#LIMINAL Bundle

[kontaktlab650]

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[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 333

I once more believe Battinson Batman needs to be given a child. Or multiple. Multiple children. I am also once more rotating Ghosts Have Wings Au. 

So Batman, still early in his whole vigilante career ends up busting a shipment, nothing too surprising there. Pretty usual honestly. Except for what was in one of the crates already open. Because it looks like some sort of gemstones but… perfectly spherical. Strange. Suspicious. 

But it’s also late, er, early in the morning, and the GCPD is notoriously corrupt, so like, he’s not going to just leave the weird gemstones, each about the size of a plum or so. (Dear Gotham he’s apparently hungry, and might inwardly vow to never let anyone realize what his tired mind decided to use as measurement) 

So he, unknowingly spurred on by more than just a slight bit of ecto contamination, takes the strange spheres back home. Just puts them in his pockets and heads back to the manor that they moved back into after the whole Riddler mess. (He even found a cool cave! With a bunch of terrifying bats, but they made a glass separator! For safety!) 

But in Bruce’s defense of forgetting about them, he’s more than a little tired and hungry and just wants to sleep for a bit, y’know? So maybe he forgets about the gems as he falls asleep in the chair in the cave (Alfred was not pleased!) until he starts digging around for them. Erm. Did they fall out somewhere?? There’s no holes in his belt pockets… 

And maybe these sort of things shouldn’t slip his mind, the spheres had felt Weird with a capital W, but he gets forced to a circus and there’s an… accident. So maybe he pushed it away as not important because there’s now an angry grieving eight-year old living with him and he’s panickedly reading any and all sort of parenting books he can get a hold of because he has no clue what he’s doing. 

Yeah, maybe his back is itching like crazy no matter what he tries, and maybe he threw up the other day, but it’s fine. This is fine. 

….

Oh dear Gotham those are feathers, this is not fine- ALFREEED!

[thelostbaystudio]

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[ellecdc]

hiya elle!!!

could i request a first-time dad sirius fic of siri introducing his baby to the other marauders?? 🩷🩷

so. stinkin'. cute.

dad!Sirius Black x mom!reader who are introducing their first child to the Marauders

You felt as though you were experiencing the world through glasses that weren’t your exact prescription, riding out the last of the adrenaline coursing through your veins after the past 24 hours. You were floating in this liminal space between discomfort and euphoria, pain and joy, worry and love.

You thought perhaps though the love was beginning to win out.

You were sitting in your hospital bed as you watched Sirius gently bounce the tiny bundle he was holding up to his face.

“Isn’t her nose just perfect, sweets?” He asked you (for quite possibly the 13th time in the four hours your daughter has been earth side) without moving his gaze from said nose.

“So perfect.” You agreed readily, smiling softly at the picture and hoping that this image in your memory didn’t fade as you became more lucid. 

There was a gentle knock before a mop of wild hair and a pair of spectacles shoved its head in through the door to your room.

James gasped quietly yet no less dramatically as he looked between you and Sirius.

“Can we come in?” He whispered, adorning quite possibly one of the biggest smiles you’d even seen on him (which was really saying something, considering he has been notoriously sunny since the day you met him), before Lily shoved her head in just below his. 

“I promise we’ll behave.” She added.

Sirius chuckled and nodded his head in invitation. “You were never the one we were worried about, Red.”

In a way that only happened throughout the history of humanity at the precise moment family members or loved ones entered the room of a newborn and their parents; Lily, James, and Peter all tiptoed in, for some reason even hunching low as if their lack of height would somehow make them any quieter.

James gasped again as he and Lily peered over Sirius’ shoulder to get a glimpse of the newborn in his hands; all three friends sharing identical beaming grins. “She’s beautiful, Sirius.” Lily whispered in awe.

“Bloody perfect, is what she is.” James agreed, leaning around Sirius to look at you. “Way to go, mum. Brilliant job you’ve done.”

“Thank you, Jamie.” You replied, turning a little shy as Sirius turned his lovesick gaze to you, which was very embarrassing considering he literally just watched you push his fucking child out of your crotch. 

“What’s her name?” Peter asked, standing in front of Sirius like an eager kid waiting for their turn to pick a toy from the treasure box.

“This is Aurora Jubilee.” Sirius said proudly, turning his daughter slightly so that Pete could get a look.

“Bloody perfect.” James reiterated when you heard a quiet commotion outside your hospital room.

“I said I was sorry, Reg. The baby can’t tell time yet, she won’t know you’re late!”

You then heard something that sounded an awful lot like someone being whacked with a bouquet of flowers.

“Idiot.” Regulus hissed. “I’m trying to make a good impression; just because you don’t worry whether or not Harry finds his uncle to be untimely doesn’t mean I want to set the same precedent for my niece. Tu as tellement de chance tu es une bonne baise.”

The door pushed open slightly further as Remus and Regulus quietly stepped in, furious blushes adorning their faces when they realised that you all had paused in order to eavesdrop on their conversation.

“How nice of you to finally join us, little brother. Your niece has been asking for you.” Sirius deadpanned. 

Regulus scoffed and Remus grimaced as Regulus came rushing over to your side and pressed a kiss to your hair. “How are you doing, mama?” He asked, pulling back to consider your form as Remus pressed his own kiss to your head. 

“I’m good, uncle Reggie, thank you.” You smiled at him.

“Good.” He said with a curt nod. “I worry, leaving you in the care of my brother - you deserve better.”

“Sod off.” Sirius muttered, causing Lily to gently swat at his back.

“Watch your mouth, Sirius. There are little ears now.”

“Yeah, watch your fucking mouth, Sirius.” Remus volleyed.

“Christ, our kids are doomed.” Lily complained as she moved to sit on the end of your bed.

“Okay, I can’t take it anymore; let me hold her.” James demanded, making grabby hands to Sirius.

“Okay but Prongs, I swear to god if you fumble this like you fum-”

“I didn’t fumble that pass! You threw it too hard!” James quickly negated with a petulant whine.

Moving in slow motion, Sirius relinquished his hold on his new favourite person into James’ capable and seasoned dad hands before moving to perch himself beside you on your bed. 

“‘Lo, Aurora. I’m uncle Prongs; your favourite. I’m going to buy you so many stuffies, your dad and mum will need to buy a second place  just to have somewhere to put them all. And Haz is going to be the best big cousin you could ever ask for; he’s already trying to convince me to buy you a bike so you guys can ride together. And-”

“Okay.” Lily interrupted. “My turn.” 

James harrumphed but acquiesced and passed her over to his wife.

“She has her mummy’s nose.” Lily cooed, causing Sirius to gently pull you into his side and pressing his nose into your hair.

“That’s what I’ve been saying.” He said, causing you to snort.

“No. You just kept saying it was perfect.” You argued.

“Exactly.”

“Let’s just hope you have your mummy’s smarts, too.” Lily concluded, passing Aurora to Pete.

“Oi!” 

“Hi, ‘Ro.” Peter said, smiling down at the infant as she started to stir slightly. “No, no. Please don’t wake up. Oh god, oh god, James take her - take her! I’m not ready for this!”

“Oh hand her ‘ere.” Remus mumbled, moving to take the tiny bundle from his mate. “Wormy smells, doesn’t he, little love?” He cooed at the baby who, much to Peter’s chagrin, stopped fussing immediately. 

“Oh you and I are going to get into so much trouble, darlin’. I’m going to teach you so many swear words, and I’ll help you prank your dad any time you want - you just give me a ring and I’ll be there.”

Any contention between Remus and Regulus from their arrival melted quickly as Regulus leaned into Remus’ side to gaze at the newest Black family member. 

“You wanna hold her, love?” Remus asked him quietly, causing Regulus to shake his head quickly. 

“I don’t want to hurt her.”

Sirius scoffed. “Please, we let Peter hold her.”

“Sod off!”

“What if I drop her?” Regulus continued.

“Just don’t drop her. God, you’re a weird bloke.” Sirius muttered under his breath, though Regulus seemed to catch it as he levelled his brother with a glare. 

His face softened considerably as Remus shifted his hold in order to transfer Aurora into Regulus’ careful arms.

He spent a few moments just looking down at his new niece, a silent conversation seeming to pass between them as Remus reached around him to stroke the downy soft skin on the side of her face.

“Okay, I’ve only known Aurora for three minutes; but if anything ever happened to her, I would kill everyone in this room and then myself.” He said simply. 

Peter let out a nervous laugh before he realised Regulus was quite serious. 

“Good.” Sirius said with a nod. “That’s why we picked you to be her godfather.”

Regulus’ head whipped up at that as he seemed to strengthen his hold on the baby in his arms.

“You what?”

“If anything ever happened to us, we know you’d do everything in your power to give her a good life - the best life.” You explained.

“I- but…really?”

“Yeah.” Sirius said emphatically. “Besides, you inherited all of mother and father’s dirty money anyway, might as well use it to spoil our girl.”

Though there were clearly tears forming in Regulus’ eyes, he turned his attention back to his goddaughter with a derisive scoff. 

“I was planning on doing that anyway, Sirius. Je suis vraiment désolé de te dire ça, Aurora, mais ton père est un idiot.”

Remus snorted. “Already teaching her important life lessons.”

“Get bent, Moony.” Sirius sneered.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The paradox of choice screens

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

It's official: the DOJ has won its case, and Google is a convicted monopolist. Over the next six months, we're gonna move into the "remedy" phase, where we figure out what the court is going to order Google to do to address its illegal monopoly power:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

That's just the beginning, of course. Even if the court orders some big, muscular remedies, we can expect Google to appeal (they've already said they would) and that could drag out the case for years. But that can be a feature, not a bug: a years-long appeal will see Google on its very best behavior, with massive, attendant culture changes inside the company. A Google that's fighting for its life in the appeals court isn't going to be the kind of company that promotes a guy whose strategy for increasing revenue is to make Google Search deliberately worse, so that you will have to do more searches (and see more ads) to get the info you're seeking:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/24/naming-names/#prabhakar-raghavan

It's hard to overstate how much good stuff can emerge from a company that's mired itself in antitrust hell with extended appeals. In 1982, IBM wriggled off the antitrust hook after a 12-year fight that completely transformed the company's approach to business. After more than a decade of being micromanaged by lawyers who wanted to be sure that the company didn't screw up its appeal and anger antitrust enforcers, IBM's executives were totally transformed. When the company made its first PC, it decided to use commodity components (meaning anyone could build a similar PC by buying the same parts), and to buy its OS from an outside vendor called Micros-Soft (meaning competing PCs could use the same OS), and it turned a blind eye to the company that cloned the PC ROM, enabling companies like Dell, Compaq and Gateway to enter the market with "PC clones" that cost less and did more than the official IBM PC:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/08/ibm-pc-compatible-how-adversarial-interoperability-saved-pcs-monopolization

The big question, of course, is whether the court will order Google to break up, say, by selling off Android, its ad-tech stack, and Chrome. That's a question I'll address on another day. For today, I want to think about how to de-monopolize browsers, the key portal to the internet. The world has two extremely dominant browsers, Safari and Chrome, and each of them are owned by an operating system vendor that pre-installs their own browser on their devices and pre-selects them as the default.

Defaults matter. That's a huge part of Judge Mehta's finding in the Google case, where the court saw evidence from Google's own internal research suggesting that people rarely change defaults, meaning that whatever the gadget does out of the box it will likely do forever. This puts a lie to Google's longstanding defense of its monopoly power: "choice is just a click away." Sure, it's just a click away – a click, you're pretty sure no one is ever going to make.

This means that any remedy to Google's browser dominance is going to involve a lot of wrangling about defaults. That's not a new wrangle, either. For many years, regulators and tech companies have tinkered with "choice screens" that were nominally designed to encourage users to try out different browsers and brake the inertia of the big two browsers that came bundled with OSes.

These choice screens have a mixed record. Google's 2019 Android setup choice screen for the European Mobile Application Distribution Agreement somehow managed to result in the vast majority of users sticking with Chrome. Microsoft had a similar experience in 2010 with BrowserChoice.eu, its response to the EU's 2000s-era antitrust action:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BrowserChoice.eu

Does this mean that choice screens don't work? Maybe. The idea of choice screens comes to us from the "choice architecture" world of "nudging," a technocratic pseudoscience that grew to prominence by offering the promise that regulators could make big changes without having to do any real regulating:

https://verfassungsblog.de/nudging-after-the-replication-crisis/

Nudge research is mired in the "replication crisis" (where foundational research findings turn out to be nonreplicable, due to bad research methodology, sloppy analysis, etc) and nudge researchers keep getting caught committing academic fraud:

https://www.ft.com/content/846cc7a5-12ee-4a44-830e-11ad00f224f9

When the first nudgers were caught committing fraud, more than a decade ago, they were assumed to be outliers in an otherwise honest and exciting field:

https://www.npr.org/2016/10/01/496093672/power-poses-co-author-i-do-not-believe-the-effects-are-real

Today, it's hard to find much to salvage from the field. To the extent the field is taken seriously today, it's often due to its critics repeating the claims of its boosters, a process Lee Vinsel calls "criti-hype":

https://sts-news.medium.com/youre-doing-it-wrong-notes-on-criticism-and-technology-hype-18b08b4307e5

For example, the term "dark patterns" lumps together really sneaky tactics with blunt acts of fraud. When you click an "opt out of cookies" button and get a screen that says "Success!" but which has a tiny little "confirm" button on it that you have to click to actually opt out, that's not a "dark pattern," it's just a scam:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/27/beware-of-the-leopard/#relentless

By ascribing widespread negative effects to subtle psychological manipulation ("dark patterns") rather than obvious and blatant fraud, we inadvertently elevate "nudging" to a real science, rather than a cult led by scammy fake scientists.

All this raises some empirical questions about choice screens: do they work (in the sense of getting people to break away from defaults), and if so, what's the best way to make them work?

This is an area with a pretty good literature, as it turns out, thanks in part due to some natural experiments, like when Russia forced Google to offer choice screens for Android in 2017, but didn't let Google design that screen. The Russian policy produced a significant switch away from Google's own apps to Russian versions, primarily made by Yandex:

https://cepr.org/publications/dp17779

In 2023, Mozilla Research published a detailed study in which 12,000 people from Germany, Spain and Poland set up simulated mobile and desktop devices with different kinds of choice screens, a project spurred on by the EU's Digital Markets Act, which is going to mandate choice screens starting this year:

https://research.mozilla.org/browser-competition/choicescreen/

I'm spending this week reviewing choice screen literature, and I've just read the Mozilla paper, which I found very interesting, albeit limited. The biggest limitation is that the researchers are getting users to simulate setting up a new device and then asking them how satisfied they are with the experience. That's certainly a question worth researching, but a far more important question is "How do users feel about the setup choices they made later, after living with them on the devices they use every day?" Unfortunately, that's a much more expensive and difficult question to answer, and beyond the scope of this paper.

With that limitation in mind, I'm going to break down the paper's findings here and draw some conclusions about what we should be looking for in any kind of choice screen remedy that comes out of the DOJ antitrust victory over Google.

The first thing note is that people report liking choice screens. When users get to choose their browsers, they expect to be happy with that choice; by contrast, users are skeptical that they'll like the default browser the vendor chose for them. Users don't consider choice screens to be burdensome, and adding a choice screen doesn't appreciably increase setup time.

There are some nuances to this. Users like choice screens during device setup but they don't like choice screens that pop up the first time they use a browser. That makes total sense: "choosing a browser" is colorably part of the "setting up your gadget" task. By contrast, the first time you open a browser on a new device, it's probably to get something else done (e.g. look up how to install a piece of software you used on your old device) and being interrupted with a choice screen at that moment is an unwelcome interruption. This is the psychology behind those obnoxious cookie-consent pop-ups that website bombard you with when you first visit them: you've clicked to that website because you need something it has, and being stuck with a privacy opt-out screen at that moment is predictably frustrating (which is why companies do it, and also why the DMA is going to punish companies that do).

The researchers experimented with different kinds of choice screens, varying the number of browsers on offer and the amount of information given on each. Again, users report that they prefer more choices and more information, and indeed, more choice and more info is correlated with choosing indie, non-default browsers, but this effect size is small (<10%), and no matter what kind of choice screen users get, most of them come away from the experience without absorbing any knowledge about indie browsers.

The order in which browsers are presented has a much larger effect than how many browsers or how much detail is present. People say they want lots of choices, but they usually choose one of the first four options. That said, users who get choice screens say it changes which browser they'd choose as a default.

Some of these contradictions appear to stem from users' fuzziness on what "default browser" means. For an OS vendor, "default browser" is the browser that pops up when you click a link in an email or social media. For most users, "default browser" means "the browser pinned to my home screen."

Where does all this leave us? I think it cashes out to this: choice screens will probably make a appreciable, but not massive, difference in browser dominance. They're cheap to implement, have no major downsides, and are easy to monitor. Choice screens might be needed to address Chrome's dominance even if the court orders Google to break off Chrome and stand it up as a separate business (we don't want any browser monopolies, even if they're not owned by a search monopolist!). So yeah, we should probably make a lot of noise to the effect that the court should order a choice screen, as part of a remedy.

That choice screen should be presented during device setup, with the choices presented in random order – with this caveat: Chrome should never appear in the top four choices.

All of that would help address the browser duopoly, even if it doesn't solve it. I would love to see more market-share for Firefox, which is the browser I've used every day for more than a decade, on my laptop and my phone. Of course, Mozilla has a role to play here. The company says it's going to refocus on browser quality, at the expense of the various side-hustles it's tried, which have ranged from uninteresting to catastrophically flawed:

https://www.fastcompany.com/91167564/mozilla-wants-you-to-love-firefox-again

For example, there was the tool to automatically remove your information from scummy data brokers, that they outsourced to a scummy data-broker:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/3/22/24109116/mozilla-ends-onerep-data-removal-partnership

And there's the "Privacy Preserving Attribution" tracking system that helps advertisers target you with surveillance advertising (in a way that's less invasive than existing techniques). Mozilla rolled this into Firefox on an opt out basis, and made opting out absurdly complicated, suggesting that it knew that it was imposing something on its users that they wouldn't freely choose:

https://blog.privacyguides.org/2024/07/14/mozilla-disappoints-us-yet-again-2/

They've been committing these kinds of unforced errors for more than a decade, seeking some kind of balance between monopolistic web companies and its users' desire to have a browser that protects them from invasive and unfair practices:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/14/firefox-closed-source-drm-video-browser-cory-doctorow

These compromises represent the fallacy that Mozilla's future depends on keeping bullying entertainment companies and Big Tech happy, so it can go on serving its users. At the same time, these compromises have alienated Mozilla's core users, the technical people who were its fiercest evangelists. Those core users are the authority on technical questions for the normies in their life, and they know exactly how cursed it is for Moz to be making these awful compromises.

Moz has hemorrhaged users over the past decade, meaning they have even less leverage over the corporations demanding that they make more compromises. This sets up a doom loop: make a bad compromise, lose users, become more vulnerable to demands for even worse compromises. "This capitulation puts us in a great position to make a stand in some hypothetical future where we don't instantly capitulate again" is a pretty unconvincing proposition.

After the past decade's heartbreaks, seeing Moz under new leadership makes me cautiously hopeful. Like I say, I am dependent on Firefox and want an independent, principled browser vendor that sees their role as producing a "user agent" that is faithful to its users' interests above all else:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/05/07/treacherous-computing/#rewilding-the-internet

Of course, Moz depends on Google's payment for default search placement for 90% of its revenue. If Google can't pay for this in the future, the org is going to have to find another source of revenue. Perhaps that will be the EU, or foundations, or users. In any of these cases, the org will find it much easier to raise funds if it is standing up for its users – not compromising on their interests.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

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/2024/08/12/defaults-matter/#make-up-your-mind-already

Image: ICMA Photos (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/icma/3635981474/

CC BY-SA 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[pygmi-cygni]

Skincare - Steven Grant

so since you guys liked blue's skincare, i've decided to start a series.

Self care was important. Especially for Steven, whose tired head was overwhelmed from Khonsu's constant nagging. He hadn't had a good sleep in his whole life, but it had been getting to him recently. Even Marc was getting a bit groggy when he fronted.

Quite the self-starter, Steven decided to look into sleep-improvement techniques. Yoga, meditation, music, white noise, weighted blankets, he'd tried them all. They were pleasant, but his sleep schedule had not improved.

It was nine pm when he rang you. You paused in jade rolling your face, turning off the facial steamer.

"Hello?"

Steven's exhausted croak answered you. "Hiya, love, sorry...can't sleep again."

You pouted sympathetically, pushing hair out of your eye.

"I'm sorry, hon, do you wanna come over? I'm doing my skincare routine but you can have some tea if you like," you offered. Steven sighed gratefully. His keys clinked quietly in the background.

"Sounds lovely, thank you."

Soon he was draped over your couch, eyes staring glassily into the distance. Poor thing, he looked a mess. The gentle jazz you'd put on wasn't helping either. Two cups of chamomile, an hour of snuggles, and Steven Grant was still tossing and turning.

In the reflection of your vanity, you saw his weepy doe eyes. Your heart broke. There's gotta be something.

Peering in your makeup drawer, you examined your collection before grabbing lavender face lotion. Your mother had mentioned that the herb helped with relaxation - though whether or not that was an old wives' tale or not was beyond you. Worth a shot.

"Stevie, c'mere," you said softly, settling next to him on the settee. He turned, mumbling incoherently. His eyes were unfocused and struggling to pay attention. He eventually saw you and budged closer, scrubbing his hands over his eyes. You beckoned him forwards and he collapsed against you, hands limp around your waist.

"Let me try something. It'll help you sleep," you added at his raised eyebrow. Relieved, he shuffled until he was looking at you dead-on.

You unscrewed the lid of your serum and rubbed a good amount on your hands. The sumptuous floral air wafted through the room. Pungent but hopefully not too strong. Confusion ticked in his brow when you began dotting it on his cheeks.

"Wh...whazzat for?"

You shushed him, stroking his cheeks to rub in the lotion. It was a nice smooth texture, cool and comforting, not too oily. You'd forgotten how much you liked it, actually. Steven hummed, leaning into your palm. Looked like it was kinda working.

The lotion had already absorbed, but you kept up the massage, stroking his nose and smoothing his wrinkled brow. His eyelids closed when you kissed his forehead, bringing his face to rest on your chest.

A small bottle of almond oil was also on the nearby table, and you shook a generous amount onto his hair. The second your nails raked across his scalp he groaned appreciatively, nosing into your shirt. Even your eyes were growing heavy. The soothing combination of your gentle breaths and the smell of almonds and sugar was softening Steven's restless mind.

He felt...floaty, distant. In a good way. His hands twitched, wanting to hold your hand but not having the energy. Your long nails felt divine on his scalp, sending waves of tingling warmth all the way down to his toes. He could live here forever, boneless on your lap and drifting aimlessly in liminal space. The view from your lap was getting blurry, and his eyes had trouble reopening.

A soft warmth was pulled over his shoulders, cocooning him in a safe bundle of calm. Your hands never stopped, coaxing him gently into the dark relief of sleep.

i guess it isn't really skincare but i guess kinda maybe a little bit (there's lotion so that counts.)

@my-secret-shame @krakenkitty @ominoose @bulletgoth @twwcs

join my taglist pls

[unlawfulgames]

The current Troika Bundle features a bunch of incredible games, including our very own Bridgetown!

Bridgetown is a pastoral, liminal RPG setting of a never-ending, ever-crumbling bridge. Built for Troika, usable anywhere.

Get all the books for $20!

[rainybyday]

Hedera Helix (Not real I hate it, forget this exist there is a new remake go read that don’t read this)

Pt 1

Normal was never something that Jazz could have, even when she tried to pretend she did. Normal meant pancakes with butter and syrup in the morning, a kiss from her Mom as she left for work, silent moments with her Dad as she talked about college, and walking down the halls of her school with her friends. 

Normal was something she dreamed of since she was little. Yet, as she grew up, she knew that would never happen. For years she resented that fact.

But that wasn’t true anymore. 

With a nameless tune being hummed under her breath Jazz plucked out the growing weeds of her flower bed one by one. With winter gone and spring still in its early stage of life, it was essential to take extra care of the seedlings as they grow. Check for pests, unroot the weeds, and ensure plenty of fertilizer in the flower bed. 

That was what Danny taught her after all. 

Was it strange, she wondered, that she felt at peace?

****

Jazz always had a funny relationship with death. It might not have been as severely intertwined as Danny’s or Dani’s but she was still close enough to understand more than most. 

Death used to be single sentences when her Mom would talk about her great aunt passing away or the squashed bugs under her shoes when she was a toddler. Then it became scary stories and ridiculous dares to enter Amity Park’s graveyard alone. As a teen, she understood the extent of her parent's research to be far more wary of the basement. Then, when she became a legal adult, she stared into the abyss through her little brother's eyes. 

A void, endless and enteral with an unlimited space. 

Her silly little brother, her sweet kind little brother. 

She stared. 

She breathed. 

She reached. 

And she hugged her baby brother. 

Death is thy child she raised alongside thy self. 

He was Danny, he is her little brother. And she loves her little brother. 

Nothing will ever change that. 

So Death, she found herself wondering from time to time, is simply a boy with too big shoes to fill. 

Thinking back on that day, maybe that is why it was easier to accept the ghost that filled their town. The signs of an unnatural glow from civilians she doesn't know or the slight humming in the air. Nostalgia memories wafted with the musk of unearthed soil and the smell of sweet willow trees in the breeze. The tension that once weighed down on her soon washed away with each waking moment that passed on. 

It was as if the more chaos that erupted, she felt more seen. 

She felt free. 

(Or perhaps it was the look in her parent's eyes. They way they spoke of the dead as they prepared the table and syringes. Their words were spoken carelessly as they described the manic gleeful words of ripped bodies and chopped limbs.)

Death, she understood, wasn’t something she feared. No, but more so that she was weary of the living. 

After all, she wasn’t exactly alive either. 

Danny was the first to show her this dormant side of hers. The day he arrived with a bundle of roses and the unexplainable feeling of joy-love-precious-love-I-love-you-so-much that washed over her was unshakable. The way the world burst into color, the fullness of her heart, and her urge to protect her precious little brother will always be cherished. (White, yellow, peach, and pink. The colors of those flowers that she preserved by pressing them into her books. A gift of a thousand words in her hands.)

(Death will always cherish what life they are given.)

Precious as he was, Jazz couldn’t help but feel a bit exasperated by her own brother’s explanation of how she was Liminal and how she was also touched by Death, more so than the average person, and all the effects it may have on her. It was nice to know why she never felt out of place in Amity despite all of the ghosts making their way through from the Realms.

Some small part of her felt crushed by the acknowledgment that she could never be normal. 

Another, larger part of her, something deep inside of her chest, hummed at the certainty of her existence. 

Danny taught her a lot, about more than what it means to be a Liminal. How they can see the barriers of the spaces between them, how petty simple deaths won’t kill them, and how they are seen as Death-Touched by many of the Realm beyond. 

He also taught her about gifts. 

He told her how words from the grave will affect the specters they represent. How food offerings are seen as an energy boost to the dead and how sentimental items are a way to bring a sense of peace to them. 

He also showed her the effects of flower gifting and what they meant. 

What they meant to him. 

And she understood. 

She feels the same. 

So when the time came for another change in Amity, Jazz was the one to stay. Not that she minded, not anymore. Her dreams from before were only a goal in her mind, something to fill in her future with a sense of duty to fulfill, to be normal. 

But she wasn’t normal, and she accepted that. 

With a sense of purpose, she finished cleaning the final grave. Humming once again she placed the last blue petunia in front of the polished stone. 

(Blue Petunias mean serenity and reliability. To trust and to be at peace with those who trust and admire you.)

(They also share the meaning of hope, to have the strength to never lose your hope.)

She sighed in contentment, the wind carrying the scent of musk and morning dew. 

She stood up and reflectively patted her pants as best as she could. Gathering the cleaning supplies in her basket she glanced back at the grave with eyes that held love and sorrow. 

“I hope your heart is content,” she whispered, thinking of movie nights and popcorn fights. “Be safe my Star.”

Smiling, she turned and walked away. As she did, her mind drifted towards the greenhouse her little brother left behind. 

She wondered if the seedlings were doing alright.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I DID IT!!!! GOSH!!!

I think out of all of the seven chapters, Jazz’s and chap 3 are the ones that I have the most difficulty to rewrite because once I tried to insert another flower I rewrote the whole chapter way too many times. Jazz’s took me a while because I needed her not to be as polite but also endearing? Like, she is an older sister but she is also an adult! HOW DOES ONE WRITE ADULT/!!!!!!!!?!?!?!! 

Yeah so I went for a more soul-searching kind of chapter for Jazz since she wasn’t a main cast for the whole “Halfa” thing for a while but I do like the aus of Jazz being a Limanal so I did some centered work about her relationship with Death and Danny. I kinda like it to be honest. But I feel like chap 2 and 7 with other throw Jazz so.... :/

Now to beta read. Again. Ugh.

[technicalgrimoire]

The current Troika Bundle features a bunch of incredible games, including our very own Bridgetown!

"Bridgetown is a pastoral, liminal RPG setting of a never-ending, ever-crumbling bridge. Built for Troika, usable anywhere."

Get all the books for $20! All profits from Bridgetown go directly to the two writers: Johnny and Furtive Goblin.

[ostrichmonkey-games]

End of the year WINTER SALE!

Need a last minute gift for the TTRPG appreciator in your life? Want to try out a weird new game? Love the joy and thrill of purchasing and downloading a PDF?

Well then I have you covered, because from now until January 5th, 2024, a bunch of my stuff is on sale!

Wow! Just look at those fancy graphics.

I'll be adding to this post to highlight what's what over the next several days but in case you wanted an idea of what you can get; games range from posthuman megastructure dystopia dungeon delves, liminal backroom crawls, action-fashion adventure, magical grad school hijinks, and supernatural mystery building.

Truly, the perfect seasonal offerings!

Anyways, link below (and also above);

Happy Holidays and New Year!

[puppetmaster13u]

Prompt 290

Ghosts have the habit of taking names of those they’ve defeated. Not in spars or play-fights of course, and one has to actually be an adult for the instinct to hit, but it happens. It happens far more often than one would think. 

Jason? Actually has no clue when he comes back to the living why he stole one of the Joker’s older names, nor why the Pit goes so angry when he thinks about Robin- HisTitleHisFraidNameFromFamily- 

Now the Pit? Not a baby semi-near the cusp of adulthood, in fact is Very Old even if it���s more hivemind-esque then a full on realms entity. Very offended for the Baby it was gifted, because who takes that from a literal infant?! 

Oh! Oh that’s another baby! Hm, change of plans, obviously the baby is also its. Because while adult ghosts trying to forcefully take a Name is a direct challenge? A ghostling- or in this case liminal- doing it is an open invitation for adoption. 

[statementlou]

following up on the post wondering why do women of a Certain Age go head over heels for Louis specifically, I was wondering if that was even TRUE so- census??

I hate PLEASE REBLOG posts but LBR my blog is not gonna reach a lot of solo harries for example... a little reach WOULD be kind of nice to actually find out some interesting info

(obviously the bottom options will have way more votes by number because they bundle up so many options per one selection but it's the percentages on each section that will be interesting)

EDIT SORRY I'M SO STUPID AND THE AGES ARE OVERLAPPING OOPS just uhhh... go with your heart liminal folks. Also for the purposes of this poll we're just getting age I know we are not all ladies... in short I was very spacey when I made this and polls cannot be edited BYEEEE

[sodaraptor]

Hypnagogia: Boundless Dreams & Interior Worlds are 20% off during this year's Summer Sale! You can grab em at only $7.99 each or less than $16 for both ~

▼ Links below ▼

[evlynmoreau-blog]

Tales from the Void have finally been published.

You can get my adventure His Arrival Was Foretold. It contains a bunch of extra handouts and includes Liminal High School.

There is also a bundle that let you get the adventures from the other authors.

Resharing, reviews and comments are more than welcome.

https://evlyn.itch.io/his-coming-was-foretold

[lazywitchling]

Jes' Collection of Witch Books

I said I would make this list, so here I am, making this list.

These are all the Witchy (and witchy-adjacent) books I own and/or have read. It's a long list, so it's going under a cut!

Key of Symbols:

📗 Read

📖 Reading

📚 Not Yet Read

Books that I own

📗 Rebel Witch by Kelly-Ann Maddox (Review)

📗 A Dabbler's Guide to Witchcraft by Fire Lyte

📗 Spellcrafting by Arin Murphy-Hiscock

📗 The House Witch by Arin Murphy-Hiscock (Review)

📗 Witchery by Juliet Diaz (Review)

📚 A Witch's Guide to Spellcraft by Althea Sebastiani

📚 All That is Sacred is Profaned by Rhyd Wildermuth (edit: nevermind, he's a transphobe now)

📚 Reclaiming Ourselves by Emma Kathryn

📚 In the Midnight Hour by Anthony Rella

📗 Weave the Liminal by Laura Tempest Zakroff (Review)

📚 Traditional Witchcraft: A Cornish Book of Ways by Gemma Gary

📗 Grovedaughter Witchery by Bree NicGarran (@breelandwalker)

📗 The Sisters Grimmoire by Bree NicGarran (@breelandwalker)

📚 Witchcraft by Anastasia Greywolf or Tamsin Chamberlin (don't buy this one: here's why)

Books I read from the Library

📗 The Modern Witchcraft Spell Book by Skye Alexander (don't buy this one: here's why)

📗 Backwoods Witchcraft by Jake Richards

Zines and Pamphlets

📗 A Pagan Anti-Capitalist Primer

📗 Brainscan 33: DIY Witchery by Alex Wrekk (@upthewitchypunx)

📗 Brainscan 34: A Dabbler's Week of DIY Witchery by Alex Wrekk (@upthewitchypunx)

📗 Everyday Magic #1

📗 Everyday Magic #2

📗 Exploding the Tangerine by Clint Marsh & Oliver Bly

📗 Five Principles of Green Witchcraft by Asa West

📗 Hex Your Ex

📗 The Witchy Zinester's Pocket Book of Spells

📚 Twin Peaks Tarot Spreads

📚 Sow Sprout Grow Tarot Spreads

Charity Bundle E-Books

These all came as a bundle, so the quality will vary as it does with any bargain grab-bag. I'm not linking these unless I've read (or am reading) them because it takes a long time, and I have no idea if they're good or absolute shit. If you want to learn about these, you know how the internet works.

📚 City Magick by Christopher Penczak

📗 Consorting with Spirits by Jason Miller

📚 Herbal Magick by Gerina Dunwich

📚 Hex Twisting by Diana Rajchel

📚 Italian Folk Magic by Mary-Grace Fahrun

📚 Love Magic by Lilith Dorsey

📚 Magic When You Need It by Judika Illes

📚 Magickal Astrology by Skye Alexander

📚 Personal Magic by Marion Weinstein

📚 Plant Witchery by Juliet Diaz

📚 Positive Magic by Marion Weinstein

📗 Queering Your Craft by Cassandra Snow (Review)

📚 Reading the Runes by Kim Farnell

📚 Spellcrafting by Gerina Dunwich

📚 The Big Book of Tarot by Joan Bunning

📚 The Study of Witchcraft by Deborah Lipp

📚 The Witch's Eight Paths of Power by Lady Sable Aradia

📚 The Witch's Guide to Wands by Gypsey Elaine Teague

📚 True Magic by Draja Mickaharic

📚 Water Witchcraft by Annwyn Avalon

📚 Wicca Made Easy by Phyllis Curott

📚 Wishcraft by Sakura Fox

📚 Witch, Please by Victoria Maxwell

📚 Witchcraft Activism by David Salisbury

📚 Year of the Witch by Temperance Alden

[beansidhebumbling]

Snippet from This Shared Hunger- Chapter 1

Her interest in learning to hunt was met with wariness by Feyre, like it might be some trick designed to shred the fragile bond between them, but a cautious acceptance was offered all the same. A tender that would have been rescinded if Feyre had the slightest notion that Nesta had slightly larger, more magical targets than rabbits and deer.  

Flint eyes looking at her, like she might be a mirage still, weeks into her tutelage, in the shadows before dawn as they trekked through the thicket. She had to admit, in the bracing air, with the cloak of peace a mutual silence brought, that she was rather enjoying learning to hunt although the her lack of skill was eating at her. She could not afford to be a slow learner. She had always sat by in the desperate, though less dire times, in hopes their thrice-cursed father would do something, say something, attempt to provide maybe, or chastise her for barely tending the home as Feyre brought home meat she was never thanked for.  

A mistake she now knew. One that lived, like a tapeworm inside her, its presence constantly felt, fattened on shame ever-present. In trying to bait her father, she had ruined what lived between herself and Feyre until their connection was a mere whisp, water of the womb and little else. No action came free. Hurting a man, who was somehow less than even that, had cost her a sister. The regret that formed a tumour in her lungs, made it hard to breathe around Feyre. She did not offer apologies that would be surely unwelcome and unwanted. Words cost nothing after all. She would show Feyre. She would save her, maybe then all her regrets, letters bundled into words, speeches well-rehearsed in the liminal hours of night, sitting like a stone within, would be worth more. 

Feyre was a good teacher she mused, not for the first time, as her sibling showed her how to read a story from treads left in grass and mud. Hunched together, examining, what to Nesta looked like nothing at all but Feyre insisted was definitive proof a stag had passed through, she allowed herself to hope this could be built upon, seeing her sister gesticulate earnestly, eyes eager and bright, glancing at Nesta a little too often to be casual.  

'See that bend there Nes, see the angle of these broken branches. See how deep the tracks are. He passed through here recently. We could catch him today!' 

Feyre's voice was low and enthusiastic. A pang again in Nesta's stomach at how young her sister sounded.  

'I believe you…hundreds wouldn't'  

The dry retort is all she could muster. But her sister still huffed a soft laugh, air pushed from her lungs condensing into a foggy puff.  

'Well as long as you believe me Nes, that's enough.' 

The tone was cheeky, the words sincere, they were chiselled into her ribs as her breath caught in surprise. A love unearned. Feyre had always been the best of them.