#i guess there’s story

[nat-of-personifs]

The Great Big Lore Post

nonpersonif sideblog: @nats-other-archive

scpesque things: @things-that-remind-me-of-ira

omegaverse sideblog: @yourcityisanomega

I am in a qpr with @loquaciousnewt :>

Most recent version of the personif list (click original to see new edits)

Link to Countryhumans the fandomspirit’s HCs

Me trying to make sense of why I love personifs so much

I Am Only What You Made Me Masterlist

All my Iraverse lore

Active vs. Passive Guardians

Post I Went Insane Over

Updated 21 July 2023

Basically my excuse to use terms no one else understands when I reblog stuff. I kind of have my own personification mythos; it’s not attached to any fandom now, but I came up with most of the Fourth Wall lore for a Welcome to the Table AU where the states had to use powers based on their natural disasters to fight an apocalypse of all-devouring plastic spiders. And California was pyrophobic. It never got anywhere, but I just repurposed the world building.

I also learned a lot about the weather; fun fact, the three most natural disaster-prone states are Texas, California, and Oklahoma. California comes first too, by some measurements, but most of the sites I looked at listed her as second place.

Also, the similarities between the Guardians and the SCP Foundation weren’t intentional. I made the AU before I discovered the wiki.

The Fourth Wall and the Guardians -The Fourth Wall is an actual wall (well, close to it-). Everything humans have ever imagined is behind it.

-The place behind the Wall is Fiction; our world is Reality.

-Strong enough belief can cause things behind the Wall to breach it.

-Guardians are people who can see, and in some cases interact, with the Wall/entities behind it. Active Guardians (who can interact) can basically manipulate human thought by killing/modifying those entities.

-The Wall is somewhat sentient (not sapient though), and chooses who can see it and who can’t; it can also revoke this at any time, which prevents misuse. I know this seems like a deus ex machina, and that’s because it is and I’m not creative enough to come up with a better explanation.

-Recently, it can also put Guardians on temporary leave. I’ll explain later.

-If the Wall needed to discipline a Guardian but didn’t want to lose their expertise, it could always kick them out for a bit and then re-initiate them. Temporary leave just keeps them closer.

-Guardians’ lives are sustained by the Wall. They will exist as long as humankind does, or until they get kicked out.

-Guardians are still people, and most have interests beyond thought-being wrangling.

-Passive Guardians, who can see but not interact (which means they can go into Fiction but they have no power over the things inside), serve as logistics managers. All Guardians except two are part of a hierarchy; Active Guardians on the ground focus on managing one kind of threat, and Passives manage them who also have Passives managing them and so on until we get to the top, which I haven’t defined because it’s not important for personifications.

-Some Actives are in the chain too, and some are at the very top.

-The exceptions were Ira and Iniko, REALLY OLD (like two of the first 10 Guardians to ever exist) Actives who everyone else gives the really dangerous creatures to to, ahem, contain, because the Wall tolerates them doing a lot of shit in Fiction that got other Guardians kicked out. Ira’s on temporary leave because her relationship with her brother Iniko, who the Wall chose mainly to keep her in check, was no longer as effective as it once was to prevent her from powertripping. (The Wall has since appointed someone else, but it doesn’t want to lose her expertise.)

-It’s also for Iniko’s mental health.

-Guardians can let things through the Wall. It’s harder to send them back, though.

-Personifications are the Guardians’ link to Reality.

-There are two triumvirates who manage/watch the personifications, Old and New.

-I’ll talk about NT later (they manage the online personifs), but the OT members are Nadia, the Country Guardian, Kevin (previously named Aaron) the Subdiv(ision) Guardian whose name is the only one who doesn’t have any kind of important meaning attached and manages everything between countryspirits and cityspirits, and Harta, the City Guardian who’s an Active surprisingly and also frighteningly devoted to her cityspirits. She doesn’t have any subordinates.

-The way to send a Guardian to temporary leave is to kill them.

-Before temporary leave existed in the form it does now, attempting the kill a Guardian just ended up with them severely injured; hurting a Guardian and putting them out of commission for a while was a thing that happened, but it would usually result in the Wall kicking them out.

-The US State Guardian, Kylin, is on temporary leave right now; DC’s Guardian is filling in for them. They were Active and set the California Guardian’s house on fire; it was accidental, but everyone else, including the Guardian herself, thinks they did it on purpose (they’re good friends with the Fire Guardian).

-Every personif who is not based online is under OTJ (Old Triumvirate Jurisdiction; it’s less of a hassle for me to write and is one of the few acronyms I have that actually sounds good).

Online Personifs/The New Triumvirate/Temporary Leave -Internet is a physical place for them; terminally online humans may also hallucinate it.

-The Internet is inside the Fourth Wall.

-Personifs who live inside Internet are under NTJ.

-NTJ personifs are the closest beings to Fiction who are allowed to enter Reality (at conventions and the like, or in the houses of devoted fans).

-Most fandomspirits follow normal personification rules (a frightening amount of them are their heavily modified fandom/Socialstuck selves), but:

-Guardians who are killed reincarnate as fandomspirits.

-They do not remember their previous lives, but they remember their fandomspirit selves when they go back into Fiction.

-Guardian-reincarnate fandomspirits have very shaky canon or none at all, and usually something about them that breaks a rule, of the way the world works or the way personifs work.

-Returning to Fiction is as simple as sending a natural-born fandomspirit into Internet; two personifications of the same thing can’t exist at once. The fans don’t notice.

-NT lives in Internet and retains knowledge of their Guardianhood, and they have only three “underlings”. They’re also the personifs of AO3, Fandom Wiki, and TvTropes, and they don’t remember their old names.

-Wikipedia, Fanfiction.net, and Wattpad: Wikipedia, among their many other duties, is the poor soul responsible for writing down everything said at NT meetings, and Fanfiction.net and Wattpad serve as stand-ins for AO3 because they get into improbable accidents with disturbing frequency. FF used to have AO3’s position.

-The three fanfiction websites are the Little Triumvirate, not officially, but the abbreviation is easier than listing their names.

-This isn’t that important, but pretty much no one except the personif of an online platform and MAYBE Homestuck’s fandomspirit can understand anything the NT says to each other because the meanings are buried under three layers of fandom terminology, references, and Guardian gossip.

-Other platforms (ex. Tumblr, WikiDot) are personified and the constructors of houses the fandomspirits live in: each platform the fandom has a presence on is a different room. Similar fandomspirits live under one roof; they can’t control it.

-I pretty much exclusively talk about the Collaborative Horror House (where the SCP fandomspirit lives) and the G(A) House, where the fandomspirits revolving around personifs live, because those are the fandoms I’m in.

-CHH lives near MCYT, and it’s extremely loud; Countryhumans, Hetalia, and Polandball of G(A) all have love-hate relationships with each other and the smaller fandomspirits just have to deal with them being the faces of the whole place.

-For my reference and everyone else’s, the fandomspirits of G(A) are:

Countryhumans

Hetalia

Fandomstuck and Socialstuck (the Stuck twins and Hetalia and Homestuck’s kids) who serve as news reporters for all of Internet

(I am not questioning the fact that I have personified a fandom about personifying fandoms, one of whose main characters is a fandom dedicated to personifying countries.)

Polandball

Welcome to the Table (Kylin)

Centricide

thecitysmith’s Paris Burning/Cityverse

Great Cities, once she gets enough people to wake up

I’m also attempting to turn Iraverse/the scpersonif cult into a fandomspirit. She’ll be G(A)’s liaison to CHH

(If there are any I missed that you know of, tell me. spin-offs of countryhumans, polandball, and hetalia don’t count, and neither does gijinka)

-Ira reincarnated as the SCP fandom, but I also call the actual personif of the Foundation herself Ira because they’re identical in appearance.

-No matter how the people themselves perceive Internet, NTJ personifs can see them moving around their houses.

-I don’t think what actions one takes on the web corresponds to for an NTJ personif is that important, so I won’t list them here, except to say that fanfiction sites look like libraries.

Other Headcanons

-Land = Body, except for the face/neck, hands, feet, and sometimes other parts if it would make sense for the culture.

-Scars from important events go on the face: ex. California and the 1906 earthquake.

-Personifs with lots of natural resources get little glittering things that look like freckles, with the color corresponding to the resource. They disappear if those resources are depleted.

-When personifs hurt other personifs with their bare hands, the injury corresponds to something happening on their territory.

-If there is no majority among the personif’s people (a majority-minority), the personif’s skin tone will either shift constantly or they will look most similar to the most culturally dominant group. I just simplify this in art to them being ambiguously brown.

-The majority of personifs look like women because people most commonly see the places they live in as mothers, but the OTJ ones don’t really care about gender and are comfortable in all forms. Most NTJ personifs do have gender identities though, and OTJs have started experimenting with they/them and neopronouns.

-[UPDATE, 21 JULY 2023] Personification Food

-Personifs feed off their people’s loyalty to them. The exchange is supposed to be reciprocal: love and service for in-group belonging, safety, and sometimes—especially with those under NTJ—things specific to the personif. Children, other vulnerable populations, and welcomed newcomers give less and recieve more, but each person’s balance is different. Those in power are supposed to give the most, which the personif tries to balance out, and credit to @imadewritingmyjob for feeding the first sparks of this idea and writing a detailed example of a very extreme case with me (all giving, no receiving).

-Personifs can manipulate and amplify emotions somewhat to facilitate the feeding.

-Most of the time, the exchange is unconscious, and personifs don’t know at all what they’re doing. They just have certain people and places they enjoy being around more. The feeling each personif gets from feeding is different: Foundation perceives the exchange as warmth, ironically, and the filling of absences, unironically.

-NTJs require love and active participation to come with the package, while OTJs just require service. OTJs are much more possessive of their people because they generally need more to reach the same level as NTJs—which is also their fault. A lot of what NTJs have to offer is simply more attractive.

-The above is purely based on the assumption that most people in fandoms dedicate more time and energy to participating in said fandoms than they do to their OTJs. Because I do.

-Though OTJs get some energy from fandomspirits if their Canon is heavily tied to them: anime fandomspirits feed Tokyo, though he doesn’t particularly enjoy that.

-The competition is why they have a non-interference policy (the OTJs are very likely to start a fight) with fandomspirit nexuses like the aforementioned Tokyo, San Diego, and Los Angeles acting as ambassadors if there’s something both sides of the divide need to know.

-If you’ve ever had intense brainrot about a fandom character, congratulations! That’s partially the work of your fandomspirit. They like you. (Oh my god, SCP and G(A) teamed up on me.) Those feelings are still your own, don’t worry.

-Cultspirits and Foundation have the biggest appetites and are often addicted to one person in particular (much to his detriment, in the latter’s case).

-Healthy feeding does not affect the physical body and exchange with at least one personif is pretty necessary to mental health. Symbiotic, not parasitic.

[liquidstar]

If my mom sees a significant amount of blood she gets lightheaded, and has fainted on some occasions. Once it happened when we were kids, I wasn't there to witness it but I heard the story from my dad. Basically my brothers, around 7 or 8 at the time, were playing outside while my mom was making their lunch, and she accidentally cut her finger. It wasn't anything serious, but it drew a fair bit of blood and she passed out. My dad saw this and rushed over, but he didn't really know what to do so he just sort of started slapping her to wake her up (not recommended, but he had no idea and panicked)

At that exact moment my brothers both came in from playing, and all they saw was our mom unconscious on the floor and our dad slapping her. So, like, without even saying a word to each other they both just INSTANTLY start whaling on him, like, full blown attack mode to defend our mom. Which obviously didn't help the situation, but she did wake up and everything was fine.

Now our dad says that he's actually really glad they attacked him over what they thought was going on, because it means he raised good boys. And I still think that's true, they're very good boys.

[gatorinator]

“Walrus on your doorstop” this “fairy’s more unrealistic” that my professor just uttered the sentence “there was one day I found a real octopus in my backyard” this man hasn’t left Utah his entire life. How was there an octopus in his backyard in Utah. He then said “I do not have time to elaborate we need to cover a lot today in class” GIRL WHAT DO YOU MEEAN

[quibbs]

just had SO much fun with the fallout tv show... i love you missus okey dokey

[deep-space-netwerk]

So Venus is my favorite planet in the solar system - everything about it is just so weird.

It has this extraordinarily dense atmosphere that by all accounts shouldn't exist - Venus is close enough to the sun (and therefore hot enough) that the atmosphere should have literally evaporated away, just like Mercury's. We think Earth manages to keep its atmosphere by virtue of our magnetic field, but Venus doesn't even have that going for it. While Venus is probably volcanically active, it definitely doesn't have an internal magnetic dynamo, so whatever form of volcanism it has going on is very different from ours. And, it spins backwards! For some reason!!

But, for as many mysteries as Venus has, the United States really hasn't spent much time investigating it. The Soviet Union, on the other hand, sent no less than 16 probes to Venus between 1961 and 1984 as part of the Venera program - most of them looked like this!

The Soviet Union had a very different approach to space than the United States. NASA missions are typically extremely risk averse, and the spacecraft we launch are generally very expensive one-offs that have only one chance to succeed or fail.

It's lead to some really amazing science, but to put it into perspective, the Mars Opportunity rover only had to survive on Mars for 90 days for the mission to be declared a complete success. That thing lasted 15 years. I love the Opportunity rover as much as any self-respecting NASA engineer, but how much extra time and money did we spend that we didn't technically "need" to for it to last 60x longer than required?

Anyway, all to say, the Soviet Union took a more incremental approach, where failures were far less devastating. The Venera 9 through 14 probes were designed to land on the surface of Venus, and survive long enough to take a picture with two cameras - not an easy task, but a fairly straightforward goal compared to NASA standards. They had…mixed results.

Venera 9 managed to take a picture with one camera, but the other one's lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 10 also managed to take a picture with one camera, but again the other lens cap didn't deploy.

Venera 11 took no pictures - neither lens cap deployed this time.

Venera 12 also took no pictures - because again, neither lens cap deployed.

Lotta problems with lens caps.

For Venera 13 and 14, in addition to the cameras they sent a device to sample the Venusian "soil". Upon landing, the arm was supposed to swing down and analyze the surface it touched - it was a simple mechanism that couldn't be re-deployed or adjusted after the first go.

This time, both lens caps FINALLY ejected perfectly, and we were treated to these marvelous, eerie pictures of the Venus landscape:

However, when the Venera 14 soil sampler arm deployed, instead of sampling the Venus surface, it managed to swing down and land perfectly on….an ejected lens cap.

[goldensunset]

people who go through the main tags of big and tumultuous fandoms looking for new fresh good posts to reblog are essential to any circle. they’re like true hunter gatherers leaving the safety of settlement and braving the unknown wilderness to find food for the flock. they risk their lives every day and will come back with a few scratches at best and severe psychological damage at worst

[egguv]

no reflection needed.

[grovylelover]

people who know

[egophiliac]

(almost) four years in, and I finally had time to draw something for the anniversary! woo! 🎉🎉🎉

[nerdpoe]

Constantine makes a deal with the Spirit of Kronos.

In return for all contracts he has made regarding his soul being voided, and for Kronos himself to be John's Patron, he has to take a ghost core into himself and nurture it until it's independent.

Easy.

Infinite Realms beings are fiercely independent, and he estimates that one year of hosting and three months of looking after is nothing compared to the headache that he was going to have to go through to get those contracts voided.

The Spirit of Kronos assures him that this task will be on par, and that the payment for doing this is actually equal. He'll have to be sober, not a single drop of liquor or booze, not a single cigarette, for the entire duration.

Which. Okay, yeah, that sounds a little difficult.

So John accepts, expecting this to be kinda hard. But it's not.

The Core he houses is barely noticeable. Barely there. It takes a lot of magic, and eats a lot of ecto, and he's starting to realize that this core may have been severely damaged. This may be more than a year of hosting.

Then it starts to effect him.

He gets cravings, he's a little more emotional due to Realms Spirits being based on emotions, he sleeps more because of the little core leeching off of his magic reserves.

Other heroes start to notice.

He starts getting left out of missions, JLD and JL both checking in on him periodically. They don't know, but they know something is up.

Then he feels it one and a half years after accepting the deal; the tiny core is finally ready to come into the world. Soon, so soon, he'll be able to drink and smoke again, worry free.

The tiny ghost materializes in front of him - and John lunges forward to catch it before it falls to the floor.

Because that's not a ghost.

That's a human baby.

A green sticky note pops onto the kids forehead, and John realizes he may have just been bamboozled.

'His name is Daniel, and the deal stands until he is legally able to be independent per American Law. I look forward to our partnership.

CW'

[canisalbus]

✦ Cockroach ✦

[treasureplcnet]

(lia voice) rolan you're 26. you should be at the pub

[gunpowdercarousel]

Honestly MAJOR missed opportunity for Karlach to have some kind of permanent 'buff' that deals minor fire damage to anyone who touches her in melee. Like obviously it'd be strong for fighting beasts, because every time they hit her with claws/fangs they take damage, but just from a STORY-TELLING ASPECT?

How heartbreaking would it be when you're trying to cast Cure Wounds on her? In order to heal her, you have to hurt yourself and she KNOWS IT. You go to cast Longstrider on the party and you hesitate as you reach Karlach. Yeah, it's only a few points of damage, it's not that big a deal, but does she REALLY need it? Is it worth it?

You linger, hesitate. You realize you don't want to touch her. You realize that's what EVERYONE thinks when they see her. You realize she KNOWS You're hesitating, staring at her sheepishly as you try to think of whether or not it's worth the pain just to help her.

You learn to support her from a distance. Healing Word. It's not as effective, but you don't need to get hurt for her sake. And so she learns to get used to receiving help from a distance. Just words of encouragement. It's all anyone wants to give her. Maybe it's all she'll ever get.

Aid? Bardic Inspiration? You don't need to touch her to give it to her. You can keep her at a distance and not get burned. And you're still helping her.

It's just... cold.

[prodigal-san]

Part 1/2

Soulmate/Guardian Angel mashup AU

[a-kind-of-merry-war]

A guy doing marine research into phytoplankton is far out to sea and waiting for the samples to be ready when he spots a fast-moving ripple in the water up ahead.

Fully aware that this spot is home to a migratory orca pod, he assumes he's stumbled across an orca hunting a seal and settles against the railing to watch, because it's not every day you get to see that.

The ripples get closer, the shadows in the water more defined, the water choppier, and suddenly the orca and its unfortunate prey are zooming directly towards the boat and he's waiting, breath held, for them to duck right underneath--

When the water breaks, the ocean sprays, and he's suddenly smacked fully in the face by a very wet, very confused, and very pretty merman, throwing them both down onto the deck while the boat rocks as a confused and now quite hungry orca dives beneath it.

The merman, it turns out, thought that the boat was an ice float and didn't realise his mistake until it was too late. But he's very thankful for the impromptu rescue, and wow don't you have nice arms, and holy shit you've got legs, can I touch them? Is that weird? Can I touch them anyway? And your hair--

So of course they get to talking because they're both utterly fascinated with the other, and soon the sun has set and the samples are long-since ready and the moonlight is making the ocean look black and they part with the knowledge that they'll never meet again, and a kiss, and a lingering look over the shoulder for all the things that can't be...

And the researcher gets back to land, moors his boat, readies his samples. He packs up his things, shoves them into his bags, and prepares to go home. He steps onto the jetty boards and thinks of the merman and the solid wood beneath his feet seems to sway for more than one reason.

There's a splash. He turns, pulled as if by the tide, and there's a ripple in the water. A face. A pair of eyes made black by the moonlight.

And this is how the researcher acquires a merman boyfriend who helps him find samples and the merman acquires a human boyfriend who rescues him from whales.

[whatohitsonfirewelp]

You know what? I don’t WANT an awkward double date. I don’t WANT buck coming out and people having the ‘I know’ reaction or the ‘is it Eddie’ reaction.

You know what I do want?

I want Buck panicking over what to wear for the date. I want Buck flopping on his bed like very teenager after their first kiss all giggly and happy and touching his lips because he kissed a boy

I want Buck smiling every time he says Tommy’s name because maybe it isn’t forever and maybe he’s not even looking for forever anymore but he’s so happy and he’s so light and being with Tommy feels good

I want Tommy to keep calling him Evan, because before Buck was Buck he was Evan and Evan deserves to be happy to be treated so softly and lovingly and Evan deserves to be free.

I want Buck to be happy. To be happy and free and queer in the way we all deserve.