#also there’s some weird time travel esque stuff at the end and i think it might be implied that the love interest gave birth to her partner

[sableprince]

i really want to sit down and make a proper Real lore doc for these goobers and not just the paragraphs of shtuff from whatever-ago, but like....... (buries myself underneath the dirt) lazy!!!!!!!

[genderdog]

every time i listen to ugly death no redemption i go fucking insane about ice the last generation again

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 2/13/2024

writing cover letters like "Market Research Firm 953989464860, will YOU be my Valentine?"

also, a fallout 4 femslash fic for femslash feb

listening

Fresh Blood by the Eels off their 2009 album Hombre Loco. i would say this is another "i think a vampire probably wrote this low, grooving track" but there are several howls featured. wikipedia says it is about a werewolf. this song sounds like it has a simple bassline and simple drums but it knows what it's about. it's probably secretly really complicated but i specced in knowing about fabric, not about music.

it makes me want to ice skate really fast and also sounds like watching broken highway lane dividers go by late at night. fascinating that the back half of the four-plus minute song is fully instrumental. definitely a song for when you are traveling, or perhaps proceeding. spotify

Sun down on the sorry day By nightlights the children pray I know you're probably gettin' ready for bed Beautiful woman get out of my head I'm so tired of the same old crud Sweet baby I need fresh blood

i've been mainlining The Black Keys' album Brothers so it makes sense this popped up on my Discover Weekly spotify playlist

-

reading

in 2015, the year i dropped out of college, the closest comic/weird nerd shit store was a forty minute drive from my house. i bought the first issue of the serialized anthology comics magazine The Island bc i liked the Moebius-esque cover by Brandon Graham, before i knew who either of those artists were or that i liked them. i think it was ten bucks, and having to show my drivers' license really sticks in my brain for some reason. the point i am slowly approaching is that the magazine only ran for fifteen issues, and i didn't buy any other copies bc ten bucks a month was too dear for me, but it was a tremendous incubator for artists i would end up loving. about half the time i stumble across a lovely self-contained book that knocks my socks off i find out it started life in The Island.

All his life, Hank Cho wanted to join the ranks of the Habsec—the rulers of the orbital habitat his people call home. But when he finds a powerful, forbidden weapon from the deep past, a single moment of violence sets his life—and the brutal society of the habitat—into upheaval. Hunted by the cannibalistic Habsec and sheltered by former enemies, Cho finds himself caught within a civil war that threatens to destroy his world. A new barbarian sci-fi adventure by SIMON ROY (PROPHET, JAN'S ATOMIC HEART, Tiger Lung), originally serialized in ISLAND MAGAZINE.

Simon Roy's Habitat asks: do you want to hear a story about a generation ship gone wrong? this is a guy who really knows how to draw mechs and all their fiddly bits and loves doing it, which is a really transferrable skill to lovingly detailing the crumbling brutalist neo-mesoamerican architecture. the Habsec cannibals and their bits and pieces of scavenged armor blend in so well, it's genuinely shocking when we see someone in full, kept up, incredibly colorful armor. gorgeous, gorgeous book. love a fucked up generation ship.

found while perusing the stacks of the library that was closest to a bunch of other admin errands i was running, bc i finally have a tx drivers license and can start collecting tx library cards

-

watching

im also asking myself why the hell i'm watching yellowstone with my bestie and her husband. it has every trigger warning and a lot of them would make me decline the experience had i looked them up beforehand. however, the inevitablilty of each little tragedy feeding into the circular threshing maw that is the Dutton family is really clicking for me. like well! that mom sure did die in the most traumatizing way possible! and wow that really does go a long way toward explaining why the daughter is self-medicating to an alarming degree AND why no one else is doing anything about it bc they're all still mad at her for being very tangential to her mom's death!

the amount of Stuff that happens per episode is truly astonishing. one of my favorite parts of the ttrpg Beamsaber is the downtime between missions, bc you get to have some really bonkers interactions with people who don't usually interact. despite its huge cast, Yellowstone doesn't yet feel incoherent or like it's jumped the shark in its first season bc it's really successful at getting its huge cast to have unexpected interactions with each other. this sounds a little bit like praising it for knowing how to be good television, but this is a neowestern about a land grab that's also a familial dynasty drama that's really leaning into the familial dynasty part of it. it would be very easy for this to become incoherent or bad at switching between storylines, but so far it's really good at it. it's not beamsaber or black sails bc nothing will ever be beamsaber or black sails but it's really scratching that itch of many small rapidly shifting factions and rapidly shifting political goals bc each child is their own horrible little faction and they have a lot of time where they're trapped in cars or helicopters together getting around their ranch, which is simply too large.

we're trying to watch the yellowstone franchise in release order, and the yellowstone prequel with tim mcgraw came out between the first and second seasons. we will not be continuing this. this is a bog standard wagon train western. cripplingly boring after the brazen insanity of the first season. also i think it is in poor taste at best and irresponsible at worst to show a suicide on screen.

i said i don't know why i'm watching this but i do know why i'm watching yellowstone, and that's bc my bestie keeps seeing tiktoks about it. sometimes im influenced in real life

-

playing

changed my sheets this week and didn't chortle at the TOP OR BOTTOM tag which is how i know im having. a brain time. another way you can tell im having a brain time are these screenshots of the Breath of the Wild map. as you may or may not remember from last week, last week i had very little of the map filled out.

now is this EXPLORED? good heavens no. i have under 40 shrines DISCOVERED. i have simply beelined to each tower and went VERY fast. or was very sneaky. the three towers i have not bothered to climb yet are the ones i would have to actually fight some guys about. fuck the akkala tower for real.

i love to accidentally get way too close to dragons and die. some fun things about this run: incredibly, exceptionally rainy. except for the stint in the literal desert and the five minutes in the snowfield it has been raining about 70% of the time, which has made climbing very annoying. another fun thing about this run: exceptionally low ancient shaft drop rate, which makes getting ancient arrows to safely kill guardians from afar very difficult. bc as discussed above i have optimized this little blond boy to be very fast and very sneaky to get up the towers very quickly in the two minute spans of time it is not raining.

another fun thing about this run: not very good at successfully spitting out riders next to horses. you can only see the tip of spinch's hat bc he is underground.

i have unlocked the elephant and the falcon, i haven't gotten much farther than finding painkillers for the goron boss and stalled out at the yiga clan stealth mission. bc despite liking being a sneaky fast sniper out in the world, i fucking hate an enforced stealth mission. i don't think i ever got past this part in my other run either.

not jacked enough to unlock the master sword, i think you need twelve hearts? i would rather have more stamina so i can get faster horses + the princess's horse.

after i unlocked a bunch of towers i spent a goofy amount of time in the Lake Floria system herself hunting for treasure chests (there are easily fifty chests in the water. wild) to get the 10k rupees to unlock the last great fairy. i also spent several real-life hours video game mining video game ore. this was deeply annoying bc i sold off all my gems to get 10k rupees and then had nothing to get those sweet sweet high level upgrades with. this was the point on sunday night where i realized i was getting irrationally annoyed with a game that is supposed to be fun, and is NOT meant to support the kind of grinding i was doing. that was enough video game for one day thank you.

did you know there's a korok in the shrine of resurrection? me either.

also did you know magnesis ACTIVATES on the windmills in Hebra but i can't figure out how to get close enough to any of them to do anything about it. annoying.

this has got to be so funny from ganons point of view. i unlocked the elephant and the falcon in under a week of in-game time and then spent several in-game months mining and collecting clothes. would that make ganon more or less anxious d'you think

making

cross stitch update. this confetti in the rover square. i am dying. here’s what it will look like finished, and a link to buy the pattern

i had such high hopes for pin stitches as a thread finishing method but i had to rip out a mistake near a pin stitch and accidentally ripped out the entire pin and single confetti cross stitch. so what the fuck. i am an insane woman who likes to fully submerge and lightly hand wash projects before they get framed to remove all the oils (yes i wash my hands before stitching, i do get paranoid) and i am not confident pin stitches will hold up to that. oh well. the loop method is pretty great in halving the number of ends i have to weave in, even though i feel like it is extremely wasteful and leaves me with lots of short useless lengths my cats would love to eat. so the gains from halving thread management are really not offset by the meticulous cat management i must embark upon every time i do my fun relaxing hobby.

and the back, which is a horror. and will only become more of a horror. but once this is framed no one will actually see it so it's FINE. i am FINE with this. i started this knowing there was going to be lots of confetti. that's the point of this masochistic pattern

i wrote the first chapter of this fic last summer and outlined the emotional beats (but not much else) while procrastinating moving and have finally lightly polished the first chapter and threw it on the archive. im trying to let things molder less and just fucking post them in the hopes this activates the writing part of my brain again but who could say what's going on up there. this is still something that hasn't quite returned to me post-covid round 2

this will eventually be an E-rated 5+1 fic fixing all the fucking bullshit around Cait Fallout4's companion quest. she will NOT go in the magic chair that tortures her into not being a junkie and being the perfect waifu. she is going to stumble backwards and accidentally into some harm reduction and get railed by a mean top. the mean top and the harm reduction won't fix her but they certainly won't hurt.

[yennefer-x-tissaia]

Yennaia bits in ep 3.05 (Part 2)

So, after her conversation with Philippa, Yen bumps into Istredd. Istredd tells Yen about some ancient magic book that conveniently allows time travel. Don’t start thinking about how Yen might misuse that after certain ~events later in the season @thegirl20​, just stoppit now

Anyway, Istredd and Triss tell Yen that the book is in Stregobor’s office and somebody needs to get it. Yen agrees.

Meanwhile, Vilgefortz and Geralt are talking and Geralt is seeing several clues that will come into play later. They see Istredd and Yen talking and Vilgefortz ~casually mentions that Tissaia told him that Yen and Istredd used to get up to naughty stuff in Tor Lara as youngsters.

 (Why on earth would he and Tissaia be talking about Yennefer’s teenage love life??)

Yen and Geralt meet and then there’s a dance that Geralt has never heard of, but knows the moves to. During the dance, they hatch a plot to retrieve the important book, by causing a distraction.

Tissaia watches them dance, smiling. 

After the dance, Yennefer goes to speak to Artaud and gets him in on the plan.

Geralt challenges Istredd to a pretend fight to serve as a distraction. Tissaia watches, but does not intervene.

She does appear to shield her girls from it though. Even though she is tiny.

(Either that or she’s getting ready to blast them both into oblivion for spoiling her girl’s party.)

Yen goes to Stregobor’s office, and finds evidence of the missing girls there. Meanwhile Geralt calls for a truce, which is a signal for Artaud to fall into a pile of glasses, delighting Sabrina.

Tissaia and Triss go to comfort Istredd, which I only wanted to show because of how little Tissaia is.

Stregobor comes in and finds Yen snooping and they argue, but everyone else comes in at that point and we have a Scooby Doo-esque unmasking scene where Yen, Triss and Istredd tell everyone that Stregobor is behind everything.

Yen says he tried to kill her.

And Tissaia looks like she wants to incinerate him on the spot.

They get out the time travel book and tell everybody that Stregobor stole it so he can rid the world of elves. He tries to plead his case but Tissaia cuts him off.

This is very gracious of her, considering the last time she wanted him to be punished she basically had to come back to Yen and say ‘Ummm, they’re not going to do anything to him, also they think you’re a traitor and you’re going to have to kill Cahir to prove you’re not’.

He’s taken away to wizard jail protesting his innocence and Tissaia says ominous, fate-tempting things.

She thanks Yen (and Geralt as an afterthought) for saving the evening.

We don’t see what she does with the book, but we can assume that it will definitely fall into the wrong hands at some point. 

Yen notices Chekov’s Tissaia’s bracelet on the floor and picks it up.

Everybody goes back to the party and Tissaia makes a toast to peace, and to Yen and Geralt, but mostly Yen.

Geralt tells Yen he loves her, she doesn’t say it back. (Like Tissaia didn’t say it back to Vilgefortz in ep 2.) And they kiss. Tissaia smiles.

The party ends and Geralt and Yen go back to their room and reminisce about all of the events while in the bath and then while having sex.

In the morning(?) they’re getting dressed and they start to discuss Philippa’s weird warnings, leading them to discuss Lydia, which makes Geralt ask about Tissaia’s bracelet.

Now, I don’t mean to be sexist here, but I have never known a man to glance at a set of earrings and take note of what they were made of. But apparently Geralt did.

They know what it is made of and where it is mined. Conveniently.

Then they discuss a painting Vilgefortz showed Geralt, and Yen says that’s where her dodgy portal took her. Vilgefortz is not subtle. And neither is the writing of this scene.

Suddenly, Phillippa’s warning makes sense.

They spring into action, Geralt picking up his sword and Yennefer chanting over Tissaia’s bracelet.

Yen is doing a location spell to find Tissaia, to make sure she’s safe.

Yen does not take kindly to being told she doesn’t have time to care about Tissaia’s safety. She vehemently tells Geralt that she’s not abandoning Tissaia.

And goes back to trying to find her.

Geralt heads out into the hallway where we hear that something bad is happening.

And that’s the cliffhanger!!

(Apologies if I missed a whole strand of storyline - it was difficult trying to do this in a linear fashion!!)

[cassiesdevblog]

Custom Contraption Design in Tears of the Kingdom Baby!!!!

Hey guys! Something I wanna use this blog for in addition to talking about my own gamedev work is talking about various design thingies from other games that interest me. I've been thinking a lot about the custom contraptions in the upcoming Zelda game lately and I'd love to share my own ideas for how this system could be designed to maximize creative freedom and the dynamic, emergent interactions BOTW is known for, and minimize fiddly menuing and general tedium

Max emergent interactions!!!!

So, first up, I think these contraptions should behave exactly how you'd expect a bunch of BOTW physics objects glued together to behave. They have weight and can be pushed around, wooden parts can catch fire, metal parts attract lightning and can be moved with magnesis, etc. No fancy cheats to bias physics or chemistry in favor of what the game might assume the player wants. That hovercraft pictured above should be hard to keep upright, and if you can't keep it from flipping over, you're gonna end up falling out of the sky. Maybe that's why you'd choose to build a comparatively slower, less agile hot air balloon: you don't want the challenge of keeping a less stable aircraft upright, or you want to transport some objects and don't want them throwing off your craft's balance. Or maybe you want to forego the downsides of either approach and build a land vehicle. Whatever you're building, you should be able to take advantage of all the normal properties of BOTW physics objects, but on the other side of the coin, you should also have to worry about the downsides of each of said properties

Some contraption parts could even be designed with both upsides and downsides in mind. For instance, maybe you wanna use one of the fans in the aircraft pictured above for blowing things around, rather than for propulsion, so you'll need to come up with a way to stabilize the fan to keep it from propelling itself away. The fan has multiple potential uses, but they can be in conflict with one another

Finding Parts and Building Stuff

In the trailer, we can see Link lifting a wheel out of a swamp using what looks like a Magnesis-esque rune thingy. It's a safe bet to say we'll be gathering up parts from the world to build our contraptions, and considering we have a tool for manipulating parts in space, we'll probably be using it to physically build our contraptions. That's right, no fiddly building menus for us! We're designing an even more fiddly in-game building system.... wish me luck!

Ok, so first, we're not traveling the world every single time we want to gather parts for the same old contraption we've built 100 times. Once you've picked something up with the "Part Mover" rune thingy, it's capital Y Yours forever. While holding something with the Part Mover, you can magically dissolve it by pressing, like, X or whatever, to put it in your parts inventory, and if a part gets far enough away from you that it would unload from the game, it'll instead dissolve and return to your parts inventory, magically cleaning up any parts or contraptions you leave behind. You can even hold X for a few seconds while using the Part Mover (but not while holding any parts) to dissolve all of your currently loaded parts

When you wanna build something, you can enter your parts inventory to choose the parts you want to use and dump them out in front of Link. Then, you can use the Part Mover to move them around, rotate them, and glue them together

Glue

When a part is held close to another part, evenly spaced dots will appear on the surfaces of both parts, including key points like the axle of a wheel, and when you hold, like, A or whatever, the dots on the part you're holding will attract toward the nearest dot on nearby parts until they connect, and then they will snap together, with the weird, gloopy, magic looking green glue seen in the trailer creating a rigid connection where they touch. While attracting toward other dots, parts will also try to align themselves rotationally with the face they're attaching to, snapping to the nearest multiple of 22.5° (half of 45°) relative to it, keeping things rotationally clean as well

To unglue something, just grab it with the Part Mover and press X once, then again if you want to dissolve it. You can hold X while holding a part of a whole contraption to dissolve the whole thing

This system is intended to keep things "on grid" so to speak, making it easier to create symmetrical contraptions, keep things even, and put things where you want them. The intent behind parts attracting together before connecting is to avoid all the wonky collisions that would occur if we just teleported the parts into place. Also, parts should probably have more dots than in the mockup I provided above to allow more creative freedom, but not so many that the point of the dots is defeated

Parts

To maximize creative freedom, Hyrule should be littered with all sorts of basic contraption materials to find--parts good for not just vehicles, but catapults, makeshift bunkers to survive big attacks, traps for enemies to fall into, and whatever else players can come up with. Pistons, rope, wheels, fans, balloons, sails, springs, and cubes, planks, sheets, wedges, orbs, and rods made of metal, wood, stone, etc. We'll also need pressure plates, crystal switches, and that steering wheel rod type thingy Link uses in the trailer so we can control our contraptions

Logic

While using the Part Mover, we can see normally invisible magicky "wire" things coming off of output devices like buttons and switches, mocked up above. We can use the Part Mover to grab these, drag them around, and plug them into an input node on anything that takes an input, like wheels, pistons, and fans. If you've ever played Littlebigplanet, it's exactly like that. Some things that take inputs have multiple input nodes, like wheels, which can take inputs for clockwise and counterclockwise rotation

We can steal some more from Littlebigplanet to create the interface for the direct control device Link can use. Aside from a dedicated dismount button and buttons reserved for things like pausing or the weapon inventories, we can plug any input on a Switch controller, including the accelerometer and gyroscope if Nintendo really wants to let us go wild, into anything we want. This UI can appear within the world, always facing the camera, above the direct control device, making sure to appear high enough that it doesn't overlap with any parts so it doesn't get in our way

While using one of these, the left stick also causes Link to shift his weight a little, which is how the aircraft in the trailer could be steered

Finally, depending on how complex Nintendo wants this to be, we could even attach simple logic gates to our contraptions like AND, OR, and NOT, invisible when not using the Part Mover like the wires. Plug two buttons into an OR gate, plug the gate into a piston, and now either button can activate the piston

Saving stuff

Now, crucially, if you like what you've built and want to use it multiple times, you shouldn't have to painstakingly rebuild it every time, so, while holding a part, you can press, uh, Y or whatever, and a "blueprint" of the whole contraption it's a part of will be saved for you to access later in a tab of the parts inventory. Select it from said tab and, as long as you have all the parts it's made out of, enough space in front of Link, and enough glue (more on that later), the resources are used and your whole contraption will plop down in front of Link, ready to use or be moved where you want it by the Part Mover

Technical considerations

Now, this is obviously a pretty powerful, robust system absolutely ripe for lag and abuse. But its design comes with an important limitation: Once you've collected a part, it's yours forever, and there are only so many wheels, planks, and pistons in Hyrule. Even after collecting everything, you can dump out your whole parts inventory and it won't amount to too many objects for the Switch to handle. You can stress the game a little and lower the framerate if you go ham, but you won't be able to make it unplayable

Or... that's the ideal, anyway. Maybe it would be best to just impose a limit on the number of parts you can have dumped out at once 'w'; Not so fun to reach such a limit, but it would allow Hyrule to be littered with all the parts you could ever want

Btw, I saved the best for last :)

Ok, so thus far, it seems like this is a pretty overpowered system, right? Parts never break, and you can dissolve and re-summon a contraption from its blueprint as many times as you want. Isn't that OP? If weapons break, shouldn't contraptions? You could build one car and it'd pretty easily outclass any horse, right? What's the catch?

Glue! Glue is an additional resource you'll need to collect from the world. It's not just any glue though. It's an ancient, magical resource Ganon has imbued all his minions with, and you'll get some every time you defeat one, addressing BOTW's problem of picking fights with random bokoblins being pretty pointless. You can only hold so much though, so don't hesitate to use it if you've got it!

Glue is used every time you glue things together or summon a glued contraption from its blueprint. Whatever the case, each connection between two parts costs 10 units of glue

And here's why this is my favorite part: Glued connections aren't forever. Anything more than a small amount of stress on a glued connection will start to degrade the glue, causing a particle effect and gradually fading the glue's bright, vibrant green color until it's a dull grey. Shortly before the glue comes apart for good, it'll flash red and then bam! With a particle explosion remiscent of a weapon breaking, your connection is no more and the parts it held together are now two independent physics objects. This will lead to all sorts of spectacular dismantlings, crashes, and disasters. Wheels will roll away mid-drive, cars will split in half, aircraft will fall out of the sky, and plans will go terribly wrong even when machines are otherwise perfectly designed and operated

Now, ideally, the minimum amount of stress to cause glue degradation should be high enough that a medium-weight car just sitting around won't slowly fall apart under its own weight. Generally speaking, connections should degrade with use, not disuse, unless contraptions are really heavy, poorly supported, or stuck under something heavy like a big boulder

When you use the Part Mover to break a connection or dissolve a whole contraption, each glued connection will refund an amount of glue relative to its degradation. Since one connection costs 10 units to make, completely fresh glue refunds 10 units, halfway degraded glue refunds 5 units, and so on. The refund is always rounded down to the nearest integer, so no glue farming funny business

A big advantage of this system that I'm fond of is that it avoids lots of paging through your parts inventory trying to decide how many of each type of part you're willing to spend in order to deploy a contraption from a blueprint. Your parts never break, are easy to retrieve, and will automatically return to your inventory if you leave them behind, so you'll almost always only have to think about how much glue you have on you. Unless you're using lots of contraptions at once, you won't have to worry about whether you have enough parts to place something out

And that's it!

A long post, but I wanted to go into all the intricate design details necessary to realize a system like this. I wanted to come up with something that would slot in well with BOTW's existing design and balance while offering a ton of room for creative freedom, emergent interactions, and beautiful disasters, without skimping on learnability or ease of use

Thanks for reading all that :) I can't wait to see what this system actually ends up being like in the final game! Also, let me know if you would design the system differently!

[mejomonster]

Grade these fanfiction tropes!

-Amnesia

-i forgot what it's called but the trope of accidentally ingesting or inhaling a drug that turns the character lustful

LOVE AMNESIA FICS IF EITHER A. AMNESIA MAKES SENSE FOR CHARACTER (in the end 90% of my fanfic preferences boil down to "if it's in character it's good, if it isn't something they'd likely go through boo" unless it's a quite unique idea or well written enough to tempt me). Or B. It's sort of a very temporary Tabula Rasa "short term" type amnesia because that can be very funny or interesting exploration and if it is angsty its temporary. (I say this but I've written... the long angsty kind).

I'll say A-B grade. I don't look for it unless the source characters already got amnesia like Zhang Qiling or Zhao Yunlan (of past lives), because I really like canon compliant/adjacent/divergent fic so it's playing with a character situation they already had. (I do get my heart desperately broken searching for both those characters amnesia fics ToT). But it's a B if it's for anything else - I like it and I'll read it but it's not Absolutely My Jam always.

X

Sex Pollen trope I think is what you're looking for? Grade A+++ showstopping. Amazing. Incredible. A classic from Star Trek TOS Pon Farr episode that I'd now like to see played with for fun wherever people fancy to explore (whether that's crack comedy to angst realism I'm fascinated where people go with it). Considering rhe intense amounts of tentacles grabbing Wu Xie in dmbj, a spore thing impregnating him, and every other canon batshit Wild thing that can happen in dmbj

(if you said the iron Triangle met an alien, stole it's ship, met Spock, Pangzi married T'Pring, Zhang Qiling punched Dr. MCcoy out. Then Captain Kirk dropped them home in a rush into America Washington DC and Pangzi ran into Krychek from X Files and made a hush hush shady deal for some cold sexy cash? I would believe u. I would say yep, canon compliant. Anything is probably canon compliant... except San shu being a good uncle and apologizing to wu xie for all the fucked up shit. But hey idk I haven't read Everything, maybe one day that awful uncle Does apologize and Wu Xie goes to therapy about it???... I doubt it but hey. Canon divergent if not compliant, probably, something changed so San Shu would do such a thing.) My point is sex pollen is absolutely well within the dmbj wheelhouse of batshit weird sci fi horror esque bullshit and I'm frankly a bit shocked there's not at least a heap more tentacle sex and sex pollen fics. And if there are more than I think, then I'd like links/recs ToT

Adjacent to the something makes characters magically horny trope? I'm also quite fond of any Wild Trope used in a fic for the hell of it especially if it's a canon compliant/adjacent/divergent fic (or such a fic but comedy crack). Like dmbj and Guardian and Star Trek are Excellent fandoms to play with fun bizarre ideas since you could argue its "just another day they likely had I guess." Shen Wri turns into a kitty cat and Zhao Yunlan takes care of his boy? Some Dixingren turned him. Wu Xie has time traveled? Sure, he went the wrong direction and ended up 1000 years in the past why the fuck not. Spock is now inside someone else's body? Well he's already been in McCoys! Might as well right any body switch of your dreams!! Hei Xiazi's a vampire?! Well maybe he's always been and just didn't bring it up! ToT. Zhang Qiling jumped universes to an alternate reality where "insert your dream AU here"? Sure, he can't always remember stuff, for all we know this has happened before and Will happen again. I just love the kinds of stories where wild tropes are just very easy to insert amd play with regular canon.

[dopaminegyro]

bro do you ever like watch a movie or smth and at first youre like haha this kinda reminds me of <hyperfixation> and then later on youre like holy shit this would make a perfect au everything fits so well and i also happen to dislike the ending so i can change it if i actually made that au. anyway so the adam project was a kinda cool movie

[carminite-wyrm]

A Genshin Impact Hermitcraft AU Idea, God Help Me

Last year, on September 28, a particular gacha rpg game was released and I, occasionally regrettably, fell straight into playing it. In honour of the fact that this will mean I have lasted nearly a whole year (I got the game a week after bc uni) determinedly not spending any money on Genshin whilst also trying to roll good characters…here’s a bunch of Hermitcraft Genshin AU ideas that I initially came up with at roughly 2.40 am.

The general idea of this AU is that the Hermits end up in a new world that has Genshin-esque mechanics, on top of the usual Minecraft shenanigans. So, Visions and stuff. Also, we’re gonna just…briefly ignore the actual Genshin lore in regards to how Visions and Gnosises (Gnoses?) come about, for this one.

Post-S8, the Hermits are travelling to a new world, ready for another season.

The moment they arrive, it is clear to them all that…something is different. Something is vastly different with this world, for all that it appears much like the previous servers that they have lived in and travelled to. There is something of a…presence to it, in a sense.

When the Something Different doesn’t appear immediately, being the demigods/almost-deities that they are, they go about their days, setting up starter bases, gathering the basic resources and tools, the usual beginnings.

Things change when Doc wakes up one morning after a hard day at work building a new redstone machine, to find a small glowing chess piece lying next to his head, crackling with an ethereal purple light

Upon picking it up, he feels a burst of energy, almost like that one time in the previous world where he and Ren built a lightning-summoning tower

However, the changes it has wrought become apparent later that day when Scar comes out of nowhere with the recording of a creeper’s tell-tale hiss and explosion, and Doc sends him flying backwards with a startled blast of lightning

At first, they chalk it up to ‘Something Funky With Doc’s Current Project’, but after some tests, some experimentation to confirm if it was a one-off reaction…they end up confirming that they may have found out what the Weird Thing about this season’s world is

The duo go to Xisuma with their findings, and, to their collective surprise, X can’t find anything blatantly broken in the server’s code, but he does find a few interesting lines within.

By all appearances, this is not a glitch, but simply an intended feature of the server

Seven lucky hermits, designated as Archons in the server code, will receive a Gnosis, an artefact of elemental power that the server can assign, given to the ‘player who best suits the element’

The server notes speak of how the power granted (and represented through the chess-piece-shaped item) will grant the receiver the capability to shape the land around them

By random chance, other players on the server will also be gifted a Vision, a somewhat lesser artefact that will still grant them a form of elemental power

Given that the Hermits are practically gods in their own right, considering they are already capable of shaping the worlds they arrive in as they see fit…are more curious than worried, at this point

They agree to keep an eye out, to see how chaotic the sudden acquisition of elemental powers will turn out

The next person to receive a Gnosis is Grian, who delights in the bursts of wind he can use to buffer his flight, gliding across the server with naught but the turquoise magic the server has seen fit to grant him

After that, most of the Hermits soon receives some sort of Elemental power from the server

A Summary of Who Gets What (That I can think of so far):

Doc: [Electro Archon]

Can summon lightning, without need for a trident, a thunderstorm, or a machine that can generate an ongoing thunderstorm for as long as its activated

Can also generate an Electro shield, though it does require his active concentration to maintain for longer than a few seconds. This shield appears like a charged creeper’s aura, except purple

Capable of generating a thunderstorm at will, but rarely does it on account of mob spawning dangers

Has found that by channelling a low level of Electro energy, he can in fact power redstone machines just by tapping them/being in close proximity to them

This has proven to both be a blessing and a curse, considering that on occasion, when startled, he has short-circuited some of his machines

Grian: [Anemo Archon]

Generally, uses his powers as a free rocket boost for flying around the server

Upon finding out that he can use the Anemo energy to create pockets of energy that can boost flight, he takes to leaving them all over the server, in convenient locations to make flight that much more efficient

Yes, he absolutely sets up a fancy elytra course that makes use of his flight-boosters to send players rocketing around a course at breakneck paces (poor Scar experiences many instances of kinetic energy)

Bdubs: [Geo Archon]

Suddenly, making mountains and other works of major terraforming is a lot easier

Certainly, he still prefers to sculpt them and detail them by hand, but bringing the basic shape of the mountain forth by brandishing the power of Geo is something that he can do with ease, in this world

A new shop pops up in the shopping district rather quickly after this realisation: Bdub’s Landshaping Service, Now offering quick terraforming at a budget price! (it is, in fact, a service that makes him quite the amount of money)

And when he wants to sleep, without the other hermits breaking his bed? A glowing shield of steadfast golden magic takes care of that.

Gem: [Dendro Archon]

The patch of the server that Gem has claimed for herself quickly springs to life as plants of all varieties grow to surprising proportions, energised by the power that she now can radiate

The effect is most notable in and around her home, of course, but wherever she travels, the plants grow more vibrantly for days afterwards

Adding a forest of birch around her house takes little more than a thought, a fact she uses to prank some of her friends, those who in the last world were rather vocal about their dislike of non-stripped birch

Another power Gem finds herself with is the ability to summon vines even without a surface for them to initially grow upon, and thus it is not uncommon to see Gem building or resting in a hammock of woven vines

Cub: [Cryo] (cannot make up my mind if I think he’d be Archon material or not)

Gathering powdered snow has never been easier, as instead of waiting for a storm to form and last longer than it takes a Hermit to get into the nearest bed, he can simply clap his hands together and a lump of snow shoots out from just above his shoulder.

It does hurt, getting hit by the sudden snow barrage that Cub is now capable of, but except for the occasional snowball fight, his newfound snow-creation ability is used for making increasingly more insane mob farms and snowy building decoration

False: [Pyro]

The magic her Pyro Vision grants her doesn’t become apparent, not for a while, until she visits the Nether for the first time in this world

A mis-swing in a bastion, and suddenly a horde of piglins and hoglins are chasing after her, and there isn’t enough time to pillar away.

She readies her sword and shield, ready to fight, and suddenly her blade crackles to life with bright flames, unlike the fire aspect enchantment in that it actually is on fire.

Every attack she lands, whilst her sword is alight, seems to invigorate her, return strength and stamina that was lost when she had first tried to flee the enraged inhabitants of the bastion

Xisuma:

The admin is one of the few to not receive a Vision or a Gnosis

Quietly, he does admit to being relieved, considering his powers as an admin are already much greater than that of the other Hermits, for all that they are still his equals

And then, one day, whilst X is placing his diamonds to sign up to one of Grian’s newest competitions, he feels a rush of foreign magic, so unlike the familiar ordered pulses of server code

The blast of wind that comes with a swing of his sword, much later whilst he is mob-farming, is greatly surprising, if not unexpected.

The funny thing about all these new powers, granted by the server itself in the form of artefacts that can easily sit in one’s palm, is that for all they are miraculous on their own, the natural capabilities of the Hermits are already enough to rival them

In the hands of an ordinary person, an ordinary player, the powers from this world would bring them close to the near-omnipotence of Creative, could even be the driving force of server-wide conflict.

Powers such as these, while they can build great things, can so easily be used to destroy, to cause war and destruction, and in other realities, they have.

Perhaps whatever trick of fate that caused the server to be capable of granting these powers hoped to create that conflict, to see what would happen when only a few of their number were gifted such strengths.

Later, when the initial surprise and rush to test out the limits of the server’s granted magics dies down, Zedaph approaches Xisuma, one of the few to not possess an artefact of elemental magic, with an observation

Zedaph notes that, from his studies of the Hermits’ new powers, almost all of them are oriented vastly towards combat, whether they be summonable blades of frost, elemental shields, or even the ability to soothe aches and hurts

And even though the Hermits have all found ways to make those powers work in the ways that they wish them to, it does not take away from the fact that the likeliest original purpose of this server’s magic was for fighting

Any other server, any other group, Zedaph quietly says, and there would more than likely have been bloodshed, given the inequality in the range of power granted

At the end of the day however, unexpected gifts of power or not, the Hermits, at their core, are a group that creates and innovates, a band of friends that shape entire worlds with naught but their own ideas and willpower, and regardless of what powers they now possess in this particular realm, that will not change.

[superman86to99]

Adventures of Superman #508 (January 1994)

Superman teams up with the Challengers of the Unknown, who are like the Fantastic Four but, uh, less Fantastic. They're still Four, though! As the first page informs us, this story takes place between the panels of a 1958 Challengers of the Unknown issue where they fight a guy called Tiko, the Wizard of Time, one of many Silver Age comic book villains who managed to find a way to travel in time and used this potentially world-changing technology to steal stuff. After catching Tiko in the year 3000, the Challengers are taking him back to 1958 when they accidentally crash down in the also-futuristic-but-not-that-futuristic year 1994. Upon being exposed to 1994 fashion, the Challengers describe this era as "some sort of post-apocalyptic future world," which is technically true since this is the DC Universe and there's like two apocalypses a month.

Anyway, Tiko escapes from the Challengers and hides in an alley, where he takes out a box containing some stolen 31st century weapons that happen to look like fancy rings. As he's monologuing to himself about how powerful these things are, Tiko is jumped by four hoodlums who steal the rings and decide to try them on, at which point there's a big explosion of green light. That's right: these four alley-dwellers are the new Green Lantern now that Hal Jordan went insane! Wait, no, wrong Tumblr...

Meanwhile, the Challengers, having seen a Daily Planet headline about Superman, show up at Perry White's office to ask if he knows how to contact Supes, because he looks like the kinda guy who might be useful when you need to find a time traveling-wizard. As Perry nerds out on the Challengers (who knew he's a Jack Kirby fan?), they all hear some sort of commotion going on outside: the four muggers, transformed into elemental beings by the futuristic bling, are tearing up the street. The Challengers jump down to contain the hoodlums using their amazing acrobatic abilities and superior intelligence. Soon, Superman stops by to help out, using his punches.

(Hehe, he said "Thing.")

The hoodlums are promptly taken care of, but then Tiko shows up with the fifth ring, which gives him the powers of the fifth element: no, not "Heart" or "Life Itself" or something cute like that, but vacuums. Tiko starts sucking up everyone and everything into a big void, which even Superman is having trouble resisting. Luckily, Tiko's love of monologuing allows one of the Challengers (the commie-hating one) to sneak behind him with something even more powerful than a 31st century ring capable of producing vacuums: a gun. No bullets, just the gun.

So Tiko is apprehended, and before the Challengers take him back to 1958, one of them (I made it through this whole summary without looking up their names, so let's call this one "Gary") asks Superman whatever became of the team. Before Superman can say anything, the brainiest of the Challengers, Prof (I did remember that one!), tells Gary that they shouldn't know too much about their own futures... and besides, this radical world full of super people in leather jackets probably doesn’t even need four powerless adventurers like them. The issue ends with Superman thinking that the Challengers are an inspiration just as he flies over Prof's headstone in a cemetery. A nice tribute, and also confirmation that, yeah, we don’t need you (don’t think Prof would have been much help against Doomsday or the Bloodlines aliens).

Character-Watch:

So what DID become of the Challengers? They starred in a 1991 miniseries by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale where Prof gets blown up (but then returns as a ghost) and the others turned all weird and violent and... '90s. On other hand, Loeb and Sales' take on Superman in that miniseries is just as great and timeless as it'd be years later, in Superman: For All Seasons. Superman shows up to defend the Challengers during a trial and says some pretty Superman-esque stuff:

Other than Prof's death, that series isn't acknowledged at all in this issue, and I kinda wonder if that's because Karl Kesel didn't care much for the modernized Challengers. Oh, and he later went out of his way to bring back the original team again during the "Hyper-Tension!" storyline in Superboy, even though a brand new Challengers series with different characters was going on at the same time, so that's more evidence for that theory. Finally, Kesel merged the original Challengers with the Fantastic Four in his Spider-Boy one-shot during the DC vs. Marvel crossover, which we’ll have to cover here at some point because it’s one of the finest single issues ever to grace this medium.

Plotline-Watch:

The Daily Planet article the Challengers read is about Superman catching the all-new, all-child-killing Toyman, as seen the previous week in Superman #85. Wonder how they figured out which one’s Superman.

This issue also includes the funeral for Cat Grant's son Adam, a victim of Toyman, and Cat's boss Vinnie Edge tries to hit on her again, right in front of her child’s grave. Incredible that Vinnie's own son had a criminal empire and tried to kill a bunch of people with a giant robot and Vinnie is STILL the biggest sleazebag in the family. Cat's reply here is foreshadowing:

Also at the funeral, a man named Ira Green comes to talk to Cat about his missing daughter, Sasha (who was murdered by Lex Luthor Jr. in Superman #77, and then brought back to life by aliens in Superman Annual #5, but he doesn't know that). Cat would have been justified in telling him "poor timing, dude" but instead she promises to help him find out what happened to Sasha.

STILL at the funeral, there's a moving scene where Superman comes to pay his respects and Cat asks him what it's like to be dead, since, you know, he’d know. He says it's different for everyone, which is probably true (I doubt Adam got a creepy procession by ghouls posing as Kryptonians).

Patreon-Watch:

This post was brought to you by our patrons, Aaron, Murray Qualie, Chris “Ace” Hendrix, britneyspearsatemyshorts, Patrick D. Ryall, Bheki Latha, Mark Syp, Ryan Bush, Raphael Fischer, Dave Shevlin, and Kit! Last month we asked them if they'd rather have more Patreon-only posts or more activity here on Tumblr and they overwhelmingly voted for the latter option, so this post wouldn't exist without them (well, it would, but like a month or two later). We'll still post exclusive stuff from time to time at https://www.patreon.com/superman86to99 but the focus will now be on keeping this Tumblr more active, because seriously, it's been eight years: you'd think we'd be AT LEAST up to the Electric Superman by now. Here’s to tackling Zero Hour before 2021 is over!

And this post is also brought to you by the great Don Sparrow, who finished his side like a month before me. And he even did his homework and looked up all the Challengers’ names! Read Don’s section after the jump:

Art-Watch (by @donsparrow​):

We begin with the cover, and it’s a good one, though like the rest of the issue, it seems to feature this week’s guest stars as much as Superman.  Superman’s musculature in particular looks very Tom Grummett-like, but the squat wide faces, and large hair let us know it’s definitely a Barry Kitson cover.  Get a load of the detail he puts in the flowing water here, with three distinct areas, and a real sense of motion.  Water is one of the trickiest things to draw, and he positively nails it, here.

The first few pages zip along nicely, though we’re tossed pretty abruptly in the middle of someone else’s story, so it’s not hard to feel lost.  They do have a caption naming the flat top wizard guy, Darius Tiko, but it’s not actually on the page in which he appears, so I didn’t think they’d named him until my second readthrough of this issue (I’d thought his actual character name was Green Goon since that’s what Red Ryan calls him). [Max: I think I like “Green Goon” better.]

While the colouring in this era is attempting to be a little more airbrushy than the solid blocks of colour from the old newsprint format days, it’s still a work in progress.  The attempts to add tone, or shadow, particularly to the characters faces leaves a little to be desired, as they tend to look less like tone, and more like bruising.  

The funeral scenes are well staged, and I appreciated the avoidance of the funeral in the rain trope.  The sunny, if windy, skies help to put in relief the horror of a child’s funeral.  The shot of Superman paying a condolence call is a very good one, with a very McFarlane-y cape whipping around.

Kitson’s Perry White looks a little chunkier than we’re used to seeing him.  I wondered, given the prominence of his wide smile, if this was supposed to be a reference to Lane Smith, the actor playing Perry in the then-airing Lois and Clark TV show (similarly to how the artists altered Lois’ hair, and depicted Martha Kent as thinner and more youthful to match the show) but when I double checked, Lane Smith is much thinner than this Perry White (and doesn’t have slicked back hair, either) so I’m not sure what brought on the new look for Perry.

We see a properly Jack Kirby-like intro to the different elemental mutants, reminiscent of the Fantastic Four on page 13.

More great texture work on the following page, as the water and fire creatures are drawn well in their attack on the Challengers. The full page splash as Superman (finally) enters the fray is a good one as well.  There’s a nice sense of motion as the items on the street get sucked into the void, but I will admit there’s a real dearth of backgrounds for most of that sequence as well. Overall, a fairly workmanlike issue for the art team—they aren’t asked to draw anything too spectacular, but they do serve the story well.  In the issue’s opening credits, they mention that this story was something of a passion project for writer Karl Kesel, and it reads that way—it doesn’t really fit neatly into the present continuity, aside from the singular Cat Grant scene, nor does it really explain who the Challengers are, what they can do, etc.  Even the ending assumes a lot about our base of knowledge of these characters, which I certainly didn’t have at the time, reading this as a teenager. I’m not fully convinced it works as a Superman story, as he is so limited in terms of screentime, and, because we are given so little in the way of explanation of the Challengers, it doesn’t fully serve them, either.  It’s just kind of a weird little novelty issue, for people who like the Challengers.  

STRAY OBSERVATIONS

Props to Perry White for being hip to who the Challengers are.  I sure didn’t! [Max: I think I did know the Challengers when I first read this issue, but only thanks to Kesel himself in Spider-Boy, which I re-read that issue like 90 times.]

It’s odd that publisher Franklin Stern only sort of appears in the issue—almost behind the “camera”, completely in shadow, then he’s gone.

Rather than a bowdlerized swear word, I choose to believe that the criminal punk calling Tiko a “fudd” refers to Elmer Fudd, who also had a tall, sort of flat hat.  Earlier in the comic, the rainbow haired lady calls one of the Challengers Barney, and I’m a little less clear on that reference.  He’s blonde, and so was Barney Rubble, but it could just as easily be early 90s slang.   One of the many results for Barney on urban dictionary is “an unremarkable male” so maybe that’s what she means? [Max: It’s well known that being a “Barney” is the opposite of being totally rad.]

Professor Haley seems unimpressed by “miniaturized computing” but we don’t hear the end of his sentence.  Surely, it was gonna be about the cloud.

Hey Rocky, here in the future, we don’t call them “future cars”. They’re just cars.  And actually, that one’s a van. [Max: For the sake of consistency, he should have called EVERYTHING future. Like, “Hey, Gary, pass the future pen. I’m going to future write something down. Future thanks.”]

[maswartz]

Collection of my Weird Dreams

1. I had a weird dream last night. I was reading a (very very nicely drawn) King of the Hill comic where Dale got bit by a vampire. Soon Lauane was too and either turned or killed Peggy. I don’t remember seeing Bobby. But I know it ended with Dale biting and turning Hank as fangs emerged from Hank’s teeth. The weirdest part was it was on tumblr and I could see all the details of the blog it was on. 2. I don’t know why but for some reason lately I’ve been having dreams about a TV show that was basically a live action Superfriends. It stared Sinestro (in a heroic role and a really weird costume) and a cast of DC heroes. It aired in the gap after Smallville ended but before the Arrowverse began. I even remember the title “Sinestro and the Corps of Justice” The really weird thing is that in the dream I just had last night the description for one of the episodes (which I just realized I shouldn’t have been able to read in a dream) mentioned Squirrel Girl and I saw Deadpool in it. I still remember the intro from last nights dream too. It started with animated versions of the heroes floating in space rising up as they turned into the live action versions. 3. I had a strange dream last night, it was a zombie apocalypse but it was in the Monsters Inc. universe and the monsters were using the closets to save the children. 4. I had a weird dream last night. Basically it took place in one of those idealistic 50-esque towns but everyone had a dark secret. It begins and ends with the town’s greatest actor dying in the center of town. Eventually it’s revealed he hid evidence that would have cleared the main character’s brother of a crime. As he died he confesses. This is where it gets weird. There’s also some deep rivalry/conspiracy between people who wear dog shirts and people who wear cat shirts. Oh and did I mention that everyone was either a barbie doll or a ken/GI Joe doll? Basically by the end the town is torn apart by all the secrets. 5. I had a weird dream last night, basically it was one of those festivals you see in RPGs celebrating the defeat of some ancient evil, only it was like a modern carnival with tacky stands and food and rides and stuff. And in the middle of the carnival the evil guy was inside a room with glass windows so people could look at him inside the seal. And at one point he’s going on the usual “if i were free I’d turn this mockery into a crater” until a staff member just hands him cotton candy. 6. I just had a weird dream It was like a combo of Earth D and the DCAU/batman beyond. Here’s what I remember Robin was an indian version of Tim Drake and his daughter was a new heroine and he had a job making historical holograms Supergirl was asian or something and her son had a crush on the daughter of Robin Aquaman was older and a bit chubby but still kicked ass when an atlantian tried to attack the surface world he led the army against them Aquagirl was the same as Batman Beyond Terry apparently was a brat before but through time travel or something had gone through what we saw in BB and become a better hero for it and for some reason had a sword and was in a semi relationship with Aquagirl. The joker was still alive and somehow got all the heroes to surrender there was a subplot about a spikey nut thing one of the batmen (bruce was still batman too) kept dropping and a villain telling another villain not to let a monster dog eat them During the climax Terry drops a gas pellet, bruce throws a flash bang and terry uses one of the nut things to set it off near Superman recharging him and that’s where it ended. 7. Every time I hear this song I can’t help but think back to a dream I had once. There was a massive giant who walked across the world until they noticed small creatures suffering. They taught the creatures how to farm, how to build, how to craft weapons to ward off predators and so on. One day there was a terrible disaster (right as the song reaches the zenith) and the giant protects the small village with their body dying in the process and their body becomes a tall mountain that watches over the village for all time. 8. I had a weird dream once where it was a horror movie that took place in a mansion, it was haunted by a banshee but the banshee was summoned by a teenage girl to save her from other teens at a party gone wrong. Basically it ended with the girl becoming the new banshee. 9. I don’t know what reminded me of this but a few years ago I had a dream about a kid about 5-10ish who carried around a stuffed bear dressed like a knight. One night the kid and his mom are attacked by a mugger and the bear begins to glow and grow until it’s about 6-7 feet tall and it attacks the mugger. It turns out the kid has the power to bring the bear to life to create KnightBear! That’s pretty much all I remembered 10. I just had a dream where I was watching an LP/playing one of those “found journal” games. I mean I remember seeing the progress bar at the bottom, I even skipped ahead a few times.

The journal belonged to a boy at one of those troubled boy places decades ago.

It kept talking about some imaginary friend thing trying to pressure him into horrible choices.

Then it got weird when the journal revealed a nerf gun you had to use to spell the name of the “friend” and a creature appeared and had the player use various objects to play pranks on other boys and the staff.

However the pranks get more and more violent as the creature gets more and more demented looking. Then the journal reveals why the boy/you were in this place, with a bloodstained page and a photo. 11. I just had a weird dream it started with a newspaper comic crossover that somehow involved Yogi Bear and turned into a zombie outbreak. Then for some reason four old comedians including Bill Muray were tasked with stopping it but they failed however it turned out to be a groundhogs day loop. I know at one point Murray is talking about the last loops failure and it involved a showdown on a bridge where they all died and zombiefied and destroyed the bridge. That's when I woke up 12. Last night’s dream was about a group that was pretty much the Voltron Force/Power Rangers. It began with something about time travel where it was revealed things hit the fan bad! Some evil parasite that for some reason looked like the leg of a horse or a moose had taken over all but one of the team. The lone survivor managed to free two of the others so it was the leader, the comic relief and the brooding one against the second in command and the gadget genius. During the battle the gadget genius revealed they had rebuilt a ton of previous versions of the mecha only for the comic relief to remind him that he helped build them all so he took them all down. The parasite was having them use their space station to super heat the earth so they could thrive on the planet and after all five were free they formed the mecha and were forced to destroy the station but for some reason the mecha began to tear itself apart. Only the leader survived and used some gadget to go back in time and stop it all from happening but one of the last surviving parasites infected him and his past self had to kill him… 13. It’s 4 am and I just had a weird dream about a body horror game. The premise is a couple (randomly generated each play through so one play through is MF another MM and so on) are in an accident and found by a mad doctor who attaches them at the pelvis (Barbie/ken anatomy, the whole thing is played for horror) and the couple must adapt to this in order to escape.   It’d control like a two player QWOP.   I just had to get this idea out 14. I had a weird ninja anime dream last night. Basically it was one of those realistic anime styles. The main character was a female ninja who trained to be the best of the best for the usual reasons (fighting evil) but the twist was when she actually got to the battle this super deformed ninja guy was wiping the floor with them. He pledges himself as her pupil. The SD Ninja would be one of those “how scary a comedy character would be if their abilities were taken seriously” situations but he’d still act like he was in a comedy anime. At some point the female ninja’s friend is revealed to be a centipede themed monster. Oh and the female ninja managed to convince one of the monsters that hurting people was wrong and they started to teach that to other monsters. But they had to keep up appearances in front of the boss so they’d threaten people only to let them go when the boss wasn’t looking. 14. I had a weird dream last night.It was about a cartoon superhero, a boy whose powers had something to do with animals. He was fighting a supervillain who was the big bad and had a medallion that allowed him to steal the power of animals. The villain realized that people count as animals and tried to steal the boys powers but ended up draining a side character to death. The opening was then changed to include a bit with their face included among the various beings the villain stole the power of. The finale then had the villain somehow puppet the rest of the side characters to prevent the boy from attacking. Seeing the boy risk his life gave them the courage to fight the control and create an opening for the boy to strike. 15 A. I had a double whammy of weird dreams last night.The first was about Ducktales and I remember the most about it. It started off with the main cast in an amusement park playing a life sized board game thingy (Duckworth won right before someone else could) But during it they’re confronted by animatronics of themselves that FOWL had turned evil. The stinger revealed that the Louie one was turned good but thought it was the real Louie. Then it cut to Louie, Fenton, Della, and somehow the HDL father in a cave trying to escape. Part of it had caved in causing Fenton and Louie’s eyes to glow green revealing Fenton was a robot too. He had one hand as a chainsaw to clear the rocks and offered to help unlock some of Louie’s programming to help escape. But Louie was scared so he pushed him...right into Della. It cut away to the father and Louie screaming. 15 B. The next dream was RWBY with elements of Miraculous Ladybug. This one was all kinds of jumbled up. It involved Ruby dressed as Tinkerbell going mad with jealousy until an Akuma/Grimm Yang broke in the room? Then it cut to Ruby being freed from the same state? Then it cut back to Ruby actually being possessed? 17. I just woke up from another weird dream It was basically Teen Titans/Young Justice + A bad B Movie The lineup was Robin/Red Robin/Red Bird? Starfire Cyborg Superboy And Mammoth of the Fearsome Five joined the team As it went on however Robin went way off the deep end and even attacked his teammates. Starfire revealed that he’d been working solo more in secret and doesn’t even talk to the cops about the other members. Meanwhile there was a subplot about two hazardous material disposal workers who had a drum of material get stolen/fall off the truck. It ended up in a pond behind someone’s house. Superboy talked to a teenage boy genius who was either Blockbuster or some Hulk rip off who had a notebook with a bunch of notes until it was just “Blockbuster” over and over. As Superboy was confronting him two women (I think they were Titans) for some reason were in the pond and got a face full of chemicals and began throwing up. That’s when the hazardous material guys showed up and helped them not die. Then I woke up. 18. I had a freaking weird dream last night I was trapped in an anti-sexual assault PSA video. Like literally inside it. It was in universe in the MCU and Natasha was there but every time someone touched her it tore away to reveal a scared little girl inside her. Then I was running down a hallway and I could literally see the cast and crew filming the PSA, like I could see a guy in the ceiling working on lights. And the hallway kept repeating until I jumped up and grabbed the guy’s arm. That’s when I woke up and went back to bed. I legit have NO idea what spawned this. 19. It started with a skeleton villain voiced by Mark Hamill (so either Skeleton King or Skeletor) marching down the street ranting about the positive values of revenge. Going to confront him was the girl from Two Stupid Dogs (aged up to like middle school age) walking the skinny dog. The dog got scared and refused to go any further. (Apparently the dog had somehow wronged the villain) The girl was about to give up hope when a high school version of Bayonetta showed up next to her and put a stencil on the fence next to her. It was of magic words arranged in a magic shape. As she penciled it on another girl, a high school version of Zatanna helped activate it forming a seal to protect the girl and dog. That’s when I woke up. 20. I had a weird ass body horror nightmare last night. It started as a Doctor Who/Ben 10 crossover thingy with the “plot” being a musical as everyone got ready for Gwen’s wedding. Then it took a turn as along the side of the “screen” cartoony veins went up and these worm like things popped out of them and started singing. Then the person’s hand pulled on one and I could FEEL them all moving inside. Then it cut to a person searching TVTropes for more info on it and it was like the first step of some horrific transformation into a parasite monster. I full on woke up after that. 21. I just had a really bonkers dream Already forgetting small details It was some kind of movie trailer, the star was done woman in her 20s who reminds me of Frankie Foster. She was visiting some weird store with a Seussisn/willy wonka vibe to it there was some kind of secret passage hidden via a special combo on a vending machine that had some Suessian monster guy inside near the machine was a taxidermied elephant man (actual humanoid elephant) nothing graphic but their skin was red and leathery and was apparently the dad of the guy in the vending machine the skin of the elephant guy was apparently a clue in some big treasure hunt too it ended with the woman leaving to go home and the monster guy saying something like “everyone needs a vacation or you’ll work yourself to death like my old man” pointing out the elephant guy at that point she asks if he was dead when they taxidermied him and the monster just shrugged and I think it was implied he wasn’t even dead but was totally fine and that’s honestly all I remember

[shadeswift99]

hello it is i, from ao3. as promised, i come bearing gifts (questions)

what's the demon realm like? is it like the overworld, just populated by demons instead of humans/hybrids/etc? or is it more like the nether or end, or something different altogether? what about culture, society? how do they live together? is there some sort of social hierarchy? typical family constelations? are there any traditions demons have?

is communication between the demon realm and the primary plane possible? if so, how? can you travel from one realm to the other, or is it only possible through summoning?

how did team zit meet? when did they decide to summon impulse into hermitcraft with them? was impulse ever on the primary plane before? aside from impulse (and mumbo), are there any other demons on hermitcraft (that we know about)?

if not, then i wonder how impulse will react after finding out about mumbo. maybe he'll get excited about having another demon buddy on the server with him?

i have other questions but. i thought maybe all of them at once would be overwhelming ._.

Hello!! I haven't once stopped thinking about the Red Thread AU since I came up with it...less than a week ago, so the excuse to ramble is very much appreciated!

That being said: I'm afraid the answer to most of this stuff is either "spoilers" or "not really thought out yet". However, I will answer what I can! Long-winded Red Thread nonsense under the cut :D

The Demonic Plane is mostly nether-esque, but not always...fire flavoured, in all places. It's a space heavily themed around pure elemental energy (put a pin in the idea of "elemental" for later) and what you might call chaos magic, so the composition of different areas as well as the normally predictable laws of things like gravity vary. It gets a little amorphous and difficult to describe to humans at times, but the demons who try tend to speak fondly of it, so I guess it's a pretty good living environment for them!

Alrighty, what else out of that can I actually answer...family. Demons are born of elemental magic and are capable of independent survival from birth, so they don't really have families, but I think they often end up living in large groups based on location or shared interest. There isn't really a set hierarchy or firm borders between groups - their social structure is loose and ever-shifting, much like their home. Age, size, and demonic type (there are many) are the only real deciding factors in terms of difference between them. Fun fact: age and size are very linked! Demons operate on lobster immortality! And by that I mean: they have an infinite natural lifespan (aside from illness and injury) and the only thing limiting their size is age and available space + resources. Extrapolate how you will. :]

Interplanar travel! And communication. You'll See. Yeah that's about all I can say there. What I can tell you is that communication between the Primary and Demonic planes specifically is patchy and requires travel. There isn't a (known, advisable, or permitted) technological or magical option for remote communication currently.

And, ZIT. Yeah. There are threads in there. Big, long, red ones. I think a lot of your questions will be answered or able to be guessed at once Impulse and Zed start getting involved in the plot (only a few chapters left to go!) but I want to tread carefully around extra information for them, since they both end up being key players in their own special ways. Tango is also pretty important, he's just also...a regular human dude who's very much Actively In Space for the majority of the action, so he's a little backgrounded for the time being. I can tell you that ZIT did meet up before Hermitcraft, with Zed meeting Impulse first, and that Impulse was suppose to spend only a few weeks on the Primary Plane but ended up liking it so much he stayed! And I can definitively confirm that there are no other demons on the server aside from him and Mumbo. The others have their share of weird and wild going on too though, don't you worry. I can't wait to get deeper into all their complications and how they all interact....

Shaderamble complete! Thank you so much for your questions, this is honestly my favourite part about a story/universe/project/Thingy like this, just the way the flexibility and scale lets me bat around ideas and info when I'm not writing. Feel free to ask more, if you'd like to spin the "is that a spoiler" wheel again!

[turtletimewriting]

Logan’s Adventure- To the doctor’s

Summary: What it says on the tin!

Note: Woop woop! I actually found some motivation to write so feeling good about these ones! I will say, there isn’t any tickling in this one so if you’re reading purely for the tickles then sorry! 

This is based on the tickle forest idea by fluffomatic so check them out!

Beginning!--- Patton’s part!

_._._

“Well where do you think we should go?” Virgil asked. Logan took a pause to consider the options.

“Well all options are valid and useful so I guess-”

“Cool because if you don’t really have a strong opinion, then I say we’re going to the doctors,” Virgil stated and marched on the stoned road leading straight into the village. Logan huffed a laugh at him, “Just... I guess now that you’ve mentioned it, I don’t want to end up getting bitten or a rash or whatever.”

“Sounds good to me,” Logan smiled before shyly linking their hands together.  

Now it was of course no surprise to see that the side that looked like a prince straight from a Disney film would create a medieval European village. The houses all stood tall with dramatic black wooden frames but still somehow made them feel at home immediately. Maybe it was because everyone they passed waved and nodded at them and the first house they passed had a mother placing a hot apple pie on the windowsill. There was colourful bunting strung up the old fashioned oil lamps and they could both almost hear the Disney-esque music playing in the background. It was a short walk until they came across the doctors. 

Walking in, the receptionist smiled widely and waved them over. Luckily, the waiting room was pretty much empty with only one girl fidgeting and tapping her foot. “Hello lovelies! How can I help?” The receptionist spun on her office chair to face them. Despite how friendly everyone was, Virgil automatically kept looking around the office leaving Logan to do the talking.

“Hello, I’m afraid we don’t have an appointment nor are we actually ill. This is our first time... travelling through and we wou-”

“Oh!” The lady butted in and started typing furiously on the computer, “That’s no problem. So would you like a drop-in session to go over how to protect yourselves and basic aid for the wildlife here, right?”

“That’s sounds great, thank you.”

“No problem. I just need to ask some questions so the doctor knows what to ask you all about?” 

“Go ahead.”

“Right, so firstly names?” The receptionist asked much to both of their surprise. Usually most of Roman’s creativity meant that any imagined space and people knew them. Typically every villager would rave about a certain red clad prince hero, they would bake for a certain lovely young man in bright blue, Logan made an effort to challenge the professors and every villager knew to leave the poor shy man in black to himself. 

They both answered basic questions about themselves before the receptionist boredly asked one last question that froze them, “Okay last one, are you lees or lers or switches?” 

“Uh... what?” Virgil whipped round to actually face her for once and Logan simply bluescreened. 

“Do you prefer being tickled, the ticklee, or tickling someone, being a tickler? Or, of course, a little bit of both?” The receptionist asked as if she was simply asking them what they’re favourite colours were. 

“Of course Remus would also create not only paperwork but... stupid questions,” Virgil grumbled but he already knew he was going to answer quickly. Yes this was an anxious nightmare but then he wasn’t about to cause a scene to someone innocently doing their job. He’d just have to get Remus later.

“I’d say both... switches?” Logan asked with a nervous look to Virgil. 

“Yeah?” The lady asked clearly wanting a bit more.

“I’d agree with that but I do think it’s important to note that Logan here leans strongly to the lee side,” Virgil quickly butted in.

“What?” Logan demanded.

“Okay great! You’re all good to go. You won’t have to wait long. Probably no more than five minutes. The doctor will call you. You can take a seat while you wait but I will say that the girl also waiting was bitten by lersquitos so maybe keep you’re distance,” She smiled widely and submitted the form before Logan could fight against any of their answers. 

“Thank you,” Virgil smiled before dragging his bumbling stuttering boyfriend by the shoulders and sitting them a couple of seats away from the girl. 

“You. Are. A... nightmare,” Logan finally snarked once his mind finally loaded from the betrayal. 

“Eh, the doctor’s need all the information they can grab. That means they need to know about your ‘stress relief’ mechanisms,” Virgil breathily whispered into his ears while trailing his fingers up his arms, leaving Logan flinching and childishly giggling. They stopped however when the girl groaned at their teasing. 

“Uh, excuse me. I’m sorry if this is really rude, but we heard you got bitten by... a something. Do you mind telling us about that?” Logan asked 

“Oh, uh a lersquito,” The girl answered with a judgemental look. She answered as if they had asked what colour the sky was. 

“Yes. That... What is that?” He asked. The girl took a deep breath and releasing an obnoxiously long sigh.

“Yeah it’s just a bug. It bites you and you get into a ler mood. It’s like...” She awkwardly paused but continued while never once looking at them, “you can’t get the idea out of your head and it’s like your fingers can’t keep still, y’know. They mostly hang out around water, so yeah.”

“That has got to be a Remus creation,” Logan nodded to himself and the girl simply shrugged them off and continued staring at the wall while slowly flexing her fingers. 

“Yeah wait!” Virgil suddenly perked up, “how on earth do we fight against that! A bug that bites you! I didn’t pay attention to any bugs. We may have already been bitten! And, and, the map goes through the forest. How on earth are we meant to-”

“That’s why we’re here. Surely the doctor can help us,” Logan answered and smoothed his bangs out of his eyes, much to his dismay. 

It wasn’t much longer until they got called by the doctor. She was dressed like any other doctor with no indication that she specialised in any tickle related stuff. “Hello, c’mon in!” She waved them inside a room. It looked also completely normal. There was a typical notice board behind her desk filled with different flyers and information. This was the only indication that they were in a world created and based on tickling. Even Logan had to admit that it was distracting to see a massive poster of a a cartoon man getting absolutely destroyed by bugs with glowing pink mushrooms in the background. 

He snapped back to attention when he noticed the silence. The doctor laughed at them both considered Virgil was still entranced by the poster. “Sorry! Uhm, can you repeat that?”

“I just asked if this was your first time through?” She asked with a polite smile. 

“Oh yes! Right. Yes this is our first time travelling and we would like to be prepared for anything that may get us... in trouble.”

“Ah well there’s not much advice I can give,” She responded.

“Of course it wouldn’t be that easy,” Logan mumbled under his breath but the doctor kept talking without pause.

“Just apply basic common knowledge and you’ll be alright. Don’t mess around with any weird plants, leave the white flowers alone, be careful around animals. Remember if you do get into trouble then come see a doctor if you’re worried. Did you have any more specific questions?” She asked Logan who was still flicking back and forth between the blatant poster and her.

“What is the most common reason people visit?”

“Well usually it’s the ants. Not a lot of people remember to look where they’re standing and, to be honest, their colonies are not obvious. They sting you and can almost triple your sensitivity. Not a problem if it’s a kid but if you’re in the middle of work then it can be a nuisance. Also, if you do get stung and it lasts more than four hours without treatment then seek medical help immediately.”

“Is there any way to... cure the sting?”

“It’s a simple lotion. It won’t make it disappear, you’ll still be quite sensitive, but it really helps dampen the effects. The sting is enough so that your clothes tickle you so a lot of people will buy it in bulk,” She answered while handing them both the tiniest travel bottle of the lotion. It wasn’t much but then he guessed it made sense that they wouldn’t hand them loads of it. 

They chatted but otherwise the doctor was reluctant to give them anymore considered her stance was thoroughly ‘just use common sense’. Virgil kept his gaze fixed on the notice board but the longer they talked, the more confused he looked. Even Logan ended up nudging him to try and get him to pay attention. 

As they were leaving, Virgil finally spoke up. “Wait, can I look at something?” He asked but he was already leaning over her desk to pull off one of the notes. Unlike the other leaflets, it was just plain paper with a scrawled hard to read chicken scratch. 

He showed it to Logan with a concentrated frown. It read:

The treasure is kinda smelly and gross but you’ll love it!!!!

“Is that a clue!” Logan gasped, intentionally snatching it from his hand. 

“It just stuck out as weird,” He pretty much said to himself because now Logan’s mind had latched on. Any mind based puzzle and Logan was in his happy place. The wording all screamed that this was a treasure that Remus created or at the least Remus made the clue. Had they missed more clues? Were they supposed to have any idea what this means? This was so vague! It spoke about the treasure but not about what the password to unlock was. Maybe the password is what the treasure is! 

Logan absolutely didn’t pay attention to Virgil saying thanks to the doctor and shoving them out the door. Virgil merely fondly rolled his eyes and pushed them out of the village and up to the path. Back to the adventure! 

The path led straight into a heavy forest with vines and the constant chirping of birds. The bushes seemed like they were always moving with different animals scuttling about and Virgil could already feel himself start to sweat as the heavy trees trapped the heat in the forest. All this time, Virgil had to admit he did feel a little worried about getting unfairly sneak-attacked but also that was nothing compared to now. The thick heavy forest only showed that they were truly in the thick of it now. They weren’t sightseeing around a village. They were in an adventure. 

They had barely stepped through the forest before stopping. Across the path was a weeping willow. It was just as gorgeous as terrifying. The soft pinks and white rustling together in a beautiful dance of a feathery bright petals. But also that was the most obvious trap he had ever seen in his life. Logan was still mumbling to himself staring at the clue so he carefully plapped the clue out of his hands and silently pointed at the tree. 

“Ah,” Logan said.

“Yeah. Ah. What do we do?” Virgil sighed. Logan looked around with a wince. The path carved through extremely thick trees and bushes and dense foliage. 

“There’s no good option here. We could keep to the path and just take whatever this tree does or we could go around it.”

“But god knows what’s in there!” Virgil gasped!

“So do we go forward knowing we will get tickled by these... feathery looking branches or get tickled by the unknown. There isn’t a good option here,” Logan sighed. 

This adventure took 20 minutes!

Total time: 46 minutes.

OOH BOY THAT WAS SOO LONG, I’M SO SORRY!

The adventure continues, but what shall our boys do?!

1) Go forward

2) Go off the path 

Now, Logan and Virgil know about lersquitos, tickle ants and discovered a clue! But now Logan is distracted with figuring out the clue!

[dwellordream]

A Six of Crows Review: Final Thoughts

Well, I got about 60% of the way through Six of Crows and then the pacing kicked into overdrive (and it had already been pretty breakneck), so I didn’t see the point in breaking it down into just four or so chapters at a time anymore. Especially since many of the chapters in the last quarter of the book were barely more than a few pages long.

I have a lot of thoughts on this book and what I think is a lot of missed potential and some good concepts but poor execution. But in general, I think it would be most concise to just break it down into what I think Bardugo did well and what I think she didn’t do well.

What Was Done Well?

It’s refreshing to have a YA fantasy series centered around a city and set in a Renaissance-esque time period as opposed to a medieval one. That said, more could have been done in terms of worldbuilding (like, a lot more), but I liked what I saw.

Ketterdam has a lot of personality as a setting and Bardugo clearly has a very vivid image of it in her head. For that reason I wish most of the book had taken place there, as opposed to in Fjerda, which is… much more thinly sketched and doesn’t really feel like a real place with real people, but a general evil fantasy kingdom with some Nordic and Germanic inspirations. The icy place, icy people trope got played out very quickly.

The concept of the grisha and the magic system is pretty well explained in the book. I had next to no knowledge of it since it’s been years since I tried to read the Grisha Trilogy, but Bardugo does a good job of quickly breaking it down to the reader in easy to understand terms, and to repeatedly bring it back up in ways that don’t feel forced so there’s no confusion between say, a Fabrikator and a Squaller.

Kaz and Inej both have fairly well written backstories. Inej’s was done more sensitively than I expected, given the context, and I think it’s clear Bardugo was trying to be mindful of the pitfalls of writing about sexual abuse and exploitation. 

It’s not perfectly written and I’m not sure it was necessary for both Inej and Nina to wind up in brothels, but I see what she was trying to do and I think she had good intentions. Kaz’s backstory stands out as being genuinely more interesting and compelling than most of the novel’s actual plot set in the present.

Action scenes. Action scenes are notoriously hard to write and I do think Bardugo does a decent job with them. Are they super realistic? No. Are they entertaining and fast paced without being too confusing or dry? Yes. She clearly enjoys the shoot-out, heist stuff and I wish she’d given herself the opportunity to actually focus more on it rather than heaps of exposition and long travel sequences.

What Was Not Done Well?

This book suffers from being the Kaz Brekker show. Kaz is given the most development and page time. Unfortunately, his present self is not that nuanced of a character or that compelling. This makes it even more frustrating when the other POV characters suffer for it.

Jesper especially was treated heinously by this book. We get next to no backstory on him and the reveal that he is a grisha is almost an offhanded moment. He’s essentially a walking camera for most of his chapters, with no introspection or reflection, just there to report events. Inej also has this problem, though this improves slightly over the course of the book.

All of the characters needed way more development and time put into making them seem like actual people and not quippy cardboard cut-outs. We could have spent far less time trying to hammer home how impossibly cool and edgy Kaz is.

The romances. There was next to no chemistry between Kaz and Inej as characters and thus all their romantically tinged moments came across as forced and awkward. I never got a sense for why Inej would be attracted to Kaz or vice versa. In theory, a slowburn allies to friends to lovers romance between them could have been very poignant and well done. In practice, it just didn’t translate well into Bardugo’s writing.

Matthias and Nina *did* have a lot of chemistry, but their characters wound up being unfortunately hamfisted and mangled by their own romance. Bardugo wants to paint the Grisha as both a persecuted minority and terrifying, valid threats who people are right to fear. The allusions to real world atrocities such as the witch trials and the weird Nazi imagery circulating around the Fjerdan nation does not help matters.

While I thought Matthias and Nina had some good, tense interactions, the reveal of their backstory made it lose steam because it involved them acting in seemingly ridiculously trusting and absurd ways. I was not enthused by the attempts to gloss over Matthias’ happy participation in war crimes by going ‘well, Grisha killed his family!’ and ‘Nina lied and got him thrown in prison!’.

It seemed like Bardugo was trying to portray Nina and Matthias being equally morally grey and culpable, when that’s obviously not the case. While Matthias could have been a very compelling and dark character who Nina must struggle to reconcile her feelings for, that just wasn’t the case, and their core ideological conflict ended up being brushed aside with Matthias deciding that Nina is ‘one of the good ones’.

The pacing is wack in this book. I understand Bardugo wanted to keep a very fast pace but the amount of chapters that were barely more than a page was more jarring and irritating than exciting. Many of them could have been combined into the same POV, especially since the POVs themselves were so poorly distinguished from one another.

Final thoughts: I didn’t hate this book. I found some moments frustrating or poorly written and I was very annoyed with the unequal balance of how the characters were treated. But I never wanted to rage quit reading it. On the other hand, while there were a few good scenes, I was never very invested in what happened or in the characters either. 

So over all, I would rate it about a 5.5 out of 10, or something like a C or C-, I suppose. I don’t have much interest in the sequel, despite the obvious cliffhanger it ends on.

[voldiebuns]

Horror Movie a Day 2020

The past couple of years I’ve done a challenge of trying to watch a horror movie a day through the month of October. Last year didn’t go well since I was so busy travelling, so I’m hoping for better this time around!

Under the cut you'll find my list of watched movies, plus rating and some thoughts about them. I’ll also be posting every day at my film twitter. Lemme know if you have any suggestions for what I should watch this month!

Hereditary (2018) | ★★★☆☆ This movie was... not at all what I was expecting from trailers and such. The devil worshiping angle was definitely a surprise, which I didn't entirely mind, but the first and second halves of the movie felt very disjointed from one another because of it. There were some good moments, but all in all, not entirely sure I liked the movie.

Parasite (2019) | ★★★★☆ More a thriller than horror, but I make the rules! I enjoyed this one a lot for the sense of tension it achieves even when not a whole lot of “action” was going on until close to the end. And of course how well it depicts class differences and how deeply affecting poverty is. Very good.

Attack of the Giant Leeches (1959) | ★★☆☆☆ Granted, this is over 60 years old now, but it’s still very bad. And not even in a particularly fun way. It’s honestly pretty boring and not scary at all... But at least it was short!

Piranha (1972) | ★☆☆☆☆ So 70s it hurts lol And also so boring it hurts. I spent most of the movie wondering when something was actually going to happen. But the real thing I wonder now is why this was in my sharks, piranhas, and monsters movie pack because there’s approximately two seconds of actual piranhas in this and they’re not even really attacking anyone?? I think they may have included the wrong Piranha because the picture on the cover is... not this movie lol

Them! (1954) | ★★☆☆☆ I actually thought it seemed pretty well made for the time, but it was definitely very slow. Interesting as a reflection of US nuclear fears, which I don’t think gets seen as much in movies, though!

Mega Shark vs. Giant Octopus (2009) | ★★☆☆☆ This is... so bad. I’m pretty sure their budget had to be like $5 and half a gig of stock footage, but even aside from the godawful CGI, the cinematography is almost unbelievably awful and the acting is often cringeworthy. It also wasn’t particularly fun? But the romance was actually kind of cute.

Mega Piranha (2010) | ★☆☆☆☆ I honestly can’t even count the ways this was a terrible movie lol And still, not even in a particularly fun way! More cringe than cheese, which was really just disappointing.

Beneath Loch Ness (2001) | ★★★☆☆ This was actually really not bad. The graphics were incredibly 2001, but it came off as very heartfelt and the characters and their relationships felt real in a way they tend not to in these kinds of movies. I enjoyed it!

30,000 Leagues Under the Sea (2007) | ★★☆☆☆ Not really a horror movie, but in a pack with my other sea creature horror movies so it'll do. Production value was terrible and the plot was sketchy, but it had some interesting bits. Overall a pretty hearty meh for this one.

Tremors (1990) | ★★★★☆ First rewatch of the year! It's been years, though, and I needed a refresher before watching the rest. This movie is basically the floor is lava with killer worms and I love it lol A really fun movie!

Tremors II: Aftershocks (1996) | ★★★☆☆ Earl without Val was not quite so much fun, but they did some cool things with the graboids. Plus many more explosions! Biggest complaint is the puppets and CGI didn't always mesh well.

Tremors 3: Back to Perfection (2001) | ★★★☆☆ Wish they'd stop ruining things with worse and worse CGI lol This one got a bit goofy even compared to the others, but it was overall still fun!

Tremors 4: The Legend Begins (2004) | ★★★★☆ This one was really fun! I loved that they went back to the beginning of the town, especially since it was easy to see how it became Perfection in the end. I think it's the best one, tied with the original.

Tremors 5: Bloodlines (2015) | ★★★☆☆ The cinematography on this one was sometimes very weird. And the Jurassic Park homages went a bit past "homage" at point imo. But still a pretty fun watch.

Poltergeist (1982) | ★★★★☆ I think I'd seen this before, but I really couldn't remember. Either way, it holds up pretty well! Very engaging and creepy weird, with some good gross moments too.

Sleepy Hollow (1999) | ★★★★☆ Very enjoyable! Tim Burton's style meshed very well with the story, and of course the cast was full of wonderful actors. Unfortunate that Depp stars in it, but what can you do?

Underworld (2003) | ★★★★☆ Not horror exactly, but definitely adjacent enough. Great aesthetic and very enjoyable (re)watch! Also I super appreciated the soundtrack lol

Lake Placid (1999) | ★★★★☆ After I started watching, I realize I think I've seen this before. Still enjoyed it! The characters are definitely the draw more than the croc, though. Would have liked to see a bit more of it

Ghost Town (2009) | ★★☆☆☆ Holy bad acting and shaky cam Batman! Terrible movie with the barest hint of an interesting one beneath, but I think my biggest complaint is there was a Wiccan ritual being done... in the 1800s lol

The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane (1976) | ★★★☆☆ There were really no horror elements in this to speak of, which I found a bit disappointing, and I also didn't feel like it had a very satisfactory ending. But I did enjoy the movie for the most part. I guess I just wanted more.

The Witches (1990) | ★★★☆☆ Mostly just pretty goofy, but a fun watch and it felt very seasonal. Anjelica Huston was, of course, the best part! Though I'm always happy to see Jim Henson puppetry as well.

The Silence of the Lambs (1991) | ★★★★☆ This was uh dated in several ways that make it a bit of an uncomfortable watch. But I really did enjoy it! The Clarice/Hannibal dynamic was even better than I'd been expecting.

Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988) | ★★★☆☆ Wow, that was something else lol Something absolutely ridiculous and incredibly weird, but also very fun! I really enjoyed the main three characters and the music too.

Insidious (2010) | ★★★★☆ Such a good sense of tension in this! A lot of that was thanks to the music tbh, but I do think James Wan just has a really good feel for horror. Also, a very good ending, I'm definitely excited to see 2!

Malevolent (2018) | ★★★☆☆ A fairly enjoyable movie, but it just felt a little lacking and it seemed like the end came up really quickly. To be honest it wasn't quite what I was expecting. I wish there would have been a bit more with the ghosts.

The Conjuring (2013) | ★★★★☆ A rewatch since it's been a few years since I watched it. Very enjoyable movie with good music, great tension, and some actually good jump scares. The Annabelle stuff seems disconnected to the rest, though, I wish that had been more tied in.

Annabelle (2014) | ★★★☆☆ This movie dragged quite a bit and I feel like things could have been compressed quite a bit and it would have been better. The cult connection also could have been explored a lot more imo, because it felt a bit slapped

The Last House on the Left (2009) | ★★☆☆☆ Way too much sexualized violence for my tastes tbh, but I liked the concept and the cast was very good. I think I'll try the original sometime and see how it compares.

The Amityville Horror (2005) | ★★★☆☆ I feel like I may have seen this before? Not really worth the rewatch lol Like this movie is fine I guess, it just felt a bit empty and was overall unsatisfying to me.

The Crazies (2010) | ★★★★★ I was a little iffy going into this bc I thought it might be zombie-esque, and it was, but I really enjoyed it! I liked what they did with the government satellite especially.

Midsommar (2019) | ★★★★★ I was expecting this to be good since I’d heard good things about it, and it so was! The sense of strangeness and building tension was excellent. And it was just such a beautiful movie tbh.

[im-gettingby]

30 Days of Carry On

posted (and written by?) @captain-aralias

(I’m doing most of these at once because I said so. it’s long so under the cut)

1. Favourite major character

I literally thought — Simon no Baz no Penny no, Agatha!

I guess I will pick Simon, since I relate to him the most — or at least, my connection to him led me into the fandom.

2. Favourite minor character

I think we all know this one 🐑🐑🐑

I have written many a treatise on Lamb Rights. I’ll spare everyone now

3. Character you relate to the most

Oops— I already answered this, kinda. I relate to them in different ways: I relate a lot to WS Simon because he has abandonment issues and “kid who was told he was extraordinary and then grew up to be ordinary” issues. We also both have a “fix all the things for everyone” complex, too.

Baz — It took me a while to get into Baz’s head, but I would say, I relate to him because of his intense emotional world and tendency to see the world through an intensely romantic/tragic lens. But also he’s a Pisces. and I’d never do that like a Pisces does. (Sorry, not sorry.)

4. Which character would you like to go to lunch with?

SHEPARD obviously. I don’t feel the need to elaborate.

5. Favourite non-Snowbaz ship

Ooh! Probably Lamb/Baz or Simon/Shep or just...literally anything. Like, I will read anything as long as it’s well written. The weirder the better. (Within...legal and moral limits.) in my other fandoms I’ve been a big multishipper and there’s not a lot of options for that in CO - which is fine - but wholeheartedly support rarepairs :D

6. Favourite non-romantic OTP

So, obviously Simon/Penny and Baz/Penny are great ones, but I think the nearest & dearest to my heart is Simon/Agatha. The kind of siblings/unwillingly dating/weird exes dynamic and the way they both shaped each other’s lives is just so interesting. And while Simon & Penny are closer, Agatha and Simon represent their aspirational selves to one another. And the way that they were both tied to one another along with their gender roles/places in society and both broke away at the same time is just...mwah

7. Favourite Baz outfit

I honestly dress kinda like Baz. Anything involving a printed silk shirt or a floral brocade suit, so like, all of them? I love WS Baz, his fashion sense is so thoughtful yet fun. He’s so expressive with it — in the sense of both being guarded, being sexy, and playing with masculinity/femininity.

8. How do you feel about Wayward Son?

In case it wasn’t obvious, I absolutely love it. I mean, from a writing/narrative standpoint, I don’t think it’s the most elegant or engaging book ever written, but it’s just so raw and fresh. I don’t see many examples of an author trying to do what Rainbow did, which is build a complex emotional AND plot-driven story with so many characters and so much lore. I’m very excited for AWTWB.

9. Favourite scene from Carry On, besides Chapter 61

I like what the book does/sets up overall. Honestly probably the first scene, where Simon walks to the bus stop & takes the train and just thinks about his life and makes lists -- I love Simon. I know Rainbow said she thinks that bit is boring, but it honestly says so much about his character in a short time. (and he’s an extremely complex character!) Also, Baz’s dramatic entrance. Also, the chapter where Baz says “and I’m hopelessly in love with him” because it’s just so dramatic, and it comes out of nowhere

10. Favourite scene from Wayward Son, besides Chapter 41

Baz and Lamb’s journey across the Strip - vampire lore, jealous Simon, Baz getting to be his own character— it’s beautiful.

11. Remind us about something in canon readers might have forgotten about

Ahahaha um. Simon says he thinks Baz’s cousin Marcus is fit. That’s pretty funny.

12. What are your hopes and fears for Any Way the Wind Blows?

I don’t have any hopes because I don’t want to be disappointed - and that’s not a cynical thing, I just want to go into it with an open mind. (I’ll take a break from fandom and reread the books beforehand so I’m (more of) a blank slate) I guess just...interesting emotional journeys, whatever that ends up being. There’s a lot that Rainbow has to do in the book and I don’t think any one person could get through all of it -- that’s why we have fanfiction.

Fears? I don’t know. I think just...the series ending. Even though I’ve been in fandom for less than a year I just really love this fandom & the thought of that kind of eroding away is sad. But also I don’t think that will happen immediately, and change is a part of life. I’ve never related as much to Cath as I do now :’)

13. An unpopular/cracky opinion you hold

unpopular: Lamb is the best character; I don’t want Simon to get his magic back; both Simon and Baz should have other romantic options.

14. Something from your head fanon

Hmmmmmmm well. Just mean things about Baz really. Like that he’s weird looking, not that great at football, and actually has kind of garish fashion sense. (which is a self-roast as well - see above.) I just feel like Simon/fandom put him on a pedestal, and Simon’s an unreliable narrator re: Baz anyway. So I like the idea that Baz is this average looking kinda strange nerdy guy who is everything Simon has ever wanted in life.

And before you tell me that Baz was hot at Watford and Agatha was into him, have you ever been to a tiny boarding school? Standards get weird 😂😂😂 and Terry being into him — come on. The guy’s a violent pervert.

also - back to Watford being a tiny school. Baz doesn’t have much competition to be the star of the football team. (also, does anyone except Simon even think that he is?)

16. Favourite location other than Watford

Vegas!

17, Favourite location in Watford

I’m pretty bad at Watford lore/geography bc again, I’m way more into WS. Probably the floor in the Cloisters where everything happens the same way, just a day later. There’s a fic there, but I can’t wrap my head around all the time travel implications enough to write it.

18. What would be your favourite subject at Watford?

Any potions-esque subject because I loved chemistry lab. Latin because I loved Latin in school. Uhhhh I don’t like history class, so not that — maybe a literature course focused on the derivation of spells.

19. What would your magical implement be?

Ooh! This is a good one. I’d like to think it would be a weird body piercing. Or a belt a la Gareth. Maybe some kind of traditional south Asian jewelry, like a nose chain or mang-tikka or something. maybe a hat. like, imagine your magical instrument being a fedora and you just have to...wear a fedora all the time.

21. Favourite canon spell

Hm. Kiss it better? Candle in the wind?I should try to think of a non-horny one. honestly they’re all so cool and clever - I love the magic system in CO/WS.

22. What would your eighth year spell at Watford be or do?

Maybe something from a poem I love. That would probably be pretty but not very functional. Or a healing spell.

23. Who would you want as your roommate?

Agatha is uptight, Penny is passive aggressive, Simon is a slob, Baz is both uptight and passive aggressive.

Definitely Shepard.

24. Favourite item of merchandise, official or unofficial

My @subparselkie sticker

25. Favourite book cover design

WS. Oh, another unpopular opinion - I don’t like the kevin wada cover of carry on. their faces look so weird and the colors don’t work for me. I own the version with the blue and yellow cover art instead

26. Do you want a movie? If yes - any fan casts for the movie?

Probably wouldn’t want a movie! Because I am way too possessive of these books/this version of the story. And I am historically extremely disappointed by adaptations — I get upset with the smallest of changes 😂

27. If they made a movie, what scenes do you think they’d cut that you’d be furious were missing?

See above. A LOT haha

28. If you could ask Rainbow Rowell one question, what would it be? (If you have already, you can share if you like)

What is Lamb’s full name????? Is it actually Lamb Lambert Lamborghini the third???

What is Rainbow’s relationship with sheep and goats. Why are there so many references to them

29. Have you read any of Rainbow’s other books?

Only Fangirl

30. How did you get into Carry On and/or Carry On fandom?

I read fangirl & the pages at the end mentioned carry on, so I read that, and enjoyed it but I wasn’t obsessed. Then I read WS spring 2020, reread it a bunch of times, reread CO, freaked out about the cliffhanger/cool vampire stuff/unresolved sexual tension, had pandemic cabin fever, got on AO3, and the rest is history.

As @annabellelux knows, I wrote my first (published) fanfic after reading her amazing fic Drop The Game. and the first fanfic I read was @captain-aralias’ Greener Grass. I was so obsessed that about a month later, I searched through the AO3 tags for it, because I couldn’t remember the title or author but kept thinking about it.

[orettile]

ok my avatar stardust crusaders au. i had to draw at least some basic stuff for it because its been living in my head for like a month now! I imagine a mashup of jojo and atla canon of sorts 

100 years ago dio took over and became the firelord. Then the plot vaguely follows the schemat of phantom blood: jonathan and dio fight, jonathan dies, dio somehow manages to get himself frozen, not unlike aang, and is presumed dead for 100 years . Plot begins the moment dio comes back and takes back his previous position as a firelord and starts the war anew.

rest of character headcanons/descriptions under the cut

jotaro

 avatar, oryginally earthbender.

 his whole life he has been living in a quiet town somewhere in an earth kingdom, before he discovered that somehow he is able to bend other elements and therefore he’s the avatar. It happened around the time dio became the ruler of the fire nation again. Then he gets dragged by joseph to learn all the bending arts and defeat dio

i imagined him as an earthbender both because of his fighting style and personality - he is straightforward, strong, stubborn and knows when to strike

joseph

he’s a firebender, i imagine he’s been living somewhere in an earth kingdom though. During the war he usually travel in earth kingdom clothing or at least something neutral. Wants to kill dio to avenge his grandpa jonathan and end the war once and for all

along the way he teaches jotaro firebending as his first foreign element. jotaro is not very keen on lessons with his grandpa but knows he’s lucky to learn an enemy’s weappon from someone he can at least trust

avdol

yeah i know he’s basically a firebender in canon already and i like firebender!avdol, but i think he fits airbending just as well. He’s a spiritual, fun person and also i think he would look great in the tattoos

in this au i guess that airbenders haven’t been completely wiped out because dio disappeared before he was able to go thorough with the plan

he teaches jotaro airbending and jotaro finds it a bit hard since air and earth are opposite elements, but avdol is a great teacher so its not bad

polnareff

ok so he is a non-bender sent by dio, the rest pretty much the same as canon (i didn’t really think through the fleshbud thing but i think it can still be present here)

i had a problem to translate his frenchness into atla universe and still have no idea what nation he fits best but ultimately i’ve decided that he’s just from some weird island on earth kingdom territory that is known for how its citizens speak weird.

he fights with a sword he made himself

kakyoin

waterbender who was taken from his village during one of the fire nation raids. He learned bloodbending while he has been kept captive by fire nation and tried to escape using it, but got caught. After some time the news of his ability got passed to dio, who thought he could certainly use a bloodbending assasin

got brainwashed and sent to kill the avatar, but his zuko-esque behaviour ends the moment his fleshbud is out. 

jotaro learns waterbending from him and this element is something that he quickly warms up to. he finds the calming (ocean man....)

they also have mud fights :)

the group needs to get healed after pretty much every enemy encounter and he as a waterbender is at first the only one with the ability to heal. hes  not very good at it, and he finds polnareff’s ability to get injured all the time annoying, but he tries his best. he tries to pass some of his knowledge of healing to jotaro

i drew him with the brown hair like in ova 

iggy

iggy is still a dog. thats thats on that

this sure got a bit longer than i expected

i am not usually eager enough to come up with elaborate au descriptions but there were some things i just wanted to draw and then it went overboard