration with no basis in anything. yes, it is very funny that laywers have lost the bar for trusting chatgpt to cite cases for them. but if you think that chatgpt somehow prevented them from thinking critically about its output, you're accusing the tail of wagging the dog.

nobody who says shit like "oh wow chatgpt can write every novel and movie now. yiou can just ask chatgpt to give you opinions and ideas and then use them its so great" was, like, sitting in the symposium debating the nature of the sublime before chatgpt released. there is no 'decay', there is no 'decline'. you should be suspicious of those narratives wherever you see them, especially if you are inclined to agree!

plagiarizing human artists

nah. i've been over this ad infinitum--nothing 'AI art' does could be considered plagiarism without a definition so preposterously expansive that it would curtail huge swathes of human creative expression.

AI art models do not contain or reproduce any images. the result of them being trained on images is a very very complex statistical model that contains a lot of large-scale statistical data about all those images put together (and no data about any of those individual images).

to draw a very tortured comparison, imagine you had a great idea for how to make the next Great American Painting. you loaded up a big file of every norman rockwell painting, and you made a gigantic excel spreadsheet. in this spreadsheet you noticed how regularly elements recurred: in each cell you would have something like "naturalistic lighting" or "sexually unawakened farmers" and the % of times it appears in his paintings. from this, you then drew links between these cells--what % of paintings containing sexually unawakened farmers also contained naturalistic lighting? what % also contained a white guy?

then, if you told someone else with moderately competent skill at painting to use your excel spreadsheet to generate a Great American Painting, you would likely end up with something that is recognizably similar to a Norman Rockwell painting: but any charge of 'plagiarism' would be absolutely fucking absurd!

this is a gross oversimplification, of course, but it is much closer to how AI art works than the 'collage machine' description most people who are all het up about plagiarism talk about--and if it were a collage machine, it would still not be plagiarising because collages aren't plagiarism.

(for a better and smarter explanation of the process from soneone who actually understands it check out this great twitter thread by @reachartwork)

today's students are worried they won't have jobs because of AI tools

i mean, this is true! AI tools are definitely going to destroy livelihoods. they will increase productivty for skilled writers and artists who learn to use them, which will immiserate those jobs--they will outright replace a lot of artists and writers for whom quality is not actually important to the work they do (this has already essentially happened to the SEO slop website industry and is in the process of happening to stock images).

jobs in, for example, product support are being cut for chatgpt. and that sucks for everyone involved. but this isn't some unique evil of chatgpt or machine learning, this is just the effect that technological innovation has on industries under capitalism!

there are plenty of innovations that wiped out other job sectors overnight. the camera was disastrous for portrait artists. the spinning jenny was famously disastrous for the hand-textile workers from which the luddites drew their ranks. retail work was hit hard by self-checkout machines. this is the shape of every single innovation that can increase productivity, as marx explains in wage labour and capital:

“The greater division of labour enables one labourer to accomplish the work of five, 10, or 20 labourers; it therefore increases competition among the labourers fivefold, tenfold, or twentyfold. The labourers compete not only by selling themselves one cheaper than the other, but also by one doing the work of five, 10, or 20; and they are forced to compete in this manner by the division of labour, which is introduced and steadily improved by capital. Furthermore, to the same degree in which the division of labour increases, is the labour simplified. The special skill of the labourer becomes worthless. He becomes transformed into a simple monotonous force of production, with neither physical nor mental elasticity. His work becomes accessible to all; therefore competitors press upon him from all sides. Moreover, it must be remembered that the more simple, the more easily learned the work is, so much the less is its cost to production, the expense of its acquisition, and so much the lower must the wages sink – for, like the price of any other commodity, they are determined by the cost of production. Therefore, in the same manner in which labour becomes more unsatisfactory, more repulsive, do competition increase and wages decrease”

this is the process by which every technological advancement is used to increase the domination of the owning class over the working class. not due to some inherent flaw or malice of the technology itself, but due to the material realtions of production.

so again the overarching point is that none of this is uniquely symptomatic of AI art or whatever ever most recent technological innovation. it is symptomatic of capitalism. we remember the luddites primarily for failing and not accomplishing anything of meaning.

if you think it's bad that this new technology is being used with no consideration for the planet, for social good, for the flourishing of human beings, then i agree with you! but then your problem shouldn't be with the technology--it should be with the economic system under which its use is controlled and dictated by the bourgeoisie.

[mingihttps]

21 questions

bang chan x fem!reader

you want chan by your side when having a panic attack but he won't answer your calls. thankfully han is there to distract you until chan finally comes home.

wc: >800

warnings: established relationship, angsts, hurt/comfort, panic attacks, crying, hyperventilating, self harm (hair pulling), pet names (baby, babygirl, my love, sweetheart), a couple cuss words

"the number you have dialed is-" i hit the red button on my phone screen with shaking hands. i've lost count of how many times i've tried to call chan in the past hour. my sobs and uneven breaths echo off the walls of my bedroom and reach my ears twice as loud. my boyfriend not answering my calls when i need him just makes the tears run down my face faster. my thoughts are running a thousand miles a second. going from feeling so alone to feeling like my own boyfriend hates me. it's getting harder and harder to breathe by the second as it feels like the room is getting smaller. then, suddenly, the sound of the dorm room closing and heavy footsteps are ringing in my ears. based on the loud rhythm of the footsteps, i can tell that they don't belong to chan. i tuck my head between my knees and tightly thread my fingers in my hair as a way to ground myself and, hopefully, keep myself quiet. i don't want whoever it is that entered the dorm to know that I'm having a panic attack for who knows what fucking reason at this point. i can hear the footsteps getting louder as they get closer and closer to my lover's room that i've been hiding in ever since they left for practice this morning. i tug on my hair harder as my tears or faster as the footsteps stop on the other side of the door. there is a gentle knock that sounds three times louder than what it probably was. i put a hand over my mouth to make sure no sobs came out, which is fruitless since whoever is at the door already knows I'm in here.

"y/n... can i come in?" i hold back A choked sob, which only makes my breathing more shallow. why had han come home? were the others on the way? god, I hope so. "y/n? i know you probably want channie-hyung but he won't be home for another hour... so can i please come in?" now that i know han heard me crying there's no point in trying to keep quiet. i uncover my mouth and let all of my shaky breaths be heard by han through the door. han quickly moves to open the bedroom door and make his way to me. "shit." i hear him mutter under his breath once he sees the state that i'm in, hyperventilating and shaking as i hold myself for comfort.

"what happened?" he whispers affectionately as he sits beside me on the bed and takes my other hand out of my hair gently.

"i don't know anymore." i said, truthfully and quietly, but han still heard me.

"that's okay sweetheart, you don't have to know," he whispers once again while smoothing down my hair, "wanna play a game?"

i look at han with teary eyes questioningly. "what game?" i sniffled.

"how about 21 questions?" han smiled down at me with practically pleading eyes.

i wipe my eyes and nod my head. i know he's just trying to distract me from my anxiety, but who am i to say no.

"okay, i'll start, what's your favorite color?"

"han, you already know that"

"just answer!" i teasingly shake my head before answering the question and asking my own. i don't know when, but han must have texted chan and told him that i was crying because a few minutes into the game, i hear the front door slam shut and someone calling my name. the bedroom door opens quickly, revealing my boyfriend.

"i'm so sorry, babygirl, are you okay?" chan says as he wraps his arms around my shoulders and kisses the top of my head.

"it's okay channie, i know you're busy," i reassure him as i wrap my arms around his torso, "hannie helped me calm down"

"i know, he texted me, i'm sorry i wasnt here sooner, baby" chan apologizes again.

"i'm going to end this game of 21 questions here, then" han says as he gets off the bed with a stretch and leaves to go to his own room.

"you hungry at all, baby?" chan asks and i shake my head.

"i am tired, though" i whisper as i lay down in the bed.

"then let's take a nap, my love" my boyfriend whispered back as he lays down beside me.

requests are open !!

reposted from my old account

[the-apocrypha]

anything related to dream's german accent from "the fourth dimension"? I've been obsessed with that little detail since you first posted that fic ❤️

OMG yes. The original fic, for reference. Also, asking for a friend, does 800 words count as short?

They stand in perfect silence on the forest path, Dream’s phone balanced in the palm of his hand as it records. The sound of the bird's song is made into an aesthetically pleasing series of bars on a line, on the app, and below it an hourglass spins as the song is compared to millions of other stored bird calls around the world.

Pacific wren appears first.

Below it, reed warbler.

Then, at last—sedge wren.

“It must be,” Dream murmurs. He loses patience and pulls the phone back toward himself, tapping at it. “These other two are not native species, they would not be—no. Pacific. And… India. It must be the sedge wren, there is—” He taps some more, and then a recorded bird call plays from the phone. “Yes?”

Dream is looking at Hob.

It sounds the same to Hob, but then, Hob has long proven that he has neither the senses nor the temperament for birding. Why Dream insists on consulting him at these turns is an ongoing mystery.

“Definitely,” Hob says.

Dream's nose scrunches.

"Definitely not?" Hob tries.

“If only—” Dream's brows draw together as he abandons the phone to squint into the bushes where the birdsong has been coming from. The binoculars come up, and then back down again. The squint gains agitation.

There is contention, amongst the birding community, about what constitutes a “rare bird spotting”. Some people hold that the bird must be seen, while others will settle for call identification only. This is to say nothing of the debate regarding rare birds unintentionally captured in the background of photographs, noticed days or weeks later.

“Show yourself,” Dream mutters, with a scowl fit to light the brush on fire.

Hob has a little gander about the path while he waits, like an airplane in a holding pattern. Further down the trail, there’s supposed to be a boardwalk over a wetland that he suspects will take at least an hour to traverse for all the birds expected to be nested there. He’s brought a book for that particular layover. It’s even not in English, at Dream’s insistence that Inkheart was best enjoyed in its original text, and also of an appropriate reading level for Hob’s current faculty with the German language.

He takes a picture, as he waits, of Dream with binoculars to the sky. It matches the other thousand of them on his phone. Binoculars at the beach. Binoculars at the park. Binoculars out the train window.

Eventually, Dream’s shoulders slump, and he lets the binoculars drop. He pockets his phone.

The bird song has gone.

“Sorry, love,” Hob offers, with a consoling hand between Dream’s shoulderblades.

“Such are the trials of ornithology,” Dream sighs.

“There’ll be other birds,” Hob tells him, and with gentle pressure, he gets Dream’s feet moving down the path again. “Maybe you’ll get that, uh, gargagney you wanted instead.”

“Garganey.”

“S’what I said.”

Dream trudges down the path.

They make it approximately a hundred feet before Dream’s head suddenly snaps up, and he has the binoculars up as quick as a flash.

A second later, Hob is unceremoniously yanked closer.

“Look!” Dream hisses, shoving binoculars in front of Hob’s eyes. “Look, look, up there, third branch from the top, just to the right, it’s a peewit.”

“A what.”

The sound of fingers on glass patters away as Hob takes approximately an eon to find the little bird that Dream had somehow spotted out of the corner of his eye perched fifty feet up a tree.

“It is not actually called a peewit,” Hob says.

Dream ignores him.

Hob shakes his head, and lowers the binoculars to watch Dream race through the Merlin menu to find the peewit's dedicated page. He holds out the binoculars in preparation, and sure enough, thirty seconds later Dream snatches them up to verify his identification.

Hob returns to his holding pattern.

“Hey,” he says, at length. “Is that the peewit’s call?”

Dream looks up from his phone. “Mm?”

Hob gestures at thin air. “That?”

There’s a wok wok wok wok wok wok wok overhead.

Dream shakes his head, and returns to his phone. “A squirrel, Hob.” Only, of course, they are speaking German and so it is Eichhörnchen.

“A what?” Hob asks, suppressing a grin.

“Ein Eichhörnchen,” Dream repeats. He glances up briefly.

Hob’s pretend expression of confusion passes muster.

“A squirrel,” Dream translates impatiently, and then switches back to the binoculars.

One of Hob’s greatest sorrows in life is that Dream has learned to minimize his accented English over the last few years. It had been Hob Gatling, and vhatches and seh Dhreaming, every word just a little bit imperfect and all the more wonderful for it. Now, it is only when Dream’s focus slips that Hob is allowed these little gifts from him.

Skuurl.

Hob turns into another holding pattern, and grins to himself.

[ratlesshonret]

Song Analysis - Children of the City

Part 0 - My Ramblings, or Whatever

Hello everyone, my name is Honret, and today I am going to be doing the long-awaited Children of the City analysis that I have been teasing for far too long.

Of course, this isn't my first rodeo with song analysis. I've analyzed quite a lot of mili songs on r/mili, over on Reddit. So why am I doing this on tumblr? Partially for reach/exposure (r/mili is tiny,) and partially because I'm liking using Reddit less and less every day.

If people like this post, I might do more, or even repost my old analysis pieces on r/mili over here so they can be archived in a neater way.

Anyway, let us get on to the actual song. This analysis will contain spoilers for Library of Ruina.

Part 1 - Analysis of the Lyrics

This song is arguably rather short in terms of number of lyrics for a mili song, so let's get right into it.

Also, to get this out of the way immediately, this is a Character Song for Yan Vismok from Library of Ruina. If you're reading this, you probably already know that, but if not then it is very important information to know.

Sleep for a total of eight-hundred hours per day And drink a liter of milk Warm-up before you go play

Immediately, this beginning part seems to be almost satirizing the nature of the Prescripts. Obviously, sleeping for 800 hours in a day isn't possible, and drinking an entire liter of milk is uncomfortable for most, but they feel like things a Prescript would order someone to do. After all, they frequently demand impossible and seemingly random actions from the recipient.

Only eat or write Or pull the trigger with your right hand Only thing that's left Is to work on following commands

This next section seems to be referencing the suppression of left-handed people in the past, and relating that to the oppressive nature of the Prescripts. They order you to do uncomfortable things you might not be skilled at, just like a left-handed person may have been ordered to eat or write with their right hand.

The second half ties it back into the main theme by making it about following commands. The people who follow the Prescripts are, in a way, constantly being commanded to do things, with the fear of death if they don't follow. In that way, they're constantly being trained to unquestioningly obey a higher power, just as left-handed people were made to obey the command to be right-handed.

(This part also makes me headcanon Yan as a leftie)

By the time you realize You'll be restrained to a desk And with your dreams on the floor, you comply Eyes chained to the test Find a groom or bride, bonus if brunette In ninety hours, spill their insides Paint your room picturesque

This section is long, so like the last part, I'll split it into two halves.

The first part seems to broadly reference life in The City itself. By the time you've realized you're being trained to follow random commands, you're already figuratively tied to a desk, your only option to comply further with the commands due to having already given up so much.

Yan himself seems to have given up a lot to the Prescripts. Its heavily implied he's killed loved ones, and done other horrible things just for the Prescripts, with his only reward being to become the Messenger who delivers Prescripts to others just like him.

With his dreams figuratively on the floor due to the Prescripts, all he can do is comply.

The next lines seem to continue to drive in the ludicrous nature of the Prescripts. Finding someone to marry within ninety hours is a tall order, especially if you're encouraged to focus on just brunettes. And of course, the typically-violent nature of the Prescripts is also brought up, with the next command in this sequence being to kill the very person you just married. Its also a massive tonal shift in the song.

Now it's time for another vendetta Going through the shelves, picking out my pre-written persona Children of the city sees only the neon stars Reflected upon the murky gutter sky Don't ask me why I desperately wish to be included in The City's night

The first line here might be referencing how Yan has picked up a lot of vendettas in his time delivering the Prescripts. Or at the very least, he feels like people hate him for delivering their Prescripts, just as he hates the Prescripts themselves. After that, the part about a pre-written persona seems to imply that Yan is never being his true self. All he can do to avoid the pain of what the Prescripts demand is to pretend to be someone else, a persona.

This next part is likely a metaphor, and one that I've still had trouble parsing. It could be implying that the "children of the city," which is likely those who work under the Index, or more broadly those who follow what The City desires, only see the bright neon stars, and not the dark murky gutters they're reflected in.

Finally, Yan says that he wishes to be included in The City's night, but he doesn't know why. This, to me, says that he has a secret desire to follow what The City wants of him, so that he may finally be included, rather than feel the same exclusion he's felt his entire life as a Messenger of the Index.

In four-hundred thousand meters, turn right

A nice little metaphor, comparing the Prescripts to a car's GPS system.

Pick up a knife and stab a familiar warm body Learned to fight before I knew love or bitterness of coffee Snippy scissors cut down the strings, I set myself free Only to figure out everything I chose was by proxy

The beginning of the second half of the song here seems to be implying that Yan has definitely killed people close to him before, almost definitely because the Prescripts ordered it. Furthermore, he has been doing this from a young age, as it was "before I knew love or coffee," which very much seems to be telling me he was young.

The next part of the song seems to focus on the events that led Yan to Distort. He forged Prescripts to cut himself free and establish his own free will, but everything he chose was "by proxy," as the real Prescripts told people to follow Yan's fake Prescripts. His betrayal was forseen and intended all along, and his will was never his own.

As we suckled upon the nine-millimeter pacifier Swallowing the fact that other than to expand, we had no purpose As my ever-burning will to stay afloat backfires I now know I must be comfortable Being who I considered worthless

I think the part at the start of this verse seems to be implying that suicide is a common thing among people in the Index. After all, when your will isn't your own for long enough, you may consider doing something drastic to get it back, or even just to rebel, such as committing suicide. There's also probably people who have been ordered to kill themselves by the Prescripts.

The next part is more about Yan in particular. His desire to stay afloat backfired, in the sense that the very act of clinging to his free will made it hurt him even more when he realized that his actions were all just controlled by the Prescripts, and by extension, The City. So in the end, the very people who he considered worthless, those who just follow orders like sheep without caring where they're from, are in fact just the same as him, even if he didn't realize.

Follow the city's ribbon To a heart nobody seems to listen It takes my heart being broken and broken again (Broken and broken again) To know that I am the reason why (The reason why) The sufferings never end

Yet again, let's take this from the top.

The first lines are probably referring to Yan finding the "God of The City" responsible for producing the Prescripts. After all, he was following a Prescript that led him straight there, and its a place that almost nobody else knows about.

The rest of this verse seems to be Yan talking about the pain he's felt delivering Prescripts. After all, he seems to blame himself for all the pain caused by people following the Prescripts he delivers as a Messenger, which is probably why he says that its partially his fault that the suffering in The City doesn't end.

It could also be referring to his own suffering. His internal struggle for free will, to prove that his actions are his own. Every time its disproven, his heart gets broken again. But in saying his will is his own, he's also saying that him delivering Prescripts that hurt people is his own decision.

This probably ties into why he's so willing to follow the voice telling him to Distort. Once he finally has confirmation that his will is just the will of the City, that its all determined by the Prescripts from the start, he can finally remove all the blame and pain that he's been pushing onto himself and just mindlessly follow the Prescripts.

Now it's time for another vendetta Going through the shelves, picking out my pre-written persona Children of the city sees only the neon stars Reflected upon the murky gutter sky Don't ask me why I desperately wish to be noticed by The City's eye

The only part of this chorus that is different from the first chorus is the final line. It seems to be saying that Yan wants The City to notice him, that he wants it to see his actions. Maybe he feels the The City noticing him would make all of his struggling worth it, or that it'd give his life some meaning.

Do not go home until you finish reading the value of e 2.71 8281 8284 5904 5235 3602 8747 1352 6624 9775 7247 0936 9995 9574 9669 6762

This part is referencing Euler's Number, which is an irrational number, meaning it never ends. The value of this number can never be read in its entirety.

He's never going home.

Part 2 - Summary

Children of the City seems to describe Yan's thoughts and struggles in his life, as he's followed the Prescripts to both his own detriment and the detriment of those around him.

Yan wants his own free will, wants his actions and destiny to be his own. But at the same time, this desire is constantly at odds with Yan's desire to not be at fault for all the pain and suffering he feels like he's caused as a Messenger of the Index, delivering the same painful Prescripts to people that he's been following his entire life.

In short, Yan is in pain. And when he finally gets confirmation that he has no will of his own, that its all the work of the random generations of The City, he finally Distorts into a form that mindlessly follows the Prescripts, feeling no guilt or pain over anything he does.

Part 3 - More of My Ramblings

I hope this analysis makes sense, and that I'm not just hallucinating these meanings to these lines. Yan is one of my favorite new characters in LoR, and I wanted to do him justice by analyzing his Character Song to prove that I am the true Yan Scholar.

If you do have feedback, I'd love to hear it. I want to fully understand this song, and by extension, Yan Vismok himself.

[andrevasims]

I just like hearing Modern Vintage Gamer talk about technical things I don't understand lol but this video reminded me of the state of TS2

He says "For the longest time, trying to get Diablo to run on modern PCs is almost impossible. There were some third party patches & hacks you could use with some varying levels of success, but for years it was difficult to run the game unless you had access to an old Windows 95 computer."

"...It wasn't until recently, when GOG released Diablo 1 & 2 for modern machines [in 2019]. The GOG version patches routines in the executable, graphics, and sound APIs to allow you to play the game on your modern PC."

"Since Blizzard has all but abandoned the game, there is no simple way of running it on anything other than a Windows PC. ...One possible way to bring the game forward is to reverse engineer the game."

Then he goes on to explain how that's accomplished by sifting through the data files for leftovers & debug info that hint at how the game's code functions. Even though Diablo had a lot of that, it took someone over 1,000 hours to do the reverse engineering.

But after the source code was reverse engineered, people were able to fix the game so that it could work better on modern PCs. Basically doing what GOG did with their re-release, but making it open source so people who already owned the game on CD could get the same benefit.

Diablo's minimum requirement is a 60 MHz processor, and a DirectX 3 compatible graphics card.

TS2's minimum requirement is a 800 MHz processor & a DirectX 9 compatible graphics card.

Then there's my current PC, with a 3.4 GHz processer, and DirectX 12.

idk just something I've been thinking about, not just so I can keep playing my 20-year-old games but also if the developers refuse to support their games as the passage of time makes them less accessible, how are we going to preserve them.

[tinywagoncolorbat]

GAICHE ADLAI X READER PLSSS IM BEGGING (and reader is jealous of grey bc I am) if you don’t want to you don’t have to but please do any setting where you can write best!

I haven't had any luck with writing for months now but I absolutely love Gauche and really want to try writing for him because there is not enough of him out there

I am also currently rewatching Black Clover so it's perfect timing

Your just as important as Marie

Gauche Adlai x Fem!BlackBullsReader

Summary: You decide to go shopping alone instead of waiting for him but you run into him in town with gray

Warning: Fluff, Slight angst?, Cursing, Jealousy, Gauche might be a little out of character

Word count: 800+

It's been a few hours since you've seen Gauche. You heard something about him helping Gray with her shyness.

It upset you a little because he's been spending a lot of time with her lately and you found a nice new shop in the capital that has really good toys and treats for kids, so you were hoping to go shopping with him for Marie.

You wander out into the main area of the Black Bulls base hoping they would be back by now.

You take a look around and notice almost everyone is out on missions or is training.

You let out a loud sigh "Guess I'll just have to go shopping by myself then" You say as you grab your broom and head for the capital.

You arrive and you keep flying over the buildings to try to find the shop you found not too long ago when you hear a familiar voice.

You fly down to the street you hear the voice and jump off your broom to get a better look at the loud yelling that you seem to recognize somewhere.

You walk closer to see Marie standing In the street. You turn your head to see Gauche with a nose bleed screaming that he loved her and running toward her to hug her.

You stood there smiling at him because that's just like him, Until he's right in front of her and she transforms back into gray.

Your heart stops as you see Gauche and gray standing incredibly close to each other and him complaining that she changed back.

You start to feel really insecure by watching this so you walk forward to interrupt them.

"There you are Gauche, I've waiting to see you all day" You say with a hint of sadness in your voice as you approach them.

"Oh, hello dear. What are you doing here" Gauche asks when he turns and sees you there. Gray immediately panicked and tried to hide herself.

"There was a new shop i found a while ago that would have nice things for Marie, and since you weren't back yet i was going to go by myself" you say nervously while playing with you're fingers.

"New things for my beautiful angel, I will gladly come with you" Gauche states as his nose starts bleeding at the thought of new gifts for Marie. "I'll have to help you later gray, my darling Marie needs some gifts"

You smile at him as you start walking in the direction of the store. "It's a little ways down this street"

He runs up besides you and starts talking about what he could get for Marie from this shop. "Will i be able to get my angel some new dresses, Or maybe some new dolls that she can play with"

You just hum and nod along with what he's saying, fully focused on what you saw with him and gray just a minute ago.

He kept rambling until he realized you weren't responding and helping him think of what to get her. He stop talking and looked down and seen the sad expression you had on your face. "Is something bothering you" He blurts out.

You stop walking and look up at him. "It's nothing, don't worry about it" You wave it off putting on a smile.

He stops to stand in front of you too see you better. "Don't say that, it makes me what to know more.

You look up at him and then look back down at the ground. "It's just.." You trail off for a second, then take a deep breath deciding to just rip off the band-aid and just ask. "Do you have feelings for gray" You quickly say without looking at him.

At first he gets angry at the fact that you think he would like somebody else, then he realizes that your worrying about this a lot. He lets out a breath to calm down so he doesn't say anything mean and make this worse.

He puts a hand on your cheek to make you look up at him. "Gray is just a colleague and that is all she will ever be. Next to my darliing angel Marie you're the most important person in my life" He pauses and looks at you for a second.

"Actually, Your just as important as Marie is too me"

You look at him with pure shock as you eyes start to water. "You really mean that?"

"I do, I love you y/n" He say with a smile on his face.

Tears start streaming down your face as you hear the words you never though he'd say to you. "I love you too" You happily say smiling back at him.

He uses his thumbs to wipe the tears away as he leans down to leave a gentle kiss on your lips.

After he pulls away you looks at you with a slight nose bleed. "now lets go to that new shop so i can spend all my money on my sweet angel"

"Sounds good" You say as you grab his hand and lead his down the street to the shop.

[annie-creates]

My beautiful nightmare

Pairing: Lady Lesso x reader

Genre: fluff

Words: 800

Note: Hi darling, as I've said I don't wanna write another part of that story as I would have probably killed someone and I don't wanna make anyone (including myself) cry. I left the ending open so everyone can imagine the ending they want. But I've written a different family piece for you, hope it will make up for it a bit.

Lady Lesso was a force to be reckoned with. She was respected by all and feared by most. Nevers went silent when she stepped into the room and Evers cleared out of her way. No one wanted to be the center of her attention, much less her wrath. She was known to be cruel, coldhearted and firm. The smallest mistake or fault in her mood could earn you hours in the doom room, and that was a fate no one wanted to challenge. But she was also collected and deliberate. Almost anyone could get to her nerves. Except for you.

You were a shy little mouse when you started teaching in the school for evil. Quiet, subdued, and seemingly scared of everything and everyone around you. Even your students had fun of you sometimes for being too tranquil to be a real Never. But as soon as you got facilitated around the place you became the real devil in disguise. Not only did you pester your students to prepare them for all the dangers of the outside world, but you also caught out your colleagues and other authorities.

Lesso didn’t exactly appreciate that as you were showing her the fatuous incapability of her own staff. All the complain about your tricks and traps bored her to no avail. The moment she fell into one of your snares herself was the cherry on the cake of her anger. But the more you annoyed her the more you enjoyed yourself and your little shenanigans. Soon it became your personal mission to get her as many times as possible. Your highest score was two times a day so far. It annoyed her to the highest levels yet firing you wasn’t much of an option. The Nevers strangely took a liking to you, or at least appreciated your wit. And then, you were the best teacher she had here, as you have so inaptly shown her.

“You are my worst nightmare Y/l/n,” she told you once, but you took it as a compliment.

What’s better than misguiding the devil herself? She almost got used to it… so much that the moment you fell ill and couldn’t leave your bed for a week, she found herself missing your pranks. Not that she would ever admit such thing out loud of course. Your artifice and cunning was something she started to admire. She found herself enamored by you. You were still her worst nightmare tho, and she made sure to tell you every time you angered her.

Now you were sitting at the terrace bench, your back supported by cushions, looking over the magnificent mountains. You loved the peace and quietness of the place, one of the reasons you decided to move here. Whoever said Nevers can’t enjoy nice things must have been really really wrong. Sometimes you missed the busyness of the school, but you moved on in your life and you had more important pressing matters to attend to.

“How’s out little spider doing?” Leonora asked as she walked up to you, hands full of chopped wood and sleeves pulled up.

“Taking his after-lunch nap,” you replied with a smile, controlling the baby you were rocking in your arms.

“Mama I wanna play,” your daughter whined as she came back from the trip with her mother.

“You have to wait till Y/s/n is a bit older my dear viper. I promise you he’ll be in all the trouble with you then,” you assured the little girl. “Don’t worry, he’ll be running around before you blink.”

“How do you know? It’s taking him too long,” Y/d/n wasn’t having your excuses.

“Because that’s what you did to me and mommy. You grew up before we turned around to wipe your chin,” your wife laughed at that as your daughter got obviously tired with the conversation already and ran into the house to do god knows what.

“Well she’s not wrong, I can’t wait for out little demon to run around causing trouble either,” Leonora admits as she sits next to you, taking your son in her arms.

“I’m sure you can’t. Maybe you should be cleaning up all the mess this time,” you taunt her leaning your head on her shoulder.

“Hey, they got that after you!” Lesso argues with an amused smile.

“Yeah sure, cause the dean of evil and wickedness herself is a good little angel who wouldn’t hurt a fly,” sometimes she was just as annoying as you could be, but you loved her for it none the less. “But I love you with all your devilry and spite.” you assure her, you adored and sometimes even envied her troubling cruel talents.

“I love you, my beautiful nightmare.” Leonora exclaimed as she kissed your head, admiring the little vicious family you’ve build together.

[mezzy303]

Ok laddies time for this week's theory time (do I need to make a masterpost of my theories? This is getting a little ridiculous lol)

Spoilers for One Piece chapter 1115 spoilers under the cut

The way I jumped and threwwww my kindle (onto pillows) when Vegapunk confirmed all the Atlantis theories!!!!!!! I made the mistake of reading it right before bed and I was wide awake for like another two hours talking to a friend and just thinking about it 😅

I honestly was ready to scrap my theory from ch 1113 about there being whole continents 800 years ago before a great flood happened, and I'm still reeling on how it all turned out to be true besides the natural phenomenon part (here's my theory from ch 1114). And Oda once again proves how fucking genius he is bc I never expected 200 meters?????? Omg???? That's over 650ft for my fellow US folks. Here's an image going around Twitter from a YouTube video that shows what are own world would look like if sea levels rose 200m

Insanity

These recent chapters have had me really questioning the mechanics of the One Piece world lol. Tbh I think we all just assumed that the world was just Like That and mainly functioned to drive the plot forward. But there are actual reasons behind it?? With this revelation, I started thinking about how the sinking of land could have been intentional on the Allies' part, beyond the destruction of the Great Kingdom and erasing it from history. The way the world is now, with the Red Line going all the way around and the Calm Belts running perpendicular to it, it's incredibly hard to travel between the different Seas. The islands are also fairly isolated from each other, especially on the Grand Line. It makes it hard for information to travel around, and the only way to get world news is through a heavily vetted newspaper. To me, it all seems purposeful to further subjugate the world by physically dividing the people, making them easier to control and rule over.

I also want to reiterate how easy it would've been to erase the Great Kingdom from history and collective memory when the Allies/World Government had the capabilities of mass destruction that could cause sea levels to rise hundreds of meters. Not only does it make the original land inaccessible, the amount of people that died was probably immense. And with the death of a large number of people comes the loss of knowledge. Those that survived likely wouldn't have wanted to pass down information on the Great Kingdom from both the trauma of the event and the fear of retribution by the World Govt (I assume the laws forbidding research on the Void Century was immediate). So potentially after just one generation, knowledge on the Great Kingdom and how the world used to be would've disappeared. Iirc only the Minks and the Kozuki family passed down info on the kingdom's existence, and their lands are largely isolated from the rest of the world. (Speaking of which, they both are in locations where further rising sea levels wouldn't affect them)

Looking into it further, the way the geography of the world also seems like it's trying to prevent (or at least discourage) people from getting into or leaving the Grand Line and also travel between islands. Just trying to get to that sea is dangerous because it requires a person to either sail through Reverse Mountain, where many pirates canonically have died because of the crazy currents and storms and end up crashing into the mountain, or going through the Calm Belt, which is current and wind free and infested with Sea Kings. And once you're in the Grand Line, the waters itself are extremely difficult to navigate. Now what's in the Grand Line that the Allies may have wanted to prevent people from getting to? Laugh Tale.

For a little while now, I've been playing around with the idea on how the magnetic fields on each island may have been created to specifically help a pirate/sailor get to Laugh Tale. We've already seen Kidd using his awakened devil fruit powers to change the polarity of different objects, what if it's possible to change the polarity of an entire island? With those powers, a person could have created the seven paths of the Grand Line. I'm still trying to decide if this was done outside the Allies' control, or if it was an order from the Allies and the person was secretly loyal to the Great Kingdom.

And don't think I missed that little detail Vegapunk said about the Allies using ancient weapons!!!!!!! Literally each chapter has been teasing the reveal of the Elders having Uranus!!!! ｡゜(｀Д´)゜｡ It seems like the Lulusia attack really was just a taste of what their weapon can do. I can't imagine how big an attack (or how many attacks in succession?) it would take to cause 200m sea level change???

[theewokingdead]

The Princess Bride

Pairing: Benny Miller x wife!Reader (1st Person POV; Benergy Universe) Summary: Benny always breaks into random movie references when you least expect it. Word Count: 800+ Rating: No rating but my blog is 18+ Warnings: Includes lines from The Princess Bride Notes: My husband said the Mosquito Montoya line today and it sparked a fic idea. As always, Benergy is a collection of one-shots so this can be read without having read anything else. ***If you enjoy this fic, please tell Tumblr this should be shared with others by reblogging! That's what the algorithm loves (it's how it works here. I don't make the rules!)***

Masterlist Benergy Masterlist

Having grown up in Colorado’s beautiful mountains, Benny loves being outside. So much so that sometimes he lets the outside in. Even in Florida’s sticky summer heat, Benny will leave the back door wide open behind him whenever he goes out onto the patio. I guess he figures there's no point in closing the door when he'll be back sometime between now and three hours from now.

Eyeroll.

He’s come in and out of the house at least a half dozen times in the past five minutes alone. A task as simple as grilling burgers for the four of us is turning into a hundred step process as first he forgets the spatula, then the cheese, and finally a clean plate to put the cooked burgers on. Then he suddenly decides he wants hot dogs as well.

And this man swears he doesn’t have ADHD.

A hot, humid breeze dances over my body as I stand at the sink, cleaning dishes I had let pile up. The AC unit rumbles in the distance, trying to fight off the heat creeping in, but it’s a losing battle. I've given up on reminding Benny to close the door.

Sophie, our youngest, isn't as agreeable. She's sitting at the kitchen island behind me, a coloring book and a box of crayons strewn in front of her. She whines, and when I turn toward her, I can see the tension building in her shoulders as her eyes seem to follow something around the room.

“A mosquito!” she screams. I have no idea how she's a product of Benny when she hates the outdoors, especially insects, so much.

I don’t immediately see whatever she sees, though I'm certain if our backyard wasn't covered with a screen, all of the state's wildlife would've snuck in by now. There could be a gator climbing up the wall for all I know. I’m honestly not surprised that a mosquito snuck through the netting and got into the house, but I really could not care less about playing bug catcher right now.

“It’ll be okay, baby,” I say, turning back to the dish in my hand. “If you don’t bother it, it won’t bother you.”

“But it will bite me,” she whines, squirming in her seat.

“I’ll get it in a minute, sweetheart,” I offer, hoping she’ll just forget about it and move on. “I promise it won’t bite you.”

“I don’t want it to bite me!” Sophie cries, growing more distraught. “No, no, no! Go away, mosquito!”

Exhaling sharply, I drop the dish in my hand into the sink and turn off the water. Following her gaze, I finally see the source of her fear. There, on a wall nowhere near where she is, is a housefly, minding its own business.

Knowing she won't stop whining until it's taken care of, I grab a swatter and kill it, leaving a black mark on the wall to deal with later. Better yet, I’ll make Benny clean it up, since he’s the one who invited all of nature indoors.

“There. Better?” I ask, turning to look at Sophie, hoping she's satisfied and will let me return to my task.

“Yay! You’re my superhero!” Sophie cheers, clapping and smiling giddily.

"Thank you, baby." I offer her a small smile before turning back to the sink

As soon as I return to washing the dishes, Benny walks into the kitchen, a plate full of cooked food in one hand and a dirty spatula in the other.

“Hello. My name is Mosquito Montoya,” he says with the worst Spanish accent, and I can just sense him pointing the spatula at me. “You killed my father. Prepare to die.”

Sophie squeals with laughter, finding anything and everything her father does entertaining. If anything, she’s always encouraging him.

I go still, staring blankly at the wall in front of me. Sometimes I cannot believe the things that come out of his mouth.

“I swear to god I’m leaving,” I say, shutting off the water and reaching for a towel to dry my hands. He’s been in a playful mood all day and I’m just over it – well, not really, but I can’t let him know that. He’s incorrigible. “I am running away and never coming back.”

“You keep saying that,” Benny says. He drops back into the Spanish accent and adds, “I do not think it means what you think it means.”

“Jesus Christ,” I say, tossing the towel onto the counter. I throw my hands in the air, feigning defeat. “I'm done.” I walk out of the kitchen, shaking my head and biting my lip to hide the laughter. He might be annoying as hell at times, but he’s hilarious - I just can’t let him know it.

“True wuv will fowow you foreva,” Benny quotes, following closely behind me.

“Oh my God! Stop!” I exclaim, laughter creeping up in my voice. I pretend to cover my ears.

“So tweasure your wuv!” he exclaims.

“Never!” I shout, but I'm quickly breaking into giggles while trying to escape him.

“Get back, witch!" Benny finally exclaims between laughs. He reaches out and grabs my wrist, spinning me around and pulling me into a kiss before I can protest further. As his lips touch mine, everything else melts away. I surrender to the pleasure, a soft moan escaping my lips as I kiss him back with more intensity.

After a moment, I push him away, and he stares at me in confusion.

“I’m not a witch, I’m your wife,” I say, and his lips immediately twist into a more mischievous smile. He knows that I almost always go along with his nonsense. “And after what you just said, I’m not even sure I want to be that anymore.”

“You never had it so good,” he replies, bringing me in for another kiss.

I can’t argue that.

[traegorn]

I need to stop doing this to myself.

(A Rant Where Trae Has Written Too Many Books This Month)

So since most of you started following me because of Witchcraft or podcast stuff, I realize a lot of you don't know how much fiction writing I do.

Primarily what I've published are comics. The big one is UnCONventional (which ran from December of 2009 to December of 2019), but I also did a steampunk comic called The Chronicles of Crosarth (which I put on hiatus in like 2018 intending to come back to... but I haven't, and I make no guarantee that I will even though over 650 of the 800 planned pages are done). Crosarth is... fine? The art isn't great in either of these, but UnCONventional carries itself with the humor.

But that's all old stuff. You may be like "Trae, what have you been producing for the last four years," and the answer is "not a lot." I got major creative block with the pandemic. Peregrine Lake, the "Northwoods Gothic" comic I was supposed to launch in 2020 (which has some characters from UnCONventional in it) didn't materialize when I said it would. What storytelling energy I had went into Stormwood & Associates and The Meatgrinder (my two actual play podcasts), but that was it.

And then 2023 happened, and the juices started flowing again.

Peregrine Lake is moving forward -- but with me just doing the writing. My urge to draw has not returned, but my urge to write has. A friend of mine, Ethan Flanagan, is drawing it, and I've written the first year of comics. It likely won't launch any time soon (the artist I'm working with is busy as hell so we want to get a shit-ton of the comic done before we launch it -- we have like the first month and a half of the comic ready?). But yeah -- it's happening. I hoping for Spring, but we'll see.

The other thing though is that I've started writing, like, novels. I've always had like twenty ideas in my head, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I decided to start with the idea I cared the least about (in case I fucked it up): A queer urban fantasy story.

In the last month and a half I've written complete drafts of two different novels in this setting, and am halfway through another one... and have another one outlined.

I, uh, had some ideas.

If you're asking yourself "Hey Trae -- what the fuck? That's a lot" you need to know a few things that aren't obvious. At one point in college, in 72 hours, I produced over 40 pages of text between three research papers. All were for 300 level courses, and I may have disassociated while writing them because I frankly don't remember most of it. But, like, they were decent papers.

One of those papers is in Google Scholar.

Anyway, yeah. I haven't been sleeping great because I've been obsessively writing, but you might ask "Why didn't you just write one and get it ready to publish?" That's a great question. Because I wrote a book, and when I was 3/4 of the way through it I realized something very important: This book would make a great sequel to a book I haven't written. I've been writing book two in a series where I haven't written book one yet.

Well fuck.

So I finished that draft, and I went and wrote book one. Now that book? That book I'm getting ready to publish. I expect to have it out in January. Part of my editing process involves setting what I think is a completed, good, revised draft down for a couple of weeks and then returning to it with fresh eyes. We're in that waiting period right now.

But I still had a bunch of energy.

So the first thing I did was a revising draft on book two (the one I wrote first), but I finished that. And had more energy. And more stories in this setting kept popping up.

So I started a third book. And I'm halfway through the first draft of that book. But then I realized yesterday... shit, this isn't book three.

This is book four.

I need stuff to happen before we get to this story.

So now I've outlined the actual book three, and am working on literally both of these books at once (I'll take a break for Christmas and then go do a final edit on Book One).

And... I'm just like... why am I like this?

I need to stop myself for a few days and get more sleep.

[airokunomega]

Hey guys, I need help.

17M, lifelong depression, bi. I have tried every medication under the sun. None of them have even begun to help. I swear to god, they are sugar pills. I tried to get therapy, but every therapist and psychiatrist I try ditches me after the second or third appointment, straight up doesn't show up, and leaves me waiting with no explanation, nor any messages left to apologise. I've run out of therapists licensed to help in my state. I have diagnosed depression, and almost positively autism and ADHD, however I'll probably never know because every therapist doesn't stay long enough to diagnose me. I mostly play video games, but no matter how much I try I can't enjoy myself, so I tried to become competitive. I mostly play beat saber, and I have for 800 plus hours and 2 years. I'm number 2000 in the world, and have stagnated there for a few months now. Here we are, putting all this work in for something I don't enjoy, and then shmucks who started last month are hitting top 300 like it's fucking nothing. I can't even hit a 500pp play, no matter how much I practice and work. I also work out, 4 times a week, and none of my weights have increased a single pound since I started 4 years ago. I'm still the same 120 pounds I was when I started. I've seen nutritionists, sports specialists and whatnot and none saw any problems. I play aimlabs and Fortnite every day, and I'm still awful at aiming and basically everything else even though I know what I'm supposed to do. I have 6 thousand hours in Minecraft since 2013 and I'm still no good at anything in the game. It's almost like my body doesn't listen to my brain. Caffeine helps a bit, but not as much as I wish it did. I've tried so many different hobbies and given up after months of trying because they didn't make me happy. I stuck with gaming because I hope that the next level, the next rank, the next whatever gives me some kind of satisfaction. I was also kicked out of 3 discord servers that are now big that I helped build from the ground up, most notably being furry legion. I didn't do anything, they were all separate unrelated incidents, and completely took me by surprise. I know this post was kinda all over the place, but I'm just looking for advice. I know how depressed people have reduced neuroplasticity, but this is ridiculous. I'm just hoping to get some "I can relate"s or some advice about what I can do to get some help. I am really struggling to find a reason to keep living.

I appreciate your time, sorry to bother you.

Note: Not proofread, also bad English sorry

[lordwoolselytaxservices]

To the people who are trying to break the 'capitalistic nature of medicine' but still charge you $800 for an hour and a half (about $533/hour) long session with them I hope you know you're part of the problem. (It's not just medicine either. It's all the get rich quick people, all the 'its so easy to become a millionaire/entrepreneur/business owner/etc' people too.)

Because the realty is that those of us who need your services the most can't afford that. And since Big Pharma doesn't recognize your practice because they can't profit off of it I have to pay out of pocket.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be paid for your time and expertise. You should. But $800 for 90 minutes of what? How often? What if it doesn't work like everything else I've tried? That's half my monthly salary as a full time employee. They offer 15 minute phone consultations first, which is great! At $75 per 15 minutes. A rate of about $300/hour.

People who can afford those types of services at those prices are already doing it. *gestures to upper middle class and upper class* The people who need it the most can't.

I've been playing prescription roulette for over 20 years at this point. Finding someone who is approaching things from a different angle is the only option I haven't exhausted. And you wanna charge me, someone who is considered impoverished by class terms/value/salary/etc. here in the US, $800 for a 90 minute session.

I am so so so fucking sick of this "let me post this video on TikTok/Reels/etc about how I can help so many people and then let them click a link that tells them it costs literally hundreds of dollars".

You are praying on us just like Big Pharma and Big Corp and quite frankly the entire upper class does.

What will y'all do when we're all dead and can't carry your labor and fill your pockets? What then?

[argosianpancakes]

Today I made a huge mistake which was deciding to beat the superboss Satan in SMT V Vengance on hard mode while also playing Godborn. Safe to say it not only took forever but I had to grind macca to buy strength balms as well as strength and magic inscences to even make a dent in his HP because his Vitality WAS IN THE 800s but I beat him and I have now lost hours of my life to the grind and pain of watching the death cutscene over and over again but I'm happy I did it. Next up is Masakado who might be easier (I've only beaten him in normal)