#a project i've had in the workshop over the past year

[katestrophic]

[blossom-hwa]

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[drdemonprince]

Can we really expand our window of tolerance as autistic people? I’ve been working on that kind of thing for so long and I can’t tell if I’ve made any genuine progress or if I’ve just unconsciously doubled down on masking :(

We can! But our expanded distress tolerance can't come out of nowhere. Something has to give. So for example, for me, I have way fewer sensory issues these days than I used to have, by a wide margin, and I have significantly less social anxiety and don't need much social recharge time on the level that I used to. I have more distress tolerance for sensory input and for social stressors now than I ever have before -- but this has required lifestyle changes and unmasking in order to get there. Let me break down both these improvements and how they happened:

Even as recently as a year ago, I would have terrible sensory meltdowns on a regular basis. But I haven't had a single sensory meltdown in months, maybe not even a single one for the entirety of 2023 so far? And that's because I have a) cut out caffeine, dramatically reducing my physiological stress levels, b) cut back on some workplace stress by reducing my commitments, c) stopped taking on additional projects outside of work that I didn't want to do and that only caused me stress (workshops and talks), and d) began working from home far more consistently, and made myself a wfh office that is more comfortable.

Now I operate from a really solid base of sensory comfort most days and I'm not overloaded with information or overwhelmed with obligations. This means I am far more tolerant of screaming people on the bus, the upstairs toddler slamming her feet on the floor, ambulances blaring by, noisy concerts, people bumping into me at the bar, etc.

I also am, for the first time in my life, clear-headed enough to recognize when I am starting to experience sensory distress, and can intentionally put on sunglasses or pop in ear plugs or remove myself from an upsetting situation more quickly. I had to experience what being relaxed and not overstimulated felt like, and get accustomed to living that way, in order to recognize subtler signs that I was feeling shitty and take steps to address those small annoyances before they exploded. I can handle a lot "more" in an intentional way now because I built my life to allow "less." My overall distress tolerance has still expanded -- but it's because I stopped masking and began attending to my sensory and stress regulation needs.

For the social piece, my distress tolerance has also gone up due to unmasking. If I was still motivated by passing as NT or being socially acceptable all the time, I'd be so overwhelmed being around people and worn down by every interaction. I also wouldnt be able to advocate for myself. But in the past few years I've become more and more openly weird and outspoken in my needs and true feelings, and I've recognized that the right people actually love me more when I do so and show up for me, and so being honest or even difficult to deal with is not really a threat.

This means I just don't experience much distress being honest or difficult to deal with anymore. I really can tolerate the discomfort of telling someone they're wrong or that I'm hurt without freaking out about being hurt or abandoned, because I've had a lot of good experiences with it and because I enjoy being unmasked so deeply that I just can't put my personality back in a bottle.

Masking lowers distress tolerance because it frays your nerves with stress and wears you out and bars you from ever getting to attend to and regulate your discomfort when there are signs of it happening. In order to increase your distress tolerance, you actually have to learn to better honor your discomfort early, and preventatively, so that you don't bubble over into a meltdown after days or weeks of ignoring your needs.

I think some people think distress tolerance is about becoming more tough, but it's quite the opposite. We become more resilient by getting better at recognizing and attending to our hurts.

[ariaste]

Hi! Regarding your recent post about how you taught your writing workshops, I was reading through it and was feeling very inspired (you sound amazing as a teacher), but I also really wish I had a community like that. Since I'm currently focusing on an original work, I was wondering how do you go about finding fellow writers/betas that you can trust with work and form a mutual writing relationship with? I've looked for and joined many communities like Nanowrimo and discord servers over the years, yet nothing seemed to click? So yeah sorry for the bother but I was wondering if you had any advice :D

Re: "you sound amazing as a teacher" -- aw thanks! I was an INCREDIBLE teacher. That might sound kind of vain to say with so much assurance, but it truly was the first time in my life where I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was doing a really, really fucking good job. (And that's WITH my anxiety, so like. Oof.) I just set out on purpose to be the kind of teacher I always longed to have when I was an apprentice writer, and that got me most of the way there. The rest was just spite for all the shitty creative writing classes I'd had before LOL. I'd already seen all the mistakes myself from the other side, so I just came up with better ways of doing things. And then day one of class, I had them all do a self-assessment of what they wanted to learn in the class, what fears they had, etc, and I was really struck by how universal the sense of insecurity and under-confidence was in all their replies. So that just confirmed what I already suspected, to wit: my ONE JOB (and again, this was a "writing and publishing scifi/fantasy" class) was just to hammer in the idea of, "Your ideas ARE cool, the things you think are cool ARE IN FACT COOL, you ARE allowed to write about queer dragons or whatever and that's an awesome thing to be doing and I'm HERE FOR IT." If the one thing a student takes from a creative writing class is more confidence in their writing and more trust in themself, then the goal has been achieved. If a teacher says anything else, we're verging on snobbery (Iowa Writer's Workshop can go get fucked btw)

ANYWAY.

Finding a beta you click with is a lot like finding a friend or a romantic partner who you click with. That is: there's a lot of fish in the sea, but not all of them are going to be right for you, and sometimes it takes a while to find that special person. It sounds like you're doing all of the right things, though, so just keep at it.

That said, a couple lifehacks: do NOT talk about your work with the vibes of "hey, i'm looking for a beta, does anyone want to beta for me?" because (at least in my experience) those acquaintances often turn out to be sort of transactional and shallow -- think of people who walk into any situation like "hey will you be my girlfriend? i'm looking for a girlfriend. do you want to date me as my girlfriend??? will someone please be my girlfriend?" rather than trying to make genuine connections with people as *people* versus the role that the girlfriend-seeker wants to put them in. (Exception to this: Fandom-specific servers where you are looking for a beta for a fic. Then it's less weird to ask out loud for a beta, because you've already established a mutual shared interest/passion. It's not cold-calling in the same way, you get me??)

Instead, aim to project vibes of "I'm having so much fun playing in my sandbox :) I am having so much fun by myself, maybe too much fun in fact [psychically broadcasting that the fun is in such abundance around here that there would be enough to share if someone happened to wander past...]" Post about your work, talk about it in public, give people little excerpts or tidbits you're proud of. Look for people who express interest in the sort of fun you're having, and then start up conversations about it. Look for people who are having the sort of fun of their own that you're interested in, compliment them on it and ask questions, and build a relationship. (If they're writing the sort of thing you're into, chances are that you're writing the sort of thing they're into. Not always, but frequently!)

Sometimes it is possible to take an existing friend who is interested in your work (or at least supportive of it and loving of you) and kind of train them into being a great beta reader even if they themselves are not really a writer. It takes a lot of self-knowledge of what you're looking for and what you need in terms of feedback, it takes some patience and trust in your relationship with them, it takes the ability to negotiate boundaries and ask really good questions, and it takes a friend who is game to try and who likes the sort of things you like. (Personal recommendation: Don't try to get feedback from someone who isn't even interested in the genre that you're writing. A dedicated literary fiction fan is probably going to have a REAL hard time appreciating your gruesome scifi horror book for what it is, and if they're not familiar with the genre conventions, their suggestions are predisposed to be kind of Weird and Not Right For What You're Writing. Accept their love and support, but also accept that neither of you are going to have a good time if they try to beta for you.)

Trying to build relationships in an open community like a forum or a Discord server is a good way to cast a wide net, but all deep lasting relationships happen on a single line between you and the other person, so look for opportunities to talk to people one-on-one in DMs to build that kind of creative intimacy.

It takes time! But if you're open about the things that are bringing you joy and you're talking about them and setting them out in plain sight, the right people will eventually be drawn to your joy/fun like moths to a flame. Humans cannot resist that shit.

If you've been doing that and it's still not working, check in with yourself -- is your project actually bringing you joy, or are you going through the motions? Readjust, reorient yourself, try again. Lean into it. Go hard or go home. If you're really truly genuinely having fun by yourself, then your eventual readers will too.

If you're doing all THAT and it's STILL not working (that is, if people are expressing initial interest but you can't hold their attention and they wander off once they read your work), then that's a signal that you've got a tension problem.

GOOD LUCK. You will find your people eventually, just keep going! :)

[papercutsunset]

what ain't gone is going

Clocking in (LOL) at 985 words, I've got a little piece about Aline October hanging out in Harlow's car for @flashfictionfridayofficial that I finished ON TIME. There's some stuff in here about an eighteen year old being super dead because of being shot and burned to death, because that's what Aline's deal is, so that's kind of the warning there; otherwise, I don't have much else. And it's RELEVANT because it's about Project Clockshift and about clock parts. Also about being dead. But whatever, she's just always dead anyway. There are ZERO real clocks here.

I researched clocks for this. Definitely compared Aline to Galileo on purpose. And then I got back into folk music. The title's a line from "Enough About Hard Times" by Caitlin Canty. And now I have to sleep because it's my 22nd birthday and I meant to be in bed two hours ago.

If anyone is going to figure out how to lay in the backseat of a car while being incorporeal, it’s going to be Aline October. She’s determined. With all this metal framing, there has to be a way. This ghost can’t keep making do.  

Not that she likes being a ghost. As if she could fix it. Yeah, right. Bringing back the dead is more than possible, but nobody here is doing it. She’ll focus on looking over the blueprints in Harlow’s messy-ass car and ways to improve them. Did he ever put those clicks and rivets in the box to attach to the prototype she had already been working on with him? Did he write down her idea about the potential potency of mixing the Avatars’ fluids into the clock oil and how it would affect backward- or forward-in-time movements? Did he consider quartz? And was he going to let her build her verge escapements into the central mechanism when they got home? 

Obviously, something happened after she suggested those things and shoved the blueprints in the backseat where she’d been lounging out with her rifle. Two someones kind of died. She was the one with the verge escapement implementation know-how anyway. Harlow’s a genius, but he let Aline October work on his project for a reason. 

He’ll have to make do now. 

At this point, there isn’t much else to do but blame herself. She could have fought Harlow harder instead of accepting that Wrench was bleeding out. She could have died in a blaze of glory. She could have stayed home and made a clock that you shit in, but there she was, with cops firing at her and the knowledge that she was going to die no matter what. It was written from the moment she was born. Strength’s Domain is a death sentence; that’s why the three of them needed to fix it. She needed to grit her teeth; press her toes into the gas; grip the wheel like it would keep her from remembering the rifle between her legs and that Wrench was too messed up to use it; throw the van in the other direction; go, get out of there while Wrench fired from his shotgun seat. And Wrench was trying, wasn't he? Good sport. Grit his teeth through the pain and her whirlwind of motion. Always a good fucking sport. Handed her his namesake in the workshop when they were working on PROJECT CLOCKSHIFT before Harlow told either of them what it was. As if the name didn’t make it obvious when she outed it; as if he didn’t ask her to work on the mechanics; as if Aline October wasn’t the best set of hands in their stupid fucking town and everyone knew it. 

Clockshift. Turn time back; prevent all of it. No burning flesh in the distance; no burning flesh on her. Here she is, right? Glass from the windshield sliced up her arms, hip and femur cracked from the impact, bullet holes in a dalmatian pattern across her torso, left side of her body smoldering in her pushed-up sunglasses and lab coat, eternally eighteen. She catches herself in the rearview mirror and doesn’t hate it. 

Past the dashboard, Harlow heaves the hood of the car, billowing smoke on the side of this overgrown old asphalt. No matter where you go, she smiles, the infrastructure sucks. The Avatars don’t care about the roads. 

She hopes he doesn’t blame himself for what happened to the two of them. Those hopes are as jagged and terrified as a click gear— and she can dig them into her skin, but they won’t take hold. Does he know, she wonders? Does he know he gave her the only funeral she cared about? Does he know she mustered everything within her to throw her sunglasses into the backseat of his car? Does he remember that burning everything down for the spectacle— all eyes on us— was her idea in the first place? 

Could she grab him by the collar as the days pass, as she loses herself in the monotony of being and being unseen, of giant birds running around the track, of time moving on and on and on as the blueprints get abandoned in the space under the driver’s seat? Could she tell him to get it together and own his shit? 

He thrusts his fists against imaginary posts, using his headlights as a rubber duck for his broken-down car. She knows she could fix the engine if she were here. 

With a soft groan, she assures herself she’ll figure out this whole haunting thing and mentally calculates the width of the frame on the machine. He didn’t ask her to refine the design at all, but she did. It’s going to be better for it, even if she and Wrench aren’t around to help. The work has to continue. Someone has to paradox and prevent this apocalypse they live in. If Harlow’s Galileo and Kronk are gone, then someone has to nudge him toward more finely-tuned verge escapements and away from the battery-acid-energy-drinks he’s been guzzling nonstop. 

Maybe she’ll find out. Sure as shit, though, she’s not going to mope around while she follows him to wherever the hell he’s going. 

She’s still Aline October. The tombstone her father made tacked his surname on there, too, like he’d ever been as important to her as her mother. That didn’t mean it was true. She’d never gone by Aline Saturnina Aritza October in her life. Crying like he actually missed her— they both know he didn’t. Aline and Wrench as remembered by Harlowis closer to the truth. 

She’ll snap back to her body when the government’s reconstruction makes her heart beat again. For now, she’s here. Thanks, throwing-sunglasses-in-someone’s-backseat. It’s an invaluable skill. 

She leans down and reads the blueprints again. PROJECT CLOCKSHIFT. What a thing to die for. 

[12pt-times-new-roman]

c3e65

Y'know, it only came up because I saw them in the art reel, but the Judicators do sound alarmingly like Cybermen.

"We... we spent every waking hour of every waking day trying to get back to you. And you came back with -- you have a boyfriend now? You had a little tryst? And you (Imogen) -- you have a new best friend, apparently? I thought about you every moment, and I thought you might've been dead... we didn't have downtime, we didn't have fun moments, we didn't go shopping, we didn't have threesomes -- we went to the middle of nowhere, we saved a fucked up town, and we almost had one of the Ruby Vanguard murder all of us. That was our fun time."

"We're not angry that you didn't suffer -- but it's going to take a while for us to recover." If you told me that, by episode 60, Ashton would be the Bells Hells' voice of reason, I'd laugh at you. But here we are.

Ashton says that he's feeling weirdly okay, Orym is frustrated and wants to move, and Laudna is... withdrawn? Angry? There are a lot of emotions going on, most of them conflicting.

They agree to split up for a day to go investigate different lines of inquiry -- Ashton and FCG want to visit Milo, Chetney wants to meet with Ajit Dyal. Afterwards, they plan to teleport to Zephrah to talk to Keyleth.

I feel like it needs to be restated that the temple of the Dawnfather in Hearthdale was built 30+ years ago because they were given permission to do so by wealthy landowners who bought a chunk of land and let them use it. They increased their presence in response to the solstice, yes, but in the end their prolonged presence there was the result of capitalism and wealth disparity.

We go first to the Krook House. Milo's workshop is in complete disarray -- most of their creations and projects have been disassembled because a lot of it just stopped working. "Wait, were your meds arcane?" ashton--

Ashton hands Milo a mystery note and a bag with some stuff in it. "How quickly can you do that?" "A day and a half." He hands over his hammer. "What are you plotting?" "I think I'm getting a real job. I think we're gonna save the world somehow, fuck it. I think we're gonna be some fuckin' heroes."

Ashton had a lot of time to think over the past few days. They thought about their life, everything that's happened. And they've decided that now is not the time to be worthless, now is not the time to be useless. He doesn't like having things to lose, but now he does, their time apart made him realize that, and he knows he can either risk losing them or he can go all-in with this new family.

They also call FCG out, gently, on their self-destructive tendencies. FCG agrees that if they start taking care of themselves more, the rest of the group will spend less time taking care of them (i.e. they won't have to stop them from sacrificing themselves at every turn), and that they -- between Frida and their newfound faith -- have found a reason to live.

Sometimes, caring for other people is the most punk thing you can do. Or whatever that one post said.

We go next to Imogen and Laudna. They go to visit Xhudanna, who has taken up painting.

"You don't need to listen in to hear my thoughts. I'll share them with you." "...can I kiss you?"

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"I don't think you realize, you're such an anchor for me, and when you weren't here, I did such horrible things -- I'm worried I'm a bad person --" "I've heard everything inside you, Laudna, and you are not a bad person. I said you were my tether. Whatever you did, you can tell me." She recounts what happened with Bor'dor, that she was literally hanging on by a thread when she did it. His betrayal broke her, and she couldn't let him live. She says that she lost control, even though her inner monologue in that moment told her that she was holding on to control.

"He attacked you, first of all. Fuck him. And whatever happened with [Delilah]... we'll make it right again, okay?" "Can I be honest with you? There's part of me that thinks we shouldn't. We're about to face the greatest challenge of our lives." Delilah can make her stronger, and she thinks she can use Delilah.

Meanwhile, Imogen doesn't know whether she wants to get rid of the moon's tether. Power is tempting, alluring -- maybe it's their destiny to harness it, maybe it's to challenge and reject it, but only time will tell.

There's something happening in the marketplace. People gathered around in a circle. A familiar voice. "We were never meant to be bound by their laws. We were always meant to rise above them." A hologram-like image of Ludinus hovers above the fountain, speaking of finally rising past the imposed destiny, of no longer being the "beasts of burden" to the gods but the driving force of future and fate.

Guards rush through -- "fuck, another one!" -- and pull a silver disk from the water. When they smash it, the illusion fades. In the crowd, there's mostly fear and confusion, this is adding to their anxiety -- a handful seem to be absorbing the words, but the wardens are hastily dispersing the crowd.

Lastly, Chetney, Fearne, and Orym go to visit Ajit Dyal.

Leading up to the solstice, ships from the north docked in Jrusar before heading south, but after it, there has been a steady stream of new skyships and soldiers.

When they ask about rumors, Ajit says that the people of Jrusar are afraid more than anything. The Quorum calls for calm, but it's hard to ignore the soldiers, and the "big red sign of impending doom." There's an alliance between Issylran militaries, the leader of Ank'harel (J'man Sa'ord), the Clovis Concord, and the Stratos Throne, and all of them are sending forces to the Hellcatch Valley.

There are rumors that everything has been organized by the Stratos Throne and that this is the start of a second Apex War; meanwhile, doomsayers are saying that this is the start of a second Calamity.

As far as enchantments go, many of the automatons running the gondolas have broken down, and multiple prisoners who had been bound by magic have escaped. This is mostly why Jrusar's local guards are on high-alert. The leader of the Ivory Syndicate was among those who were broken out.

The temples have been more reluctant than usual to open their doors.

They ask Ajit to point them toward someone who might know something about Old MagicTM, and he immediately returns from inside the hall with Deremon, a very elderly man who once tutored Ajit.

Chetney pulls out the El Crusty Vest de Ludinus (TM) and shows it to the pair. "This is very peculiar; I have no idea."

Because Ajit didn't hear Ludinus during the solstice either, they gather that hearing that message was related to one's proximity to the leyline nexuses. People who were close to nexus points heard the voice and had a chance of being teleported, it seems, which also means that there is a leyline nexus over both Emon and wherever Deni$e found Dariax.

From the Dyal Hall, the trio starts to head toward the Smoulder Spire to visit the temple of the Matron of Ravens. On their way, a scent catches Chetney's nose -- the most savory meat pie he's ever smelled. To Orym and Fearne, it's more of a stale grain smell. Following it, it becomes an overwhelming hunger, a bestial drive toward the source, like fresh blood on a hunt. Chet makes a WIS save and fails with a 16, sprints toward the source -- in a dark alleyway, there's a short man in a hood, and he tosses a pouch to Chetney -- he catches it, it's a herby, medicinal texture, and the moment he bites it the figure throws a silver net over him.

"Stay away, miss, this is official business!" Fearne immediately throws a spell at him for 31 damage. "It's just business--" "This is my business."

god, the fact that they're going for lethal force immediately and asking zero questions of this normal, leather-clad, dwarven dude they know nothing about is so incredibly telling. especially for Orym, who specifically goes for a gut shot first before tripping him.

"This is a problematic, cursed beast, and I'm going to bring him in." "I mean, you're not wrong, but he's our problematic beast." There's a bounty on Chetney's head, and this guy is intent on bringing him in, but notably he is not making any damaging attacks against Orym (who's blocking his path) -- he's just trying to push past.

Fearne approaches, asks if she can give Chetney a kiss with a 28 persuasion check, and casts stoneskin on him. Interestingly enough, she ignores the 100gp material component for the spell -- so I wonder if Matt is being more lenient with valued components this campaign.

Mister runs up to Chetney and uses fiery teleportation for the first time, which gets him out of the net.

"Tuyen sends her regards." This guy was hired by Tuyen Otwana, the shopkeeper of Prism Emporium -- the shop that overcharged him for a wood chisel, that he subsequently attacked.

As Chetney casts invisibility, I am reminded that we still have no idea why Chetney has the Shadow-Touched feat, nor why Imogen has the Fey-Touched feat. (If there's a narrative reason for either, which I have to assume there is.)

The dwarf picks up the net and misty steps away.

The trio continues to the Smoulder Spire, and climbs almost to its apex. There, they find the temple to the Matron of Ravens, made of a darker material and cleaner than anything else here. The doors are closed, but not locked. Inside, there is a singular figure who opens their arms to the trio. Orym leads them in. "What brings you to the Duskmaven's sight this day, little one?"

"I'm sorry -- I don't have anyone else to turn to right now. I'm having major questions of my faith, and the changes I see above have me worried." "You are not alone." "I am no stranger to death, and I have heard tales of fate. But the things I'm seeing frighten me. What's happening?" "The skein is tangled; the threads are not. The fear that you feel is felt by all... there is much sewn (sown?) -- confusion, distraction. They are doing what we all are doing: what we must do to survive. And our fates are intertwined; if they, if she, can see this through, they will see us through it with them. [How do you know that?] Faith."

The priest can still feel the Matron's influence, but that presence is different than it was before the solstice. She feels a "human vulnerability," and finds it both strange and comforting to feel that in something so grand. "She was like us once, so perhaps she has that vulnerability uniquely." "Do you know what her name was?" "There are none who live that do."

"She may not have the answers you seek, as we are in both a period of mourning and a period of preparation." "How much time you think we've all got?" "Come drink of the waters with me."

The priest leads Orym -- to pulls Fearne along -- toward the interior waterfall. Along the way, they notice that some of the interior lights are dark. She fills a steel pan with water, and offers it to Orym to drink. He leans down, closes his eyes, and drinks the (very cold, but refreshing) water.

The cold spreads through him as he drinks -- not uncomfortable, but cold. Fearne, Chetney, and the priest do the same; as the priest kneels, Orym thinks that he "is just looking for answers," while Fearne thinks loudly that she is "just feeding the root."

"Away from the warming light of the sun--" Is the Matron being portrayed as the opposite of Pelor? Is that what's happening here?

They all spend an indeterminate amount of time kneeling by the water, disassociating, listening to the sound of the water, the cold, the still, and they wonder if this is a piece of death herself. They feel cold, content, at peace.

When they emerge from this state, Chetney is visible, and the priest is gone. They open the front door to a crimson sky, a familiar crater, a beam of noxious energy firing into the sky -- inside the beam they see an orb, hear a scream that doesn't stop, a scream that encompasses the entirety of Exandria and beyond --

and they see a flash of a white porcelain mask, they emerge from their trance state. The priest stands before them -- "we are in a period of mourning for one of our own." That's why the temple's torches are low, why their doors are closed: they are mourning Vax'ildan, the Champion of the Matron of Ravens.

"How do we help? How do we help in the fight? How do we turn the tide?" "Faith."

Orym stoops down, takes a bit of the water from the pool, and smears it across the front of his shield.

The Bells Hells reconvene and share their stories. Laudna is visibly much happier than when they last saw her. Imogen gives Ashton an orange.

Orym would've heard things about "the Champion of the Matron" just as he would've heard about historical figures, and he'd know that the Champion had a tie to Keyleth, but Keyleth herself never mentioned him in front of Orym.

the Bells Hells don't even knows who the gods are. They don't know the difference between the Change Bringer and the Moon Weaver. Fearne doesn't now that Morri isn't a god. They don't know the difference between the Dawnfather and the Matron of Ravens.

And suddenly, the Bells Hells are debating whether they're trying to save the gods or trying to save humanity. Orym argues that those two causes are the same thing, but Laudna disagrees, and FCG agrees to too far of an extent. Imogen conflates a signal from a god to worship. Laudna equates leveling a block of a city to intervention of the gods. \

Ashton -- the most sensible one here at the moment -- says that there's a lot of conjecture about things that just happen. "I watched my parents get ripped to bits in a maelstrom of gods-know-what, I got thrown into a desert and picked up by shitty people and thrown into a fucking orphanage where I stayed -- more or less, what you'd expect. I fought a lot, I made friends, we did what we fucking could, and I fell out a window and woke up in a pain that has never stopped. And there were little sections ot my life where I prayed, and I begged, anything to all of them, any of them, and the only time they've ever spoken to me was the one who tried to fucking kill me less than a week ago. So, I'm here to save us, I'm here to save the people who live here, hell, I've had one fucking word I spoke to a fucking pile of earth that was more responsive and made me feel better and more connected to anything in my fucking life, that grounded itself more -- and you know what? I'm all for faith. I'm not gonna pick a god, they can pick me, they can pray to me, they can choose me more than I ever did to them."

I lied, Orym is the most sensible one. "History is littered with their positive influence here; but none of you would suggest wiping out every living being on earth because some of them are shitty. Some of them have done good, and I think that thinking black-and-white is comforting -- but it's a little more nuanced than that."

"Why can't i have faith in you all? Faith in Exandria, faith in you all, faith in those that came before the gods? The eidolons, the earth, the titans?"

There's a lot going on here, and Team Issylra is (deliciously) misinterpreting the eidolons and the Dawnfather's temple. They all have different opinions, and they're all hung up on the definition of "faith" -- but in the end, they agree that regardless of whether the gods are worthy of saving, Ludinus needs to fucking die. And that's something I can get behind.

I've said it before and I'll say it again -- the discussion of whether or not the gods should exist, of whether the should or shouldn't exhibit their power over mortal-kind, of whether mortal faith gives them life and power, of whether they are in control of fate -- all of it doesn't fucking matter right now. Those questions are ones that can be asked once this is all over. Because the Bells Hells know that, objectively, Ludinus' plan is evil, he is not the one who should fill that power vacuum, he needs to be stopped.

Fearne attempts to scry on Ludinus. As her consciousness extends toward him, she drifts in a liminal space with nothing to tether to, and she realizes that she is unable to scry on him. He has and is attuned to an amulet of proof against detection and location, the same item that shielded Caleb from Trent's eyes.

FCG attempts to scry on Liliana Temult. He focuses on the coin and sees its metal first become strands of hair, then become darker metal; his vision pushes through the coin and into darkness, which turns to redness. He finds himself in the familiar red dust storm that fills almost all the space around him -- but he sees Liliana walking, her hair and coat billowing in the wind. To her left is Ludinus Da'leth, and on the horizon, there are shapes -- structures, buildings... in the sky, a round body of a faint bluish-green coloration -- Exandria looms just beyond the dust storm above." That's all they receive.

They're on the SURFACE OF THE FUCKING MOON, on the SURFACE of RUIDUS ITSELF

It was like they were walking through a street. There is no distinction between home and building here -- it's just a street.

Laudna and Chetney think that this city was on the continent that got scooped up to form Exandria.

FCG asks the Changebringer whether Exandria is round, and she responds, yes.

The Bells Hells deduce that they need to figure out "how to ride [the beam]," that they need to find out how to get to the surface of Ruidus. Spelljammer, here we come!

FCG casts identify on the harness. "The funnel goes to the base of the neck, between the shoulder blades. It is designed, though it does not currently function, to take the essence of some sort of magic and funnel it to some sort of place on the wearer's body -- between the shoulder blades, on the neck."

Orym assumes that the device was designed to prolong Ludinus' life, because fey creatures are generally more long-lived than Exandrians.

Ashton finally asks the question of where Ira and Xandis are.

By sunset, Milo has finished the modifications on Ashton's hammer -- they have installed the immovable rod into the handle. "I'm not entirely sure what the properties of this are, aside from the fact that it's very unique, there's a refractory aspect of the crystal itself." Inside the sack was some amount of the refractory crystal they took from the Verdant Tomb, and incorporating it into the hammer has had some...... unforeseen implications.

Orym tries Caleb's sending stone. "Caleb Widogast. Bells Hells here. We survived -- where are you? Do you know what happened out there?" There's static fuzz, and no response. There is no indicator on the Treshi scry ball, and the Drixlich sensor points toward Uthodurn.

Imogen tries to cast sending on Ira. "Ira? Can you hear me, is this working?" With a 53, a familiar static of the "arcane forces in the sky."

FCG scries on Ira, but he makes his save. Ira exists, he lives out there somewhere, but he made his save.

Fearne scries on Ira. She focuses, and connects to "the pulse of life around Exandria" -- Ira is deep within a clustered, red-dust storm, not among structures or others but alone, pushing through a maelstrom, a stronger storm than they've said, trudging through an intense red. A dark shape arrives and he presses up against it, leans against a massive, smoothed boulder, and ducks into an alcove. Outside the storm, he blinks, pushes dust out of the corner of his eyes. Another figure approaches -- thick, partially patchworkly-armored torso, a muscular humanoid figure of deep red skin, oddly textured face-- features sallow and smooth, one of the Reilora. They gesture, and Ira follows. Their features are different than the figure they saw Imogen summon, and different than the gith body Team Issylra found.

Using Orym's shield as a focus, Imogen invokes the staff, and teleports the Bells Hells to Zephrah. "It's... mid-day, a beautiful cloud-dappled sky. A beautiful horizon among brown and red stones, clusters of trees, pathways that lead through the mountains, grass fields, the mountains to the east... a precipice of a cliff that is woven through the peaks of these mountains, pastels, bridges and ledges that encompass the rustic homesteads that make up this community like the existence of this village is a gift from the land itself... a tall cherry tree sits on the precipice to your right."

[cephalololopod]

Now that it's the new year and I have time to think again, I'm taking @tinygigas and @subzeroparade up on the Writing Review open tag. This was a big year for me, since it was the first time in over a decade I actually published fics on a site! I'm quite proud of all my progress creatively in 2023, and I'm looking forward to what 2024 has in store.

Words and Fics

11,542 words spread over 4 published fics, all Bloodborne

3 completed fics

1 ongoing multichapter

2 current WIPS

3 WIP chapters

1 planned fic I have yet to start

Ships

Technically I've only published for Ludwig/Laurence

Although there are a multitude of implied ships in my other fics including Gehrman/Laurence, Micolash/Laurence, Brador/Laurence, and Ludwig/Simon because I'm an unashamed multishipper.

Top Fic by Kudos

Communion (M) with 18 kudos

Top Fic by Hits

Still Communion (M) with 267 hits

Fandom Events

I took part in a fic/beta workshop hosted by a friend which was delightful, full of amazing art, and very helpful, the result of which was Crematorium (T).

Upcoming Projects

I will finish Ouroboros of Modernity (T), the silly mundane modern au my friends and I came up with.

I have three more short fics to follow the same timeline as my other oneshots, so look forward to those!

Writing Reflection

This past year was tumultuous to say the least, but I had more creative energy during it than I have since at least 2015, and more importantly, I've met a wonderful group of friends that have been encouraging and kind and have been endless sources of inspiration. I'm beyond pleased with my progress this year, and I'm especially proud of my last work of 2023, Charade (M), which might be the best piece I've ever written and is a tribute to the two biggest brainrotting influences I've had this year.

I hope I can continue to create in 2024 for Bloodborne and other fandoms I love as well. Here's to another year!

[leam1983]

So, you wanna play the Wizard Game...

Let's start with a point of comparison.

When I was a kid, in the halcyon age of the Nineties, Earthworm Jim 1 and 2 were my jam on the SNES. I loved the associated cartoon, and basically owed my exposure to absurdist humor to concepts like the Great Cosmic Worm or the launching of cows into the stratosphere using a crude fulcrum. To me, EWJ was zany, lively, more than content to wag its Vaudevillan villains around for non-crucial bits of mundane evilness that went as far as being rude to the postman - and mostly innocent.

Then, time passed, I grew up, and came to learn of Doug TenNapel, the creator of the IP - and of his views.

Doug TenNapel is a Conservative who mealy-mouths his way around bigotry and antisemitism, more or less the type to Tommy Tallarico his way out of a situation by waving the "Lookit, I'm zany!" card as if we were still effectively in 1995. He tried for a comeback with a Webcomic entitled Ratfist, back in 2010, but his views more or less blew up in his face. Ratfist was unceremoniously concluded and TenNapel effectively faded from public consciousness.

I spent a few weeks wondering how I felt about this. I still had some fondness for EWJ and for ancillary projects that bore a bit of that TenNapel touch (like Shiny Entertainment's MDK), and it took me a while to remember that no, some literary analysis devices that I've been taught to use in the field are not, in fact, a form of tacit approval of the author's views.

Fast-forward to today, and I'm seeing a world where you cannot extricate a work from its author, where someone having a stroke of genius one particular decade ago and then turning into a raging shithole several years later apparently disqualifies everything they've put up in the past from any sort of consideration.

Now, my girlfriend had a sideline in Art History. Whenever she's confronted with Purity Culture as a concept, she remembers Caravaggio's works. The guy is a giant in the field of later Renaissance art, both for his talent and for his personality.

You see, Caravaggio fucked. He was a serial philanderer, he got into fights over women, cultivated a long list of lovers both male and female - and of open convictions. He also recruited a prostitute off the street and hired her to pose for him - as the Virgin Mary. Imagine picking a lady-of-the-road right across from the church that's just commissioned you, and recognizing that with the right light and medium, her face had those exactingly precise characteristics the elite looked for in their depictions of religious figures. For his time, he was as controversial as you could imagine. By today's standards, he'd probably have a massive following on Tumblr, if he were both alive and had a blog of his own. I don't think it'd be much of a stretch to imagine him as an ally, actually.

Despite that, no Art History student will ever look at his works in the context of who Caravaggio was. They'll look at his works in the context of when and where they were made. There's a massive difference there. In my own studies, I've done the same for everyone between Zola to Steinbeck, and I've definitely given Joanne Katherine Rowling's flagship series more of a critical eye.

Just - not in the way I'd assume most people would appreciate, these days. The Potterverse, if you will, is one that's effectively designed to be formative for younger readers, and one that quite visibly predates the author's drift towards reactionary politics. You can spot weak shades of it in some places, like Dumbledore's tokenistic referral as a gay man, but the series actually strives for inclusiveness. As to why trans characters never came into play, I'd chalk it up to ignorance and lack of comfort. I'm only a cis and bi man, and it took me years of study and careful attention to work past my own fears and workshop a trans character that wouldn't be - hopefully - much of an offense to anyone. Rowling herself simply never had that chance, or never took it once it was offered.

Obviously, she won't take it now even if it's offered. Her later works are disturbingly facile, in the sense that most skilled authors tend to use their external voice to provide mere observations and not to unsubtly pass judgement - an aspect in which she now repeatedly fails. Her posture can still be extricated from what she's written under the name of Robert Galbraith, but it has the relative finesse of a Ben Shapiro wish-fulfillment fantasy. Considering, I find it quite easy to draw a line between the Potter Era and the Post-Potter Era. There's a bitterness at play in her later works that just isn't present in what actually serves as her juvenilia, effectively.

There's a young and hopeful JKR drawing sketches in a café, and then there's the frustrated and bitter woman pulling increasingly desperate pleas for relevance. The lines couldn't possibly be any clearer.

So - let's assume you've effectively killed Rowling in the sense used by Narratology theorists and removed her from any consideration in her works. Can you play Hogwarts Legacy knowing that a small, if not insignificant portion of its royalties are going to go to Rowling's pockets?

Yes. How, you might ask?

Pirate it. If the Wizarding World still matters to you, pirate the fuck out of this one. Rip her books and upload raw PDFs to your Kindle. Considering the game's dev history, I'm sure plenty of employees in Avalanche itself would give you their blessing.

The Death of the Author absolutely does apply - especially in a situation where means exist to obtain the media involved at no cost whatsoever beyond your own bandwidth.

[purplekoop]

I officially Have Job Now (still in the process of getting a bank account because the past 6 years of my life have been an almost comical series "we'll get to it later" moments but at least I can rest easy enough knowing my hours are gonna be compensated when it's possible) but I'm still in a creative and artistic rut that I very much wish to solve with the metaphorical equivalent of being bashed in the head with a shovel to get on with it.

I'll be transparent here and say that art has been hard for me the past few months. Between frequent downward spirals of self doubt over my creative and technical capacity, and just general inability to muster the desire to do art despite the ever-looming dread of not doing art... I've had lower points in my creative journey but I've sure as hell had higher. Not dissimilar is my broader mental state, where I've been generally fine but subject myself to existential spirals when dwelling on something as simple as having a big cavity in one of my molars and no immediate access to dental care at the moment. This isn't meant to be a pity post, genuinely I don't have much to complain about right now, it's just the same sort of mental (and in some respects physical) issues I've been dealing with for a while now. It's just more poignant now when I don't really have much of a satisfying "distraction" in the form of doing stuff creatively.

Currently there's only a few "projects" (feels like I'm giving myself too much credit with that terminology) I really can commit much thought to lately, both of which, either luckily or predictably, I've gone into at least some depth publicly on this blog. Fortunately for what I assume is the majority of my follower base, both are based around Overwatch.

The Role Requeue AU is a very fun "project" for me (again, feels wrong to call it a "project" when it's something meant strictly for the concept phase, even just a workshop mode is beyond the scope of realism). It scratches all my itches for something fun to think about: no pressure to make it a "finalized product", the opportunity to conceptually tinker around with mechanics I'm both thoroughly familiar with and interesting in exploring beyond their official scope, and most importantly, people to share ideas to and even collaborate with! Seriously, I know it's almost certainly less than a handful of people who've even seen any of the posts on it, but the response so far has me beyond ecstatic. The greatest gift an artist can receive in my opinion is a "yes, and" to their work, and I'm extremely grateful that Role Requeue (shoot, down to even that name being a suggestion too good to pass up) has already inspired such.

The only technical restraint on Role Requeue is me sitting down and writing a long tumblr post, so once I have the time (as soon as tomorrow mayhaps?) I'll try and get another one out. I still have some specifics I want to sort out, but Symmetra, Sombra, and "Ashe" are all contenders for being the next one to get a post.

So that leaves the other project I've been able to work on at least to some extent lately: my original hero shooter concept, (still under the working title) War Bots. For those who weren't around or otherwise missed the intro, it's a team based shooter starring a cast of robot characters in a post-human earth, fighting against either another team of player-controlled bots or a ravenous horde of sentient, mutant plant creatures. The "game" (again, very much in the concept phase) takes heavy inspiration from both Overwatch and its precursor in the subgenre, Team Fortress 2. The general gameplay design of the cast takes inspiration more from OW, while the larger team sizes and loadout system are ideas from TF2.

If you're wondering why both of my creative projects I really have any ideas for right now are directly because of Overwatch, it's because. well hate to admit it but it's the most consistent thing I've played all year. Arguably the past 5 years or so, save for when the pre-OW2 content famine was really starting to hit and I finally gave TF2 a try myself in the meantime (didn't like actually playing it as much, sorry). But especially now with the steam release actually working on my PC, which the battle.net version frequently failed at, it's been my defacto "I don't know what to do right now" time waster, and to me at least it's fun enough to where I still haven't gotten sick of it. It doesn't help that my actual other biggest inspiration for War Bots, Bloons TD 6 (yes really) is my number 2 pick for that niche, and I honestly don't play games that much lately aside from multiplayer stuff or streams (yes I stream I need to make a pinned post linking my stuff). So, I got Overwatch on the brain, and when my brain has something on it, its general reaction is to try and put my own spin on it, hence the creation of the "Overwatch but different" AU and "Overwatch but not" the video game coming to somewhere you can buy video games eventually hopefully one day please. I play fighting games I come up with a fighting game, I like superheroes I make my own, I like the funny colorful character-based shooters I make notes for how I wanna do it myself.

War Bots is in an awkward spot though, because I already gave myself a hard cap for how much I wanna think ahead for a game so early in development that the sole developer doesn't even have a game making engine installed on their PC yet. The loadout system is meant to allow for a smaller roster, saving time on creating completely new characters with their models and animations and lore and so on, while potentially allowing for an even further variety of functional playstyles than what'd be possible with an exclusively character-based system like Overwatch. You don't need Soldier 76, Bastion, Widowmaker, and Ashe all existing separately with broadly similar weapon types, just one "rifle guy" with four different options for their main weapon.

Despite that, I love making characters too dang much and made a version of the roster with up to 25 characters. I since reconsidered, picking the characters I actually saw potential in, making sure to avoid redundancies that couldn't be resolved, and now have a cast of 15 or 20, ideally launching with 15 and adding 5 more post-release. A roster of 25 and possibly even beyond wouldn't be impossible after that, but I want to limit the scope of what I was considering at this point. I like the cap of 20 because my current idea is that the PvP mode is played in 10v10, and each of the game's 5 roles (Damage, Control, Tank, Utility, Support) would have four characters, while also letting a standard match (if desired) have exactly one of each character on the field at once. This pleases me. At the moment though, I have 3 characters for Damage, 4-ish for Control, 2 for Tank (shocking, I know), 3 for Utility, one guy who could either be Tank or Utility, and 4 for Support but I'm admittedly not as keen on one of them at this point. This leaves roughly 4 or 5 slots in the roster left for what I want to realistically consider right now, some of which I have ideas for based on prior iterations of the roster, but I'm still not settled on something super satisfying yet.

For now, I'm focusing more on polishing the loadout system and the alternate weapons for each character, trying to get as much out of the characters I've already established before I move onto jotting down new ones in my notes. I did however hit a snag, because the system divides your loadout into three different interchangeable options: Weapon, Body, and Accessory. The weapon is your main means of attack and (broadly speaking) determines your primary and secondary fire. The Body meanwhile refers to some interchangeable part of the robot's body that grants them unique abilities, typically aiding in mobility. In Overwatch terms this is "Ability 1", or Shift in default keyboard binding terms, while also potentially carrying a passive ability. Accessories are comparable to Splatoon's sub weapons, generally some kind of throwable thing that provides a burst of utility at the cost of limited availability, in this case a longer cooldown than your Body ability or requiring a special pickup on the map to regain faster, or possibly being limited by a character-specific resource. This is the equivalent to OW's "Ability 2" or "E" ability. The snag here was that each part of the 3-part system was given 4 variants, a default or "stock" option and three unlockables that take the basic concept and replace it with an alternative that provides unique functionality. The problem was that especially with the "Body" options, it was hard to come up with meaningful alternatives for every slot for every character without feeling redundant. My compromise was that while Weapons get 3 unlocks, Body equipment and Accessories only get 2 unlocks, unless I feel a special exception warrants it. I may deem a character would get more value out of more Body or Accessory options rather than main weapons, or if I have a really good idea for an extra of something.

oh and also semi recently I decided that reserve ammo should be a mechanic, but then I realized that doesn't work unless every character has an infinitely usable melee attack that can function without reserve ammo (and is also more robust than OW's piddly little mostly universal quick melee attack), but I don't want to make a whole fourth slot for each character for melee weapons, but otherwise I don't know what'd determine the properties of your melee attack if anything deviates it from the default, and also are melee weapon attacks always available or do they require switching off of your actual weapon, but does that make sense for the characters who'd logically just smack with their normal weapon, like does the wizard guy just hold their staff differently for a "melee stance", but also thinking is hard.

So between the partial downsizing of the Loadout system, the need to put "uses reserve ammo" or "doesn't require reserve ammo" in all of my notes for each character's weapon, and the need to figure out melee attacks/weapons, I have to do some very meticulous updates to my current notes, which doesn't make for a super exciting prospect. Hey, at least I can think of funny things for these goobers to smack people with!

I do actually have an art now, though it's not my most flattering work. Had some ideas for alternate weapons for Yanno, the explosives aficionado with a dragon-shaped fireworks launcher for a hand I shared in an earlier post. The eagle launcher rewards precise aim and improves your aerial capabilities, the hydra launcher unleashes multiple rockets at a time, and the shark cannon fires big, arcing bombs that roll on the ground before detonating momentarily after. Very obviously taking heavy inspiration from a certain other flying explosive enthusiast for a couple of these, and the shark cannon exists entirely to avoid needing a separate character just for a grenade launcher guy when rockets are already such a similar weapon type.

So uh.

...I had a point I think.

art hard but I wanna do it more. this was a rant post but got devoured in word count by War Bots so uh. oops if you don't care about that.

I think I feel better now? remind me when I get up though to make a post linking my twitch and youtube.

[bigsnaff]

ough 12, 17, and 20 for Dokks from the OC ask game!!!

x @/scourgeblooms

OC ASKS

12. Generally, what's most people's first impression of them? + What impression do they *want* to leave on others?

It largely depends on whose first impression it is, because it tends to go either one of two ways:

They warm up to him very quickly! What's there not to like? He's charismatic, he's thoughtful, he's energetic. His presence pretty much immediately lights up a room.

His upfront friendliness reads as over-familiar or offputting, sometimes even infantilizing. I don't think he comes across as disingenuous by any means, but I can see how he would seem overbearing.

Either way, Dokks doesn't tend to put too much stock into first impressions of himself. He's had his fair share of people figuratively (and sometimes literally) turn away from him for his demeanor, but for as incredibly warm of an individual he is, he's also not a people-pleaser. He never has and never will change himself to be palatable to individuals that can't take having this oldie dad them. If it sucks, hit da bricks!!

17. How talkative are they?

Dokks is VERY chatty when given the opportunity! Don't get him wrong, he can read the room; he knows when saying his piece may be inopportune or out-of-place, depending on the circumstance. But he's the type of guy to stand there for hours chatting away with someone by his side, even if the only indication of them listening is the occasional "Uh-huh," or "Really?". Walk out of the room and you'll still hear him talking away in there for the next hour!

And this is a two-way street! Dokks is happy to listen to others, ecstatic even! Join him in his workshop one day when you need someone to vent to; he'll always have some advice or words of comfort to offer, and he very much enjoys the company. Ignore it if he accidentally bangs his head on a bar. It happens.

20. Any song(s) that you feel represent your character best? (bonus: would *they* like this/these song(s)?)

THIS little track has been in my head for years as Dokks' theme. I generally associate synth-heavy songs with Dokks anyways, but this was the first! It has the energy to it. It's the type of song I've imagined him bouncing his head to while working on a project of some sort. ...So I imagine he would like it just because of that, haha.

As for a song that has actual lyrical substance to it, Unity by Shinedown really really really gets me for him. It highlights the most significant parts of his character; his family, both past and present, the ones that are gone but he continues to live for, and the ones that are still with him and he is holding onto with everything he has. I think he'd really like the song just for the message it carries alone.

[lgctaeha]

 「 ❀ 」  ━━ ˗ˏˋWORKSHOP OPPORTUNITY 002 ! ( 1-on-1 ; © )

"Hi, hi, hi!" Taeha enters the small conference room with a bit of a bounce in her step. It had been quite a while since she'd last had a sit down with Kwon Soyi, and she all but greets the woman with a giddy hug before nodding her head and flopping into a seat across from her. "Where should we start?!"

The conversation flows smoothly with Taeha hopping from topic to topic as she's known to do. Finally, after a few rambles about Osaka and plucking chicken feathers out of her hair, the acting coach is able to ask - what do you think are your strengths right now?

"My strengths?" Taeha parrots, chin pinched between her thumb and forefinger. "I think that this year I've really been able to improve on stage! I was watching a few clips from my first big performance as a trainee compared to an LGC Girls' stage, and I think that I've really grown overall as a performer," she nods affirmatively, folding her hands in her lap. "I came here a pretty confident dancer but with everything else I just... Sort of... I was very unsure of myself? And I think that showed whenever I performed. My face just always looked like I knew I was about to make a mistake... But now I think that I have a lot more fun? I feel a lot more... like the stage is home? So, performance definitely! I also feel a lot more confident about my rapping ability! Before LGC Girls Japan, I hadn't really thought I could ever see myself as a rapper... But now, I think that I really hold my own. Even my older brother who used to rap was impressed by how far I've come - and, I beat him in a rap battle over Chuseok!" She gives the coach a playful grin, flipping a lock of her over her shoulder. "And of course, Japanese! I'm really proud of how far I've come in such a short time as well. Being on tour and getting to interact with all the fans in Japan really helped sharpen my language skills, and of course there's always more to learn, but for now I think I've made a lot of good progress and can chat pretty okay!"

What are three skills that you would like to work on in the next few months?

"Oh! If I got to choose? I would really, really, really love to spend more time on dancing. It's always been one of my strengths, and although I've been doing a lot of choreography while being part of LGC Girls, I would really like to devote serious time to trying out new styles of dance, and maybe... possibly choreographing more of my own? Then, of course, singing. Over the past few months I've felt very good about my vocals, but I know that I'm not as strong of a vocalist as some of the other trainees. I've been planning to meet more with the vocal coaches for one-on-one sessions, and maybe even trying to sing some ballad-type songs? I'd like to become very versatile in that way! And then... maybe some acting? I haven't done too many acting workshops outside of those we were assigned for the Project Origin musical... but I do think a lot of the skills that I learned in those have helped me become a much better performer now, so... maybe more of those?"

If given a chance, what types of gigs would you be interested in participating?

"Oh, oh, oh! Drama acting and variety, for sure!" she beams, clasping her hands underneath her chin. "I loved being on Charms Japan and Invisible Youth, and I would love, love, love to try out more variety. I think that I've done pretty well so far so I'd like to do different kinds of shows too! Maybe... The kind of variety shows that have a lot of puzzles to solve or, or, or more traveling type shows? Like Charms but in other locations around Korea? Or even internationally, like... Hawaii!" she grins, well knowing that a show like that would be nothing more than a ploy to take a quick vacation trip home. "And for acting... I think I would really like to star in a drama one day! I've been watching them since I was a kid and although I don't have much acting experience, I do think it would be super fun to try!"

During your time here in legacy, what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned about yourself?

"Lessons?" The question gives Taeha pause, gaze wandering up to the ceiling. "I think... I think - I think that I've learned its okay to go at your own pace... To be where you are, when you are, in this moment!" She points to her lap, knees bouncing up and down once for emphasis. "Sometimes, I can get really trapped in a... bubble of worries? But lately, I have found that I really enjoy... the journey of all of this? No matter where the road is taking me, and all the ups and downs and bumps and blips on the way - I really am happy where I am, with everything that I'm learning and... I'm always hoping to learn and grow, but I still feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. Here and now." She tilts her head to one side with pursed lips. She wonders if she should add the most important lesson she's learned thus far - 'never try to ship coaches.' ...Nah.

[dangerously-human]

16, 17, 18 📝

Thanks for asking! :)

What were your go-to writing songs? I've got a general writing inspiration playlist called Unwritten, and several subsets for specific things (ship songs, sci-fi vibes, title ideas, etc). Then, of course, I've got fandom-specific playlists, and some individual projects get their own playlists, particularly if it's something I know I'm going to be spending a longer time workshopping. I will say Twenty Something by Nightly was pretty much guaranteed to get me in the writing zone this past year, and if I needed something to keep me focused while actually putting words to page, Last Wish by Till Death was a go-to.

What were your go-to writing snacks? You know, I don't think I really snack while I'm writing, which comes as a surprise to me as I'm saying it. My break from writing is Tumblr time; otherwise, my hands are pretty occupied.

What was the hardest fic to title? Wow, quite a few of them were struggles this year - doing more flash fiction has meant I don't have weeks to agonize over titles, for example - but I would say the hardest was probably Five Stones. You would think, given that it was pretty classic songfic, that I would have had it easy with choosing a lyric from the song, but nothing quite fit; everything would need a full line for context and I wanted something shorter, possibly plainer. I settled on Five Stones as a reference to David and Goliath, since that is, of course, the central conceit of the song, and also because it's a five times fic and that felt suitable.

[stagkingswife]

hey, it's the "nice encouraging things" anon from December. I came to the conclusion that I wasn't making the spirit contact up because I do not have the brain of someone who would say "stop worrying about your to-do list and do things in this order" and "you need to take your heart medicine" and "stop worrying about what other people think" and "don't worry about the future, your job is just to do what's in front of you." (1/2)

however, I made the mistake of telling my older more experienced witchy friends about the spirit and they were like "that's not a cute look" "no one should act like they have power over you or like you can't take care of yourself" "you're a person with agency and it feels sus that you're 'not allowed to hurt yourself'" and now I just feel embarrassed for being taken in and feeling like I could be special or cared for or valued.

and i honestly feel even more embarrassed for telling someone who's 40 years old and teaches workshops and works full-time and can walk and has astral projected to Hell that my access needs- what I need to stay safe- really do involve someone (could be a spirit who knew me from a past life, could be Joe from next door) sitting with me and telling me what to do and making sure I eat and sleep and don't hurt myself. i don't feel confident arguing with them.

sorry for the three-part rant- you're under no obligation to reply- it's just that i've never met anyone else who has something going on that involves being very close with an unrecorded entity AND is disabled? and it's been tough going from "they tell me to fix my posture so my back pain doesn't get worse, I give them the last segment of my orange, I feel like I'm getting the hang of this witch thing" to "I HAVE FUCKED UP"

To begin with I don’t think you’ve fucked up, in the least. It sounds like you need, or at least benefit from, having someone help you manage your care.  This is a normal thing that many disabled people need/want, it just so happens that you are getting it from an incorporeal entity right now.  It sounds like this friend of yours is very independent, good for them, but their independence doesn’t get to be a factor of consideration in your spiritual relationships.  Only your needs and desires get to be a factor. And if you need or want a caretaker, then you can have that.  You should of course be careful that it’s always a healthy caretaker relationship, and that you retain your desired level of autonomy within it, but what level you desire is up to you.

Much like your friend I’m on the older side for the witchcraft community these days (over 30), I lead workshops, I’ve Traveled the Otherworlds extensively, and I’m incredibly independent, and I pride myself on that, but I freely acknowledge that I wasn’t always this way.  I didn’t spring fully formed from my father’s head with all of this confidence and all of this experience.  And sometimes I think older, more experienced, more confident practitioners forget that we weren’t always like what we are now. For instance: When I was 19 I had terrible self esteem, and only defined my worth in terms of what I could do to benefit others.  What changed that for me was my relationship with Oisin.  When He started courting me he started gently correcting me whenever I thought or spoke about myself like that, He encouraged me to eat better when I was recovering from my eating disorder, not to hurt myself when my medications made me suicidal.  All things that a caring partner or friend would do for someone going through what I was going through, he just happened to be incorporeal. It is not a weakness to need help, and it is not suspect for someone to provide it. 

Now, more than ten years down the line, Oisin doesn’t do those things for me anymore, and he hasn’t in a long time.  He helped me when I was having a rough time in my life, he helped me build better habits for myself, healthier ways of thinking about myself, and now I am this hyper competent independent practitioner, I just needed the right support at rough patches along the way.  Who’s to say you won’t see similar growth in your relationship given time.

[davyjoneslockr]

📡🎈 for the writing ask game!!

Super interested especially in the style one because it’s always fun to hear how people see their own writing!

(For this ask game)

📡: Why is writing and sharing your writing important for fandom?

I've been involved in fandom spaces for most of my life, and it's always been something I've been really passionate about, but a lot of that time was spent as sort of a passive lurker. I engaged with other people's content online and went to local cons every now and again, but I always wanted to actually create something myself and feel more involved with fandoms, I guess. I actually had a bit of a run with this in the Danganronpa fandom (I was a voice actor in an unfortunately never released and now defunct Fangan podcast), and that got me thinking about what I could do to engage with fandom more. I've always written fanfic, but it took until a short time after I left the DR fandom and got stuck in JoJo Hell, which was my first year of college, to work up the courage to actually post it.

All this to say, writing and sharing fics makes me feel like an active part of a community. I've made a lot of friends through it, had opportunities to work on some incredible fan projects, and, honestly, the past four years in the JJBA fandom have been the most fun I've had in any fandom. Plus, I think of it as sort of paying homage to this series that I love so dearly. Idk. My work probably isn't all that important to fandom as a whole, but I'm definitely having a good time participating :]

🎈 Describe your style as a writer; is it fixed? Does it change?

That's a hard one, actually. It definitely changes depending on the mood I'm going for, and it's obviously changed over the years (it's actually funny reading back older fics sometimes, because I can tell when certain writing workshops or creative breakthroughs in my academic life bled over into my hobby writing). I'd say my writing is heavily character-driven; while that comes with the medium in fanfiction, my original fiction and creative nonfiction tend to be like that, too. What details I focus on while narrating a scene, and which ones I overlook, should say something about the POV character. Stylistically, I love playing with sentence length. Sentence fragments and run-on sentences are my best friends, and I love you polysyndeton <3 (I notice I used to be really into asyndeton, too, but not so much anymore). The character-driven-ness carries over into the style, too; I tend to get a bit more purple prose-y with Giorno than I do Mista, for example. And I use almost exclusively present tense in my writing now, because I want everything to feel more immediate and immersive - more like watching a scene unfold in real time than recalling a memory, if that makes sense. I actually wanted to be a screenwriter at one point in my life; I guess I could describe my style with regard to that, in a way? Trying to write a film onto a page? Something like that.

[starberry-cupcake]

I spent the past week re-reading a novel I started to write when I was 17 and abandoned a couple years after.

I had written it in notebooks because my first novel (that I wrote when I was 14) got lost in computer mess ups. I had decided to drop that one anyway because a friend at school made me feel insecure when she kind of mocked it for being self-insert-y/wish fulfillment-y. This would be something the fic world would also advice me strongly against.

Anyway, I knew where the second one was all along but I was afraid of re-visiting it ever since I abandoned it, like 14 years ago? not sure when exactly. I guess I was partially afraid of the cringe and partially afraid of finding that it wasn't that different from what I do now.

I think that many years studying in spaces that undervalued the kind of fantasy narrative I enjoyed and pushed me to fit more conventional boxes for what is published more successfully in my country had a bit on an effect on my perception of my younger self.

The editor side made me hyper aware of mistakes and issues, so I started to be more and more reticent to enjoy the process and even afraid to start them, if I judged them unworthy from the get-go.

The literary workshops that were always focused on contemporary fiction (no fantasy, sci fi or horror) intended me to fit more commercially viable molds where I live and "push me out of my confort zone" (words I was told many times in them) so much that I became afraid that going back to what I enjoyed would mean sacrificing "progress".

In the past few years, I noticed these things, been working on them and decided to finally sit down and write a sci fi fantasy project I've been marinating in my head for ages.

There's one thing from that second teen novel I had written that I wanted to keep, so I took the notebooks out from their box and read them.

Imagine my surprise upon finding out that I had written over 400 pages before abandoning it.

Contrary to my fears, reading it was a pretty great experience. It was a product of a teen me and all but I was so invested and I had so much fun writing it.

However, as cool as some concepts were and as wide a world I had built and character roster I had accomplished, I realized upon reading it back that is was very...impersonal.

It was drenched in things I liked and enjoyed in media, and it had some ideas of things I thought were interesting to work with, but I didn't see myself reflected in it. There was some stuff, there always is in art, but I think I had taken the criticisms on self-insertion so hard that I left out all of my experiences and perceptions of self.

I shoehorned in a lot of things and I can tell and remember how some of it was doing what I thought had to be done in a story like that. I had gone so far off the extreme of "no self-insertion" that I didn't see myself reflected in my own imagination.

The names sounded foreign, the spaces looked foreign (now there's thankfully more fantasy that isn't Euro-based or US-based but at that time it was rare), the bodies were unlike mine, the identities were different from what I experienced myself at that time and even now.

I know we all do this and I know it's not a bad thing to reproduce what you admire and like but, as cool as the story was for something I wrote in my teens; for the most part, it felt as if it could have come out of anywhere, not necessarily from me. If that makes any sense at all.

It was actually better than I remember it being and I can see in its progress an interesting development of me as a writer. I cherish the characters and story and will take that bit I remembered for something new. But I can't help but feel a bit sad.

Sad for the 14 year old I tried to tone down for being wish-fullfilment-y and self-insert-y, to the point of not seeing in her a story worth telling. And sad for the 17 year old because I spent all this time hiding her in a box and afraid of the cringe she might have created.

They were both cool fun imaginative girls and I'd like them to come with me in my new journey with this new project. They were "young and unafraid", but mostly unafraid, and that's something I admire from them.

[hotforharrison]

Hi! Sorry in advance for my bad English! I wanted to get your opinion. Why do you think Harrison does so little in movies/series? Is he too picky about his roles or is there too much competition? Don't get me wrong. I understand that it's not easy being an actor and especially getting a part, but over the years hasn't he had an offer even for a minor role!!!? Sometimes I think he wants to do major roles and big projects, but not everyone is so lucky and by turning down small roles he misses his chance. I've been following him since 2017 and am really worried about his career. Only 2 series in 6 years (I'm not counting short films and 1 minute cameos in Tom's movies). Catch 22 is a good show, but Harrison is 10 minutes long. And the series "the regulars" was a flop, although I liked it. It's not a masterpiece, but it's not too bad either. I think there were big bets on this series, especially Harrison's, but in the end it was unlucky. And this year we have another series in which Harrison will have a small role. I just want the best for him! And a second question. I'm almost 99% sure that Harrison is auditioning for the role of Johnny Storm. He has said himself that he would like to play him and more than once. But what are the chances of him getting the role? He has very little acting experience and I'm afraid that's not in his favor. He has a great friendship and chemistry with Tom Holland and I think they would show it perfectly through Peter and Johnny if they ever crossed paths in the movies. And I know that Harrison and Tom stopped interacting on social media so that Harrison could develop as an independent person and actor. And that's the right thing to do. Because there will be those who will say that he gets roles because of his friendship with Tom. It doesn't work that way, though. And I'm glad he took that route. And I really wish him luck and lots of good roles!

Your English is wonderful!

He said that The Irregulars put him into a new bracket of acting jobs in the last interview he did, and he's mentioned auditioning somewhat recently, too.

He's also gone to some acting workshops that posted photos of their participants on Instagram, as recently as this past week, so he's obviously still interested in acting and working on honing his craft.

However, at the moment, he seems to be heavily involved in promoting the rum brand he cofounded, HAMA. There have been events, and he's made at least one appearance at an unrelated event where he was photographed with a bottle. He also took photos while he was in New York City of him holding a bottle in a variety of locations.

I wonder if he was in the US for audition(s) then. I don't know how that works these days. The role he took in the anthology series that's coming out later this year had a completely virtual audition process. He mentioned his height being brought up by someone who met him in person for the first time and thought he'd be taller.

I'm more heavily leaning toward him being picky about what roles he auditions for and being involved with multiple ventures.

If he has auditioned or is auditioning for Johnny Storm, I'm sending him all the good vibes. He does have a lead role in a Netflix series under his belt, which isn't a small role like his role in Catch-22 was, so hopefully that will help get him in the door.

It would be really cool to see him on the big screen with Tom! I don't really go to see movies in theaters very often, and I would definitely go see that.

But I very much hope he finds happiness in whatever he ends up doing -- whether that be acting, being an entrepreneur, or something else entirely.