#but then comes fanfiction and TTRPGs

[grandapplewit]

As we’ve moved father into the post-modern era (about 1970 onwards), which is defined by the increased social emphasis on individualism, communal storytelling has become something… shunned. Past methods of communal storytelling (theatre, music, folktales) have been increasingly privatized since 1970. Because of this, we’ve seen the emergence of fanfiction (specifically slash fiction started by Star Trek fans in the 1970s) and TTRPGs (specifically Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder in the late 20th Century), which are both ostracized by the mainstream culture, but are also the only two sources of communal storytelling in the 21st century. TTRPGs are finding more footing in mainstream culture, but because they’ve found footing are becoming increasingly commodified. In this essay, I

[magicalgirlartist]

Happy 810nicle day I have nothing to show for myself except this fluff oneshot I wrote in 2 days enjoy some cute Matoro/Kopeke

[lunariasilver]

I just finished the magnus archives like, 2 days ago and now I'm wondering if I should just- start over again from season 1.

Because

Uh

I need it

[furrylibrarian]

Alright I’ve had enough of all this “posting about things and hoping people interact,” I’m just going to say it out loud.

I want to talk to people and make friends, and I want to be part of a community. I like furry stuff and TF. I play a bunch of video games, mostly (but not limited to) RPGs, indies, and Nintendo games. I like TTRPGs, mainly D&D 5e but I’m trying to expand my horizons. I sketch occasionally, and I used to write fanfiction and TF fics and I’ve been trying to get back into that. I’m an asexual, neurodivergent, closeted transgender woman, and terrified about coming out publicly and transitioning.

I didn’t use any social media regularly except YouTube until last year, and I didn’t start posting until this year. I don’t know what I’m doing or how I should be doing it, but I can see people enjoying things together and I want to be part of that.

I’m just going to cram the tags full of stuff I like and hope this reaches some kind of audience.

[jormofyore]

Codes of Honour and How They Are BS

Screw it, I’m going to talk about codes of honour in Pathfinder and D&D, and the intrinsic problem with them all.

            For those who are curious as my background, I’m an English major who has taken some medieval studies classes, and I loved them all. I often get into arguments with a “certain friend” who is often, what feels like, frequently up in arms about alignment and codes of honour. He’s particularly against how Paizo got rid of alignment. This time I’ll be talking about how we look at codes of honour in some of our favourite TTRPG’s and how they are all bullshit.

            See, the initial problem with Paladin’s and other classes with codes, is that we have this idea of what chivalry constitutes. But people are mostly wrong about the when of them. The code of chivalry, as it’s often applied in classic Western TTRPGs, goes back to around the 12th and 13th centuries Europe. That part isn’t controversial. The problem is that the only real written code we properly know of dates to 1884 from a French historian named Leon Gautier who read too many medieval romance novels and epics. This is kind of like how the code of Bushido is sort of 11th century, but also 19th century kind of recent. Point being, these codes we have are far, far more romanticized than what they originally were, and what we see them as now is likely not what they were when originally formulated. It’s not just a case of history being written by the victors in the case of Central and South American histories (I can’t/won’t speak of African codes of honour because that’s a huge weakness in my education.) In fact, we have no written records of the actual Code’s of Chivalry and its predecessors, we only have Gautier’s fanfiction. Arguably, these codes date somewhere into Ancient Rome, but that’s a little fuzzier and based on Roman storytelling as opposed to non-romanticized record keeping.

            This leads into the second problem. Whose code of honour are we using in TTRPG-land? These European codes of honour are abstract and what we know of are only from, again, poems and epics and modern revisionisms. Cultures from all over the world had codes of honour, and I guess, sure, you can default to European codes of honour for your western-themed game, but that means you’ve fallen into the idea of thinking Europe had one code of honour. Guess you fell for my trap card. Here’s the thing, there are, at the very least in Europe, 5 main codes of chivalry in Europe. I stress “at least.” Loosely, there are the ones from what we know now as the Germanic Tribes, the Frankish Tribes, the British and Welsh, the Italians, and the Saracens. We know of 3 official ones in some random dude’s poem Ordene de chevalerie, and even then, it’s mostly romanticized ideals from the crusades, which, last I checked, wasn’t where a lot of honour was happening. “So Jorm,” you argue, “Then we’ll use the British one because we all speak English in America, right?” Oh yeah, did you know the British one, from what we can gather, either condoned or endorsed slavery, whereas the other European codes explicitly did not? Doesn’t sound much like what a Paladin does, does it? Last I checked everything we come across in TTRPG’s is that Paladins hate tyrants and slavery, so have fun with this argument in the future.

            So, this is where I like Paizo’s approach with trying to distance themselves from Christianity and it’s influences in our game worlds. They simply got rid of alignment and the silly line “Act with honour” by instead detailing what rules every deity has (Edicts and Anathema, if you’re curious), and a list for what each kind of Champion stands for. Bang. Done. It’s quite a simple and elegant solution to get past these arguments while also getting rid of that abstract code of honour BS. Sure it’s “More rules”, but honestly, it reduces the number of arguments and lets you get into the meat of gaming.

            Anywho, while I would like to continue my rant on this topic, it’s after 3AM and I’ve got a game of Civilization 6 to finish before I sleep.

Jorm of Yore out

[a-dragons-journal]

Singlet+

I've been meaning to write this one for a while, so let's see how this goes.

~1k words; essay on the experience of one person who sits right on the funny little edge between "normal roleplay experience" and "actual plurality".

So, let's start with this: I am not plural. But. I do seem to live in a weird space juuuuust on the edge of plurality (and no, I do not mean that I'm a median or blurry system - I mean on the edge of that).

For one thing, I'm a daemian - that is, I practice daemonism; that is, I have personified and given faux autonomy (fauxtonomy, if you will) to my "internal narrator" of sorts and he now lives in my brain with me as a thoughtform, a brain companion, in the shape of an animal. Strictly speaking, that does qualify us for plurality, but we personally don't view our daemonism through that framework and consider ourselves a singlet (as hilarious as the plural grammar makes that sentence, I know). Many daemons don't consider themselves plural; this isn't particularly unusual - in muir case, Locke is a part of me before he is anything else, and while yes there are forms of plurality that look like that, for us personally it makes more sense to view him as "part of me, therefore, still one person".

For another, I had... basically plural experiences when I was younger. I don't want to talk about the details publicly, but suffice to say that for many years I had what I would now call headmates, and I suspect that if I had been exposed to plural spaces during that time period, they may well have stuck around permanently, instead of "fading out" and eventually disappearing as is what actually happened. To this day I don't know how "real" or "imaginary" they were, and I doubt I ever will - they were certainly real to me at the time, but I have also always been very good at suspension of disbelief. Trying to analyze it in any great level of detail is made basically impossible by my piss-poor episodic memory rendering the memories of that time so fuzzy that I can't rely on them for details.

For another, my experiences with OCs are often... soulbond-adjacent? Recently in particular I've had a lot of funny experiences with an OC of mine, a character in a Vampire: The Masquerade campaign I'm a part of (Viridian Caldwell, for my own future self's reference), which led me to do some research on soulbonding because of how fictive-adjacent the experience of her is.

And yet. The answer is a definite no. I get very strong impressions and echoes from her; she "gives" me facts about her and her life that simply Are and that I feel as strongly about being true and unchangeable as I do about my own noemata; she's almost a separate person living in my brain sometimes; I somehow come up with near-prophetic knowledge about her world (as confirmed by my Storyteller, who happens to be part of a system alongside a number of fictives from the world in question, including several who know Viridian personally) with zero explanation on a semi-regular basis.

And yet. The answer is no. Because while I seem to have all the effects a soulbond proper would produce on my end - she is not aware of me, not really. She is not conscious of my world and my life. When I really quiet my own brain and reach out to call out and see if someone's there, there's only silence. It's as though I have a one-way soulbond somehow - which, of course, puts me in the fun gray space between "soulbond" and "normal roleplay/writing experience".

And she's not a unique instance of this. This just happens to me with OCs, although it's been a bit more dramatic with her because of the presence of fictives from her world to converse with (and, realistically, because of the real-time roleplay aspect that a TTRPG has that a video game or the writing of a fanfiction doesn't).

It's as though my brain has the capacity for plurality, but it just... doesn't manifest fully.

And, truth be told, I kind of prefer it this way. I like being a singlet; I would kind of hate having to share headspace with other people. Especially since, if my childhood pseudo-plurality experiences are anything to go by, we would not have good separation of thoughts and memories and true privacy would be very difficult if not impossible. Plus, because of that, I would... probably never get over the doubt of Is It Real Or Not, and I don't need that stress in my life. (For this reason, while I'm 99.9% sure that if I intentionally tried to bring her over as a fictive, it would work, I will not be testing the theory just out of curiosity.)

I wonder if I didn't train myself out of the ability to be Plural Proper, to be honest. Not intentionally, but - I may have mentioned that my power of suspension of disbelief is very strong, and as a child this came with me being extremely easy to manipulate because it was very easy for me to fall into believing things that I wanted to believe. (Again, I don't really want to talk about the details, but suffice to say I had a pretty bad case of Protagonist Syndrome, as it were, for a while.) I had to learn to combat that natural tendency of my brain for my own protection (especially as someone active in witchcraft spaces) - and I wonder if it didn't come with the side effect of immunizing me to developing true plurality (at least without actively trying) by shutting down any attempt by my brain to form a true headmate in the process.

I don't know. I might never. All I know is that while I am, after careful consideration, definitely a singlet, I do seem to live right on the edge of plurality, and it comes with some weird experiences. (And I would like an explanation for why I keep spitting out nigh-prophetic knowledge of this campaign's world; if I find out Viridian is a fictotype of mine or something I'm going to flip my fucking lid.) I've started half-jokingly calling myself "singlet+", half as a joke on cis+ (ie, someone who's questioned their gender and come to the conclusion that they are indeed cis but has a better understanding of their experience of cisness for it) and half as an "unless" "unlesss...?" acknowledgement of the weird border area some of my experiences sit in. It's... not really a serious label, but also isn't entirely a joke.

So... yeah. Singlet+, I guess. Another victim of the "if you only have two words for fear in your language, one for mild test jitters and one for life-threatening terror, you're going to have a lot of trouble describing a lot of normal human experiences" problem of how our language around plurality often works.

[salubriwrites-blog]

A Weird Dive into my favorite ships

This started as an answer to an anonymous question but... it grew a little bit. I have no forward except to please drink water today! Love you!!!!

I'm actually pretty new still to writing fanfiction. I've been an avid writer since I was 10 and was even working on getting my own book published. From there I springboarded into TTRPG design where I wrote world building, lore, and characters for IPs like Call of Cthulhu and Vampire: The Masquerade. I only really just got into writing *fan fiction* in the last 2 years.

My first fanfic/ship was actually pretty silly. I was on the Encanto hype train when that movie first came out (can you believe its been 3 years???) and I loved, loved, loved Bruno Madrigal. He was the traumatized, distraught uncle living in the walls of Casita trying to fix the internal damage that came from Abuela's treatment of La Familia. His intentions were pure, and he obviously had gone through a lot to drive him to the point where we see him in the story. This was the first branch I would hit falling down the "I can fix them" tree.

The story is cute and has a happy ending, but as we all know in the real world, unlearning toxic behavior and overcoming life long trauma takes time. So I wrote a BrunoxOC story about it. I ended up orphaning it because I veered the story off in a direction I didn't like because the group I was part of were heavily influencing my creative choices. Boo, hiss I know, but I was still pretty new within the fanfiction genre so I buckled.

Moving on!

My second fiction that I put a lot more love into - sorta I may go back and rewrite parts of it now - was my YorickxOC fiction.

Yorick was my first ever League of Legends love. Fucking love that haunted beef cake. The Ruined Event did him dirty, the Ruined King Game did him dirty, and the book probably did him dirty too (I haven't read it). My Gravekeeper needs ALL THE LOVE because he is absolutely going through it in sheer solitude (though the Illaoi story where he goes to help destroy Viego's amulet gave me hope that now he gets visitors sometime on the island).

Remember Yorick Mori: Before the Ruination This was my first completed and quite hefty fiction weighing in at 153k words: it followed his story where he starts out on a lonely little fishing island called Portia (it doesn't have a name in Lore). He ends up on a slightly busier island that is situated off the coast of Helia (Blessed Isles capitol) and begins his journey to understand why he can communicate with the Dead. He meets a cast of charming monks that want to both see him thrive and maintain status quo. He even meets the owner of the bakery that barters with the Order of Dusk - whom he naturally falls in love with immediately. Rosalie McKahn is not a self insert. I don't make self inserts when I write OCs because I hold myself to a weird standard - also I don't see myself being compatible with most of these characters. Would I still like them to do unspeakable things to me? Oh shit yes. But from a story standpoint, I don't do self inserts. So Rosalie was not one of those. The story follows a young Yorick through his years of servitude to the Order of Dusk, uncovering dark secrets, finding confidence to become the man that he will need to be when the Ruination comes. Rosalie was not the only person who helped to build Yorick up in this story, but their love is what gives him the strength to keep fighting when the rest of it was bleak. This love eventually passes on to the Maiden of the Mist in the epilogue I have yet to write ^^;.

Then we got into the Heartsteel arc, and this was where I really found my love for the "I can fix them" dynamics. I have no shame in saying that I wrote all of "Making of Paranoia: Off Script" in a week's time while the music video played on a loop on my second monitor. I'm just not. That was where the neurons wanted me to go, and off I fucking went. I knew I liked Aphelios when he first debuted in League, but I was scared of him because he's an ADC with 5 guns. Skill Expression was not something I was confident enough in to pursue that character. But he was hot! He ha a backstory that excited me and had a lot of potential. I really wanted to explore Aphelios' dynamic with his sister and the Lunari elders - pigeon holing him into being a weapon of faith only.

I also knew I liked Yone, but was fearful of him for similar reasons. In the end I just nutted up, typed /mute all in game chat, and hit my head against the wall until I got M7 on Yone. His story is by far my favorite of all the League characters (rivaling Yorick's, of course). A man who spent his whole, short life trying to save someone who he thought was in danger of falling off the path of virtue? Only to come back and KEEP DOING IT but with extra steps??? WAITER ANOTHER PLEASE.

But I didn't really anticipate putting these two characters together within the canon sense. I didn't see a way that they could meet (though one of my friends has since written a beautiful fiction where it shows how they do meet, and how they do connect! https://archiveofourown.org/works/52384363/chapters/132517315 )

BUT THEN. BUT THEEEEN.

I was watching Paranoia for the 69th time that day and I saw THIS VERY SPECIFIC CLIP where the only person who looked the most remote bit of concern for Aphelios' well being was YONE. Boom, Off Script was born.

Off Script was definitely the first FanFiction where I really jumped into my current dynamic. It follows after the filming of that day, cut short after Aphelios fell into a water tank with one of the drones. Yone is going to check on him, and Aphelios is lamenting that no one else has come to see if he's alright. Not even his boyfriend, Sett.

This infuriates Yone because that's just not good boyfriend behavior, and he promises Aphelios that - should he be given the chance - Yone would treat him 10x better than Sett has, is, or ever will.

Also who wouldn't want to be treated like a princess by this specimen? Let's not fool ourselves. Anyway - Paranoia gave me a chance to explore this dynamic in a new way. Yone had issues of his own - I had to find a way to implement his Arzakana nature into a modern AU so I opted for "intrusive thoughts" that encouraged him to do some generally not nice things. In Yone's backstory he was a toxic person, used people up, whored his way through most of his opportunities, and was a bad brother to Yasuo. Yone initially followed Yasuo into the music making industry because he wanted to help his baby brother succeed - and he didn't really know what he wanted to do with his own life. Yone then got it into his head that maybe he and his brother could make music TOGETHER. Yasuo didn't want that because True Damage was doing it's own thing and - for just once in his life - he wanted something that only he had made, not with his older brother. Yone takes his poorly, and being the toxic brother that he is, makes a scene at an industry party and gets booted out. Yasuo cuts him out of his life. On his drunken, staggering tirade through the streets of Valoran City, Yone gets into an accident. He dies. But then suddenly gets resuscitated! I'm not a doctor so I just literally chalk it up to a freak accident that Yone comes back. While Yone believes that it's a second chance. He wakes up in the coroner's office in a cooler, and bangs and screams at the door the whole night until the coroner ME comes in the next morning to fetch the John Doe. Yone doesn't know who he is anymore, but he knows he can't be the asshole now cause that's what got him killed. So he spends time reflecting, soul searching. He knows he still loves making music, and though he gets a desk job and lives this semi-stable life, he still dreams of making music.

Enter Heartsteel.

Aphelios' twin sister is already a multi-platinum artist who runs her own record label - Lunari Studios. Aphelios is on the other side of the story - he's just kind of following Alune around and standing back as she shines. He knows he's talented - he knows a million instruments and helps Alune with her production, but he doesn't think that he could do it all by himself. When he and Sett start dating, it's more of the same. Sett is big and loud, people are drawn to him and his style, and it gives Aphelios someone to latch onto that isn't his sister for once. In Off Script, Aphelios' fate would have been the silent lyricist and musician for the band. He would have told himself that he was happy with standing back.

Except after the events of the music video, Yone won't let him. Yone encourages him to sing, to write bolder lyrics, to voice his opinion. Yone helps Aphelios find confidence, and in return Aphelios lets Yone help him. All Yone really ever wants in any AU is to help, but helpful people can be toxic too. Aphelios allows Yone to do that, but with his own confidence can help draw boundaries on when Yone is being too supportive, or investing too much of his own energy. In the Heartsteel AU I wrote, they are happy together ^^

I finished Off Script around the time of Worlds 2023. Which was when they announced my Babygirl!

And boy what a journey THIS CHARACTER HAS BEEN.

Hwei has it all. The trauma, the growth, the setbacks, the hips, the style, the potential. Surprisingly though - I am not a huge fan of the JhinHwei ship. Maybe cause I see too much of myself and who I used to be in its dynamic. I've been both of those characters in my past relationships, but this isn't the place for that kind of deep dive.

Hwei is neat because he introduced a new idea to my ship dynamic. He's not broken, just lost. He's looking for himself and every person he meets is just a stepping stone on his journey to peace of mind.

I wouldn't call Hwei self assured, because he doesn't know who he wants or what he wants to be, but he knows he has all the tools to reach that end. I like shipping him with multiple characters with Hwei in different stages of his self-realization because he is an inspiring character. He can terrify and and awe in the same breath, depending on which version of him we're visiting.

For this last one we're departing League completely.

I got into HSR after Genshin got a little stale for me. Also I got a fancy new phone that I could actually play Hoyo games on, and HSR is the best for mobile play.

I got into HSR in the middle of the Penacony story, but my friends warned me that I'd love Aventurine when I met him. I spoiled myself by looking at pictures of him and OOH BABY

You can fit so much trauma in this baby.

Aventurine is another fun one because yes - he has a tragic fucking story and I would single handedly help him repopulate Sigonia if given the opportunity. But once again, Teeeechnically not broken.?? He has ghosts he faces throughout the story, and must address each aspect of himself before crossing the river, but by the time he's come out, I like to think he's at peace with who he had to become in order to survive. From fighting in pits, murdering his former owner, tricking the IPC, I don't think Kakavasha would have done any of that stuff. Aventurine, on the other hand-

It's a common theme when you are in survival mode because of trauma. Is he fully cured? Fuck no, but will he continue to strive to be the kind of person he wished would have saved him when he was a kid? Fuck yes.

Which is why we need to impregnate him.

My friends warned me I'd love Blade. I was determined to not, but then I went through the Jingliu story and learned about the High Cloud Quintet and it was over.

I just think this guy's hot. I know a lot of people ship him with Dan Feng and Jing Yuan (it's pretty hot, ngl), but I kinda like Blade/Kafka or Blade/Stelle. The Kafka angle is not so much romantic as it is a mutual understanding that they are both going down this journey together and it can get lonely sometime. So more convenience than romance.

I'm working on a Blade/Stelle story right now where - Best I Am, Prey You Become. It explores Stelle abandoning the trailblaze to join the Stellaron Hunters, and as part of her initiation Blade if voluntold by Kafka to train her. Their relationship is mentor/student and she is obviously hot for him, but Blade is an immortal, tired old man who doesn't have time for that. Except Elio has other plans, as Blade's script reaches a conclusion - he finds something worth dying for. When it comes to HSR Fanfictions I take a lot more creative liberty because I didn't follow the lore to the letter. Also I love world building so!!!! I also built Sigonia-IV for that story, I just gotta get the neurons to activate x.x

[mmmidnightstoriesss]

PJO Greek Demigod Homebrew

So I did this fun little thing and made a DND Percy Jackson Greek Demigod race expansion!

I love the Percy Jackson universe and everything that came after and decided I had to find a way to incorporate it into my games!

This can also be altered only slightly and perfect for Pathfinder! I include how to do so at the bottom of the guide.

Over the summer, I made a TikTok giving an overview of a quick-build for demigods and included lots of recommendations on subclasses (and trust me I dug for these let me tell you) that fit almost all of the godly parents on this list. You can find that here

Additionally, I know much is changing in the DND world and TTRPG in general right now, so I did include this message in the guide:

This expansion has the unfortunate timing of releasing at the same time as the changed OGL 1.1 announcement in January 2023 but this was already created ahead of time and I wanted to make sure and release it before I returned to uni for another semester. I do not and cannot profit off of this guide as it is essentially fanfiction for the Riordanverse, however, neither does Wizards of the Coast (not that they would unless somehow I made like one million dollars off of this which would not happen). So I hope you will thoroughly enjoy this guide.

This homebrew is quite literally a homebrew, made by a fan for fans. And I truly hope you enjoy it :) And again, as this is a homebrew, feel free to adjust it to fit your game, whether that's something in DND or Pathfinder or even a Star Wars realm or something along those lines. I'm sure you'll enjoy it, whatever is to come.

Go forth, enjoy the homebrew, and get ready for the Percy Jackson TV show and Percy's quests to get letters of recommendation poor Percy like come on he deserves some rest

Enjoy it here! And please share updates with what you and your crew gets up to!

[courtrecord]

On twitter sometime ago you described your writing habits as something similar to my own (slow, tedious, perfectionist, compulsive, agonizing over getting the words perfect instead of editing later, etc) And you also wrote a lot of dope things like Galactic 2E and Venture that are I hope you dont mind me saying, deeply inspirational. So coming from someone who hasnt Gotten There yet I have to ask, how do you get yourself to get up and just write the damn thing already?

omg thank u so much, that means more than i can possibly say. i wish i had a better set of advice but honestly so much of my creative work is vibes and hyperfixation based, and every time i finish something i look back on it like “how the fuck did i do that”, but here are the things that work for me. they are very much based on my own particular adhd and writing hangups so ur mileage will definitely vary.

start small: i didn’t start writing ttrpgs with big projects like venture & g2e. i started with a 200 word game, then some one-pagers, then kept growing from there. @jdragsky has talked a lot about the importance of building the skill of finishing things, and small projects are a really good way of doing that. hell, even g2e only exists bc i started with the smaller project of galactic, then went back to it a year later to build on it again.

share as u go: when i started working on bigger games, and this year as i’ve been working on longer fics, friends to share screenshots of my wip have been invaluable. that way i can get the immediate validation of someone reading my thing and giving feedback without feeling like i need to Publish it yet. biggest shoutout in the world to my friends who tolerate my writing nonsense.

write in chunks: this is kind of the combination of those first two points. bob games are big piles of little lists. i tend to write fic in short, impactful scenes. i have a wip that’s an sbr game, which is a big pile of little advances. that way, i am constantly getting that feeling of accomplishment when i write something. i can agonize over word choice and vibes and editing but then i actually get to a stopping point, where i like that little bit enough to move on to the next one. it seems crazy looking back that i wrote 36 places & 36 traits for g2e, but i didn’t just sit down and knock them all out. i wrote a few, sent them to some friends, then i wrote a few more. u know?

don’t force it: sometimes, the vibe just isn’t there. sometimes, u spend a year doing barely any writing or game design bc there’s a pandemic and ur brain doesn’t work anymore. etc. i’ve thought a lot the past few years about the difference btwn the feeling of wanting to write bc i want to write the thing, and the feeling of wanting to write bc i like the idea of being the person who wrote the thing. when i realize i’m in that second mindset, i go and think about something else. bc no good writing comes from that (at least ime)

find what u like: this is kinda related to the one above, but it’s another thing i’ve been thinking about lately. i spent a lot of time when i was younger assuming that bc i like writing, i had to write a novel, bc that’s what writers do. i would try to follow writing advice made for people who simply aren’t me. “writers must learn to use description sparingly” lol way ahead of u. that kinda thing. realizing that i love writing fanfiction for its transformativity, and i love writing dialogue bc it’s what i’m good at, was a huge revelation. i can just do that. i don’t have to follow the regular writer mold when i can just write really fucking good dialogue-heavy fanfiction. and in that realization, i’ve been able to grow as a writer by gaining the ability to write things down that i’m happy with, and grow from there.

prescription adderall: i told u this list was a mess. this one has kinda been crucial for me. i realized i had adhd in my first year of college in 2017 and started taking adderall for my second year of college in mid-2018. i started churning out creative projects in 2019. coincidence? absolutely not oh my god are u kidding

[miaikon]

From learning a Sci-Fi script to picking up a Con-Lang (or, a very long very nerdy Star Wars rant)

I need to rant at this to the void, and this blog is my go-to for these things. I feel free to do so since no-one comes here anyways.

A bit of background

(or, the part you can skip if you want to get to the nerdy rant now): I've been into Star Wars on and off since my teens. I'm nearly 40, so that's a few decades. I do watch the new series, and became very fond of "The Mandalorian" really fast. In-between seasons, my spouse and I also re-watched most of Clone Wars. In early 2024, we started a Star Wars 5E TTRPG campaign with a friend, where my spouse DM's, Friend plays a Jedi, and I play a Mandalorian (and she's just so much FUN to play). My character is one I came up with around... 2017? Maybe? IDK if you can find her if you scroll down far enough. Currently re-designing her, though. I originally came up with her after working my way through the Travis books and becoming fascinated with Mandalorians for some reason.

Accidential Language Acquisition

My latest obsession (and distracion from the summer heat) started with me looking up some Mandalorian phrases and curses for RPG purposes. Yes, I know, none of this is canon any more. None of us cares. We kind of make our own canon. Then I found out there's a script - and I was lost. I loved codes and obscure scripts as a child, and I did learn to read Hiragana in my 20s, so how hard could this be? I looked for a chart and found this site, which offers practice reading (and a dictionary, amongst other stuff). So, I started learning the characters in, I think, late July. I read quite well by now, my writing does lag behind. Juuust... the practice phrases are written in the Mandalorian language.

I didn't set out to learn a constructed language. I really did not. I just wanted to know WHAT I was typing. So I looked up the sentences on the cheat-sheet after I got them right. And some words started repeating, and I picked them up. Kinda automatically. I swear, I only practice reading/ writing this for like 15 to 30 minutes a day. After a while, I half-understood what some sentences said. Reading Star Wars fanfiction did not help (or help a lot, depending on your POV) there. I looked up missing words, building a bit of a vocabulary. It's erratic still, but I noticed something. In conversations, my brain sometimes supplies the Mandalorian words I know now. (I usually do catch myself, although stuff tends to slip in when I'm alone with my spouse, to his amusement.) My language center does not know this is a con-lang, after all. I also tried to write a ransom note in Mandalorian, which was a fun experience (for a private project). Through fan fiction and looking up stuff, I also learned about the Legends version of Mandalorian culture. That stuff is fascinating, although I feel like a visitor to an abandoned city. Everyone's gone (since Legends is out of print and stuff is falling into obscurity), but it's still cool to look around. It gives me a kind of bittersweet, nostalgic feeling, too. So many passionate minds, and things I'm so happy to experience, but wished I knew about sooner. Aay'han, if you will, only it's memories I never made. Nostalgia for what could have been. Not gonna lie, I'm obsessed. It's a feeling I seldom get now, although it was quite frequent when I was a teen. It feels great and enjoyable and unhealthy and I think I need to stop. I'm an adult, and I'm too old to fangirl. Or, at least, I keep telling myself this.

Analyzing a Con-Lang because my nerd brain can't stop looking for patterns

Mandalorian actually HAS different words for the people, the planet, the ruler, and the language. Let me start with Manda, which is the collective soul (or the concept of) of the Mandalorian people. The people themselves are Mando'ade (Children of the Manda/ of Mandalore. Singular Mando'ad). The language is Mando'a (no clue why, language would be joha. Maybe Mando'joha was too long and it got shortened). The planet is Manda'yaim (yaim meaning home. Simple enough). The ruler is the Mand'alor (alor meaning, well, leader. Also simple).

Before long, my brain started making connections between some things. Simple things first - "Ke" or "K' " at the start of a sentence is always the imperative form of something ("Command form"). The words for "you", "I", and the third person pronoun. Then, between words, trying to fit new words with what I already know. Like [something] ad was most likely about people. I built myself bridges that are just theories - I am not a linguist in any fashion, and I'm just trying to make sense of what's there. Like mirsh meaning brain(cell), kot meaning strenght, and mirshko is courage - so, "brain-strength"?

And no, for all of you out there that are as nerdy as me, this is not a full language. There isn't a word for "call" or "get in contact with" I could find, for example. Some authors just wanted to add flair to their writing, so an incomplete thing is what we have. Even so, I am kind of hooked in the weirdest way. I play around, trying to make my own sentences and combined words. It's fun, and private, and nobody needs to know. Except for the two people I TTRPG with.

IDK any more where I wanted to go with this. There might be a part 2, someday. If anyone read this, I appreciate you. If anyone read this and had this weird kind of obsession happen to them as well, let's talk. It might just be the universe's weirdest midlife crisis.

[thefalloutwiki]

Fallout Wiki: Founders Day (1 Year Anniversary)

Good evening to all you wastelanders out there! Today is a monumental occasion for all of us at the Independent Fallout Wiki. Today is Founder's Day! One year ago from today on April 8, 2022, our wiki was officially founded!

We are incredibly proud of how far we have come. What started as a simple fork turned into something much, much bigger and greater, and we're happy to have the support of the amazing community for the Fallout series. Let's look back at some of the notable milestones since our founding!

On May 22, 2022, we officially started our Modspace; a custom namespace that allows Fallout mods, such as The Frontier, New California, The Bleachers and Tale of Two Wastelands, to be documented properly and concisely!

On October 28, 2022, we officially created our Communityspace; another customs namespaces that allows the Fallout community to create pages for fan works and to upload fan works, such as fanfiction, fanart, user generated content, comics, TTRPG documents, fan films, and much, much more!

We've affiliated with the likes of other, amazing independent wikis, such as The Doom Wiki, Combine OverWiki, JoJo's Bizarre Encyclopedia, Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages, Strategy Wiki, Otherkin Wiki and our French counterpart Les Archives de Vault-Tec, as well as joining independent wiki alliances, such as the Gaming Wiki Network and Square Enix Independent Wiki Alliance!

We launched the wiki officially on December 31, 2022, with an amazing amount of support and cheers from all around the community!

Also on the day of our launch, we began our community project to feature Fallout fanart on the wiki dubbed Pickman's Gallery. So far, we've featured art from @auntie-murdoc, @milramemo, Overshia, and Turtle, with many more lovely artists to come!

Since launch, we've surpassed 500 followers on Tumblr and 1700 followers on Twitter! Our Discord has also surpassed 600 members!

And those are just some of the many milestones we've attained since launch! We even have a page for all of our Milestones, which you can check out here:

We're so happy to have made it as far as we have, and we only see a brighter future ahead. Thanks to everyone for all the overwhelming support and love. We sincerely appreciate all of it! We hope you will continue to support us, even 200 years into the future (assuming total atomic annihilation hasn't occurred)! That's all we had to say! Have a good night wastelanders.

END OF BROADCAST

[lotsadeer]

Hello I'm Izze Span or theshawnDeer!

I'm an illustrator, writer, podcaster, game designer, voice actor, and wearer of many hats.

You may know me from my podcasts!

Hope's Hearth

indie ttrpg actual play podcast set in a solar hopepunk sci-fantasy universe. We play a wide variety of different indie ttrpgs, ranging from high fantasy to horror, single player to 5 or 6 players, one pagers to massive novels of games. I'm one of the main cast of players and make much of the promotional material and artwork for it!

Abbey Archives

a Redwall reread podcast where one pagan and one Christian see what's aged like fine strawberry wine, and what's aged like milk. I'm one half of the duo that makes up this podcast (my other half being @kitsiinabox)

SCP Research Archives

What happens when I get tired of hearing a specific kind of voice read SCPs and I decide I wanna do it. It's just an SCP reading podcast. A nonbinary archivist is reading the scps for accessibility accommodations and has to deal with their air headed Director leaving them voice mails. I'm the voice actor and primary audio editor for this podcast.

Colchis

currently unreleased fiction podcast that is in production. A scifi audio drama about two queer trans lesbian xenobiologists and their onboard AI on an exo-planet cataloguing new life and looking to make first contact with any sapient race that may inhabit the planet. Their journey will bring them closer together, but what will they discover along the way? Dr. Vela Remnant, alone on the planet's surface. Dr. Elizabeth Pace, watching from the orbiting station. LUCIDITY, the AI trying to understand. And something watching from the shadows, learning. I am one of three authors, voice actors, and editors for this show. I voice Dr. Vela Remnant.

Cauterized

Currently unreleased fiction podcast that is in production. A lot's changed and they live underwater. Coming soon, a Sci-fi survival podcast about the things we leave behind. Music survives Armageddon. I voice Naomi!

Or perhaps from my games on Itch.io?

What about my artwork? Or my fanfiction?

If you'd like to see more of my artwork, check the #shawndeer art hashtag!

If you'd like to commission me, fill out this form!

Want to hire me for work? Email me at lotsasquirrels@gmail.com

Have some art :D

[mbirnsings-71]

i just thought it was funny how many fandoms we shared LOL

I am gonna use this ask to like let people know what fandoms I'm in because I wouldn't have known how many fandoms we share if Jay didn't keep tagging me in stuff you've reblogged!! So like anyone that wants to know my fandoms please click the keep reading button cause woo boy there's a lot.

so time for THE LIST! The Fandom List of all fandom lists!

DC obviously (Bernard Dowd I miss you...)

Dimension 20 (everyone should at least watch Fantasy high, escape the bloodkeep, or The unsleeping city because woo boy-)

Critical role (especially right now if you like Brennan Lee mulligan DMing cause he's DMing the Downfall mini arc of the third campaign and it's gonna be so fun actually, but also if you like a bunch of voice actors playing TTRPGS you should totally try to get into it even though it's a big time commitment it's so worth it though)

Danganronpa (sadly this one is an old hyperfixation come back to life, Let me at the game and I'll fix all the weird shit about it I promise I PROMISE-)

Until Dawn/The Quarry (again another Hyperfixation come back to life but this time I actually made OCs for it LIKE HEYYYYYY they're silly I love These two games they're so-)

Supernatural (again, an old hyperfixation come back to life because something about this show has a chokehold on me and I got into it through fanfictions of all things I was only here for Castiel and I got dragged way too into it my god-)

Welcome to night vale (I actually got to go to one of the live shows for this AND have a signed poster hanging in my room from it so I'm thriving- I really do need to play catch up with it though.)

The Magnus Archives (Again, another podcast I need to play catch up with BECAUSE WOOOOOO BOY I am only on season 4... Season 5 scares me but I want Jonmart....)

9-1-1 (BECAUSE I GOT DRAGGED INTO IT BY MY FRIEND AND TIKTOK AND NOW THEY ARE MY BRAIN ROT IT'S AWFUL AND I LOVE IT AND I LOVE BUCK AND AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA)

Pokemon (love the games and I do have so many favorites. My favorite Gen is gen 5 because it's one of the first pokemon games I know and have loved very much!!)

Ace Attorney (it's actually how I met one of my closest friends <3 so like I gotta include it here!!)

Miraculous ladybug (this one is because I got my nephew hooked on it so now he requests for me to put it on it's the funniest thing and this show is a mess that's for sure)

and so much more but this is getting so long and those are the ones that consistently come back into my brain most of the time, I can always be asked if I've seen something/have liked something before but like you'll probably know if I reblog something that I probably like it.

[aristotels]

Thinking about art and fiction and concepts of ownership and honestly it's kinda fucked that collaborative and transformative storytelling is literally as old as time and one of the most basic human instincts that exists, but the only good word it we have right now is "fanfiction"

and when you tell people you write fanfiction they think you're some kind of cringe weirdo and possibly pervert and then the whole thing gets derailed by this bizarre side discussion into how "No it's not all porn, it's absolutely everything and anything imaginable, duh, but like, even if it were all porn, that would also be okay". Like I'm all for pointing out the double standards about how published authors who put sex into their stories don't lose any respectability (especially if they're men, and especially if the sex is cishet), but the second I, a fanfiction person, add a romantic arc into my plotty casefic suddenly I'm a fujoshi with shipper brainrot etc etc-

But it's tiring that this is even a focal point

My favourite funny and sad thing is watching people (usually dudes) who clearly either view themselves as above fanfiction or have simply never ever thought of themselves as "the type" to do creative writing discover The Fanfiction Urge, because the way they express it is like. An increasingly passionate and detailed video essay about how Movie should have gone instead, or, my favourite, a story about something cool that happened to them in XCOM or Darkest Dungeon or some other Difficult Game For Serious Gamers and by the end of the post they're legitimately just writing prose. Like look at this! LOOK! Damn if this person didn't speedrun the gamerbro-to-AO3 pipeline just for a sec. And not that there's anything wrong with those formats but it makes you wonder if that's something they'd be interested in exploring more if their wings got unclipped

Or DnD. Small wonder that TTRPGs are becoming so popular when they're one of the few increasingly non-cringe ways to do the extremely basic human urge of Tell Story Collaboratively

A friend of mine had this to say recently about his own struggles with this kind of internal bias:

i'd like to try out Thousand-Year-Old Vampire (a solo role-playing game with minimal rules to make you write your own narrative) and my toxic masculinity is getting in the way. discouraging thoughts include: i'm not creative enough; creative writing is for Floofy Humanities types and i am a Cold STEM type; it's not a real game unless it has Systems that you can Study and Master. would anyone like to say something encouraging?

and honestly that's incredibly illuminating innit isn't it. The splitting off of creative activity (not just fanfiction, either) into something only for Floofy Humanities Types but not Serious People and the way it's linked to whether or not you can make money off it... oof.

This became a long post thank you for your patience

ngl i just dont rly care that much for fandoms... i like fanfic, i read it and write it, but i dont rly see fandom as my identity or smth i particularly care about, to me all of it is just the same as me playing with barbie dolls.

i dont think its something special that can be compared to actual literature and i think there are certain problems w booktok people relying on tropes that come from fanfic mentality. its just not the same, and i do wish people who like fanfic would sometimes also read.......some actual books sometimes

i just generally dont see what youre describing as some huge thing or problem, i think anti-kink ppl doxxing artists is the major worrisome thing when it comes to fandoms, but i think the doxxers also take the whole fandom experience too seriously

and i say this as someone who also writes fanfic, so like, it rly isnt me going "fanfic authors/readers are stupid", i find fanfic super cool to explore yourself, fanart taught me sooo much as an artist, i even enjoy roleplaying; all of this serves a very real purpose of exploring things as a human in realms of fiction, and pre-existing characters make that easier. i think that can be very useful, we learn about ourselves through books and stories. i just think fandom should be treated the way it is - playtime with toys ✌️

[caspercryptid]

New info post <3

Hi, I'm Casper, or Cas. I'm a Queer Trans Disabled writer working on fanfiction, original fiction, and professional TTRPG work on startplaying

Current hyperfixation: Book of Bill

Current projects:

November Write More Month! a Nanowrimo alternative focused on writing as much as you can and getting craft advice

Gravity Falls- Ad Astra: A portal Stan AU where Bill takes Tad Strange's body and introduces himself as Ford's boyfriend. It's going to be a weird summer (in progress) Requests open! Completed- swan princess / monster falls / Vampire Ford (1) (2) / Hades and Persephone

Short stuff: Collect Call

Original work:

The Aspera Project- Even forces of world domination have corporate websites. @theasperagroup for Vibes, Patreon for updates (under construction), and various other social media built into the worldbuilding that's hiding around. #aspera project for a lot of my original writing here on the blog. I'm in league with @the-neon-pineapple on this one <3

Watchville- There's a man, in a town, all alone. He alone knows what's coming. He may or may not tell you how to stop it. professional ttrpg inspired by Gravity Falls and the book of bill, #startplaying for my info posts about running games (seats still open!)

Miracles ttrpg- In a landscape as huge as the United States, a lot of things can get overlooked, and a small group can dedicate themselves to the cause of making sure that deaths from monsters are not among them. There are things that are bigger than you: the skyline, the road, the country, the heavens. But you can save lives, and that oughta be good enough. professional ttrpg based on. Well. Spn. Lets be real. #startplaying for my info posts (Seats still open!)

Current novel project is an arranged marriage supernatural romance set in the late 1940s, and I don't even have a working title. That's where we're at. @the-neon-pineapple is my beloved cowriter on this one too <3

I tag my nonfiction ramblings and shitposts with #casper's cryptid tales

I'm Always open to chatty anons (although I may take a while to answer, because... Disability.) To weird anons, to odd questions, occasionally to bizarre accusations. Sure. Hit me. Requests are open for Billford AUs and OC stuff.

Sideblogs:

@adhdapp for reviewing productivity apps

@theasperagroup - Gothic, horror, Vibes.

@fuckyeahjaycetalis - Jayce

@thebeelog - Bees

Asks are tagged with #Casper's haunted info tag, so check there if you're looking to see if I answered you at 4am. I do that a lot.

Thanks for reading, and for being here, and if you wanna support me, Ko-fi in bio

[pennythemechpilot]

Something interesting I've noticed about myself is that, creatively, I suck ass at coming up with something in a vacuum. Previous attempts at writing my own D&D 5e module for a couple of friends have fallen completely flat and creating characters for TTRPG's takes months as well and requires an initial idea. Meanwhile, I much prefer taking an existing idea and heavily modifying/changing it to the point that it barely resembles whatever it originally was. Most of my OC's are created in other people's settings, in Minecraft I always use a randomly generated structure as a base instead of building my own, I write fanfiction instead of creating an entirely new setting (although I don't know how much that applies here), in Armored Core 6 I can't come up with a build to save my life, but I can take an npc build and change out every part but one of the weapons no problem. Just something I thought was interesting is all