#just adding a little bit of fun worldbuilding

[sysig]

Some more Just Desserts pets, and thinking about Candy Mers again (Patreon)

Also ft. the pigeon study I did, what a cute bird!

[writingwithfolklore]

Making the Most out of your First Draft

As someone who used to write every first draft without planning and then use that to figure out characters and outlines, I have a lot of experience in first drafts that are incredibly helpful to forming an actual story, and drafts that don’t add much.

              So here’s how to make the most out of your first draft:

1. Write what doesn’t make sense

One of the most helpful first drafts I ever wrote abandoned plotlines and started new ones as though they had existed all along like several times. It was also the longest draft I had ever written because I had packed so many ideas into it. The reason why this is helpful is because you can test out what a plot point will look like in the middle or even end of your story without having to go back to the same beginning again and again.

It doesn’t need to make sense, just try things out. Disappear characters who don’t work, add a best friend near the end that acts like they’ve been there the entire time, whatever idea you’re interested in you can try out without worrying too much about what makes sense or what you’d need in place to set it up. It's like literally stream of consciousness writing, and you're going to learn so much more about your world, plot, and characters than trying to make it make sense.

2. Write poorly

I spent a lot of that first draft having characters monologue to themselves or each other about their interests and problems and lives which allowed me to explore their backstories and voice even if that’s not something I would do in a final draft. I had the wackiest plot points to see how my characters would react, what would happen to the plot, and if I didn’t like it I would keep going like nothing had happened, I did a lot of yadda-yaddaing over worldbuilding and setting the scenes and making up things on the spot to see if they’d stick, skipping sometimes to the interesting stuff, or adding in a random scene just for fun.

It doesn’t have to be good. Even a little bit. You’re learning about your world and your characters and the story you want to tell, but you aren’t writing it yet. Allow it to be the worst thing you’ve ever written.

3. Make notes on what you like

As you go through and throw spaghetti at the wall (figuratively speaking), make notes on the things that stick. If you write a line of dialogue you really like, or a piece of backstory or even a vibe, make sure to make a note of it somewhere. This will help you narrow down your ideas to what you want to keep when you start writing your story. And if you’re like me and you want to outline or plan your subsequent drafts, these notes will be invaluable to start forming your planning.

Anything else I missed?

[regal-bones]

Hi, I just discovered your art through your swords, I am incredibly delighted on how good they look and how clean your animations are! But I can't help but notice there is an underlying lore going on and I want to ask if you have stuff of The Continent available to read. I love nothing more than other people's imaginary worlds and the lore and stories they made for it!

Hey !!! first of all thank u so much, that’s really sweet! And yes I do !! Sorry this took so long to answer I wanted to make a big master post :)

so first of all and as a little disclaimer, the bulk of this project is on hiatus while I work on my video game Last Sprout. (more info on that here!) But I’ve been adding little bits to it every now and then, and still been doing stuff like swordtember to flesh out the worldbuilding! Also a lot of this is quite old (some stuff from about 2020) so excuse if the art and writing is of,,, poorer quality than my recent stuff.

As an intro, I made a little animatic trailer to the series here!

if you want full on written chapters of writing, you can read:

Curated Curios Chapter 1 and 2, and the prologue Peregrine and the Starpainter (I also have a first draft of chapter 3 written which if you want to read feel free to message me, it’s just a lil rough around the edges!) A Map of the Deadlands a web novella with some animated artwork!

Then there’s other stuff! One of them is The Back Room. This is the earliest of all of the projects and has a lot of lore, as well as stuff like DnD stats! There’s a lot of pages so I’ll highlight my faves, but have an explore because there’s other stuff than what I’ve mentioned here!

The Back Room - Artefacts The Back Room - Map of the Continent The Back Room - Races The Back Room - Museum of the Continent (DnD One Shot)

Then there’s everything I have here on tumblr! For this very ask I went through and added the #curated curios tag to everything I’ve posted here on tumblr that’s from the curated curios universe! You can follow this link or the tag on this post to check it out! Most of the artwork and stuff for it I’ve shared here on tumblr!

so yeah! I hope you enjoy !!! This universe is very dear to me and I hope you have fun checking it out :} have a lovely day !!

[grigori77]

Reasons to LOVE Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves

It's brand new in cinemas, so there are still plenty who ain't seen it, so if you're among 'em best skip this and just GO SEE IT, it's SO well worth it, genuinely it's one of the best new movies I've seen so far this year. Hope you love it as much as I did!

So, yeah, there you go - SPOILER WARNING, FOLKS!!! If you don't wanna get spoiled, RUN!!!

Still here? Okay, here we go then ...

This really is, UNAPOLOGETICALLY, a comedy. I mean yeah, this is a classic fantasy action adventure in the Willow, Krull or Ladyhawke mold, but it is also very enthusiastically POKING FUN at the classic conventions of the genre ... albeit CLEARLY done with great affection and love for the material, as only the best lampoons can be. So this is more The Princess Bride or Galaxy Quest than Your Highness or Spaceballs ...

Chris Pine is ALWAYS at his best when he's being FUNNY, so he is PERFECT here. Edgin is most definitely a bit of a douchebag, but he's the sweetest, most lovable douchebag you'll ever encounter.

Holga. Literally just EVERYTHING about Holga. She's my favourite character in this, this REALLY IS the best role that Michelle Rodriguez has EVER HAD, if you ask me. She's a total badass, a truly AMAZING FIGHTER, but I love that despite her dour demeanour she's actually quite sweet, gentle and really a great innocent in many ways. She's an absolute cinammon roll and must be protected at all costs.

OH MY GODS!!! All the easter eggs, SO MANY easter eggs ... FAR too many to count throughout, all the references and nods and winks to the game itself, all the spells and races and creatures and stuff ... but I love how the movie NEVER beats you over the head pointing any of it out, it just lets you enjoy it. So the proper fans will get a huge kick out of spotting it all, but casual viewers will just enjoy it as rich worldbuilding colour and flavour.

Seriously though, it's a D&D fan's DREAM!!! Not just the mimic, or the owlbear, or the gelatinous cube! SO MUCH to spot ...

Justice Smith's Simon gets THE CLEVEREST and best introduction in the film, I love the theatre scene, he's SO BAD at this while also simulataneously being really great. Totally sums up this gloriously clunky hot mess of a sorcerer ...

the opening is GENIUS, totally sets the movie up as it means to go on - the parole hearing is a brilliant comedic take on the scene-setting infodump which is brilliantly carried through in the way the movie delivers exposition in a fun way or just lets you absorb it through what's happening in each scene. This is the perfect, TEXTBOOK way to do it.

"That is one pudgy dragon!" LOL

Doric. Just EVERYTHING about Doric. Sophia Lillis' tiefling druid is a wonderful diminutive little action hero, so fiesty and capable. I love her. It's just a shame she's not primary coloured, I'd have loved it even more if she'd been blue, or red ...

The Wildshape Escape! XD Yeah, I love that, that's THE BEST set-piece in the whole movie, definitely, when Doric gets cught out spying and has to shapeshift on the fly to get away, and it all plays out in one immersive single shot that just leaves your heart in your mouth ...

Oh, the Speak With The Dead montage, that is comedy GOLD. Funniest scene in the whole movie. And with added payoff at the end! XD

Rege-Jean Page's Xenk Yendar. Oh boy, that paladin is something else. I love how LITERAL he is, he's like Drax in GOTG but much more intelligent. Y'know when Holga says: "You're not a lot of fun, are you?" to him? She's so wrong. I just wish there was more of him in this ...

The heist! Oh, the heist! So good ... the portal trick, it's great, love the way they did that, and then that HILARIOUS bard illusion distraction - Pine skipping the song like a broken record was just chef's kiss!

That wonderful wibbly-wobbly illusory reality thing whenever Simon tries to atune to the Helm ... wow, that is some spectacularly trippy shit. Granted, twice is fine for terms of pacing, but I could've done with a few more scenes of that, it's fascinating.

Hugh Grant really has just become a MASTER at playing smarmy, slimy duplicitous gits now, hasn't he? Forge is a reprehensible prick and I love it.

I love how they made Bradley Cooper a halfling for his cameo. They're never gonna let him live down the fact that he's now probably best known for playing a two-foot-tall talking racoon so forever after he will be a Short King.

Wow, Daisy Head's Sofina is a CRACKING villain, she's just SO CREEPY!!! I love how coolly menacing she is, a brilliant dark necromantic wizard that just makes your skin crawl. Especially at the end ... IS SHE a lich? Is that what they were doing there?

That whole big action climax, the showdown in the city centre is FIRE!!! It's so amazing, so brilliantly dynamic, with EVEN MORE great easter eggs! Simon and Sofina having an insanely awesome "arm wrestling" bout with Mage Hand versus Earthen Grasp (I think that's the spell, couldn't be sure), oh my gods! So cool ... and then the way they neutralised the threat! Brilliant.

Chloe Coleman's Kira is an absolutely adorable delight, and I think she's ENTIRELY JUSTIFIED in how pissed she is at Edgin for abandoning her. It makes the payoff when they finally make up so much better.

And that resurrection scene at the end? Yeah, sure, I saw that coming a mile off, but it was so well done, and they played it so well, that it was still SUCH a powerful scene even so. Just perfect.

Seriously, they just did this whole thing SO PERFECTLY. It's visually STUNNING, really it just looks AMAZING, and the action sequences are BRILLIANT but always feel entirely necessary for the story, which is how you want to do it. Best of all, though, is THE PACING!!! This is such a quick, breezy film, it just barrels along at a spectacular clip, so it never drags. Mark Kermode is right, even though this is two and a quarter hours long it doesn't FEEL LIKE IT, it feels like a super-trim 90-minute movie.

And it ties everything off nice and neat, too. Sure, there are definitely possibilities for the future, going forward if they make more, but if the movie DOES tank then it's fine, because this really does do a great job about feeling self-contained and telling its own complete story, so if we DON'T get more it won't be too big a disappointment ...

[thunderandsage]

netflix avatar ep. 1 thoughts (spoilers!)

major thoughts:

the framing: i was originally hesitant about starting right off the bat with the air nomad genocide and knowing that aang fled, but with the way the episode wraps up it actually does a lot of good consolidation and heavy-lifting for Aang's characterization that happened over multiple episodes in the original, so overall i think this was actually a good move

characters: sokka and aang stood out the most to me, followed by katara (still good, but less of the fire she had in the original), nevertheless all three of them managed to have a mini-arc with sokka and his leadership, aang and his duty and katara and her waterbending. zuko wasn't quite as explosive as i would have wanted but there were still moments when i genuinely had to remind myself that this isn't dante basco

worldbuilding: uhhh a bit heavyhanded in places, relies a lot on repetition of exposition, but because other dialogue is more character and action-focused i can forgive the series if they keep it just to this one episode

overall: a little clumsy at times but i thought it was nice, maybe a 7/10

details:

the prologue is a little clumsy, but it does set up the avatar cycle early on

dialogue: a little clumsy

Aang! i'm actually really happy with this aspect, the actor does a great job of balancing the fun-loving aspect with the melancholia upon learning his role

the juxtaposition between gyatso's final stand and aang drowning was really good

katara and sokka banter! speaking of which, katara and sokka don't line up 100% with their animated counterparts, but i think that's alright, and so far what i see is a good groundwork

zuko is leaning a bit more emo in this version i see

Aang sunshine vs Sokka suspicion 😭

oh no not the Gran-gran exposition dump whyyyyy we didn't need this

more focus on katara as a melancholy character? i'm a bit disappointed bc katara should be the most passionate and fiery (ha) from the get-go

zuko accepting a man-to-man fight with sokka is very in-character, though we were ROBBED of the fire nation ship breaking through the ice scene

"i think you're the bravest person i've met" that is tailor-made to get sokka on board and aang doesn't even realize it

"there's no way you're getting me on that--" CUT to sokka screaming was beautiful

ooh nice save katara! i just wish that the editing would have made the water part of it more evident bc the first time around i thought it was an airbending trick

ok i cried during the southern airtemple scene

the cuts between aang talking about loss and zuko frantically adding to his corkboard investigation wall were fabulous

[musicfeedsmysoul12]

The Top Reasons Why You Should Know Geology as a Writer

Hello, lovelies! A project for my Introduction to Geology class was to create a ‘promotion’ of Geology as it can be used for things other then you know, tourism or warning of natural disasters. Me, being the writer, decided to create this post that I will be posting for the fun of it. As this is a creative project, I decided to write it as I normally write posts here on my blog.

First off, writing is a complicated business when it comes down to it. Particularly when you get into the idea of worldbuilding. As someone who has two different worlds I’ve been working on creating, one thing that helps a lot is geology in general. I know, it sounds a bit crazy to think about. But it’s true. Geology is the study of the earth itself, and knowing how the earth works, even if it’s just basic concepts, helps build a world. After all, a town in the mountains and a town by the seaside may suffer from different natural disasters, but it comes from the same thing: the shifting of tectonic plates.

Let’s say that you’re building a world where your main character lives in the mountains. What sort of mountain town? Is it a mining town? Is it a town for tourists? In this little example, I will use a prototype for a story I am working on, where the main character lives in a town with a hot spring. How do hot springs form? Would this affect the area of the mountain town? The answer to this, of course, is geothermal heat that is pushed upwards to the upper crust. Once you know that, trying to figure out the environmental impacts of this occurs next. Then you have to think about the dangers of hot springs and so on, and how the people you have created would react to them.

Hot springs, and in general geothermal sites, have had religious or cultural connections for centuries! Think of all the health gurus talking about going to a hot spring to soak away the pain due to the minerals in a spring. Think of how people will purposely hike to get to a hot springs to soak in! An entire culture can be built around a hot springs to. Communal bathing is quite common across cultures, and a hot springs can be the site for potential political talks or even just a place of relaxation for people.

Adding to the above, you now have a tourism aspect, a possible religious aspect, an environmental concern, and a culture ready to be built up all based on a geological matter! I mean, look at the picture; it’s an image from a national parks website (https://www.nps.gov/subjects/geology/hot-springs.htm if any of you wanna look). We can see how a geological function like a hot spring can affect tourism here! Look at how many people are watching this! Even in a more medieval setting, you can’t doubt people wouldn’t line up to see this!

Let’s continue with another thought, and that is how places tend to end up settled. There are plenty of guidebooks that inform us how, as well, you can look at history! Natural resources are the answer to that, with water being a primary reason behind the settlement of many areas. But there are other resources that may have a settlement show up. Some may be organic, but others would be things such as coal, materials such as stone to create things, or it could be something like gems that people mine for money. 

As well, by considering what natural resources are around, you determine more landscape as a result of these. The picture below is a picture of the world’s largest open-pit diamond mine. Imagine that something like this exists in your story. 

And how does this happen?

Did you guess geology? You’d be right! Geology is such an ingrained process in world-building that writers don’t tend to see it. And let’s be real, if you have a group of people who live by a mine and a group of people who live by a lake, there are vastly different concerns each other has. This again comes down to the effects geology has on EITHER of these things.

Some writers ignore how geology works. JR Tolkein may have been a fantastic writer, but in the end his ideas on mountains were pretty wrong. Not bad, just wrong. While I’ll never say you can’t bend some rules for the fun of it when writing fantasy, I will say most people enjoy the sprinkling of reality littering the pages of their work rather then not. As well, it’s easier on the writer to. 

I mean, I prefer not to wonder what sort of dangers there are in my worlds.  If I can take a two-second Google Search to get an idea of it, it’s easier than trying to think of these things myself. Look to the above picture! We now have, in fact, at least 6 (6!!) things to include as worries for your little fishing village on the ocean. And guess what?! TWO of these things are related to geology! 

So, to recap so far: Geology can be used to not only give your world either income, but it can also enable you to create a religion based on things around them, it can be used to create interesting landscapes and can give you natural disasters that are connected to said landscapes!

Wanna know what ELSE Geology can be used for?

Naming your little villages and towns. No, I am NOT kidding.

Look, people name places either after relatives, or themselves or they looked around frantically before pointing at the nearest rock and went: ROCK TOWN. Don’t believe me?

In Alberta, we have: High River, Slave Lake, Okotoks (A reference to Big Rock, using the Blackfoot word for rock, "ohkotok"), Diamond Valley, Fox Creek, Milk River, Peace River, Pincher Creek, Rocky Mountain House- the list just goes on and on and on!! And again, GEOLOGY. Struggling with naming your little mountain town? Did you but a mine near it? What does the mine produce? Diamonds?

Boom. Diamondville. It’s that easy when you’ve created the geology of the world, you can just use words from your area! No more hard time thinking about it, just GO FOR IT!

So, in the end: learn geology. It gives you a way to create culture, economic concerns, a name for places and even see what sort of local concerns there are in even the smallest village. 

[insertdisc5]

Devlog #11: Localization and Organizing Notes

Hello everyone! Welcome to this month’s devlog!

If you just stumbled upon this, I am Adrienne, also known as insertdisc5! I’m the developer, writer, artist, main programmer, etc of the game. The game being In Stars and Time, a timeloop RPG, which is the next and final game in the START AGAIN series, following START AGAIN: a prologue (available here!).  You can find out more about In Stars and Time here!!! 

LET’S GET TO IT. This month's devlog is about localizations and how I organize my notes!

The month of January has, once again, been all about bug fixing. My producer once told me QA and bug fixing would take forever and I didn’t believe her, but it is true. You kill one bug and three take its place.

Bugs aside, the first pass of the localization of the game into Japanese has been completed (thanks Kakehashi Games!) ! Wait did we even mention officially that the game will be in English and Japanese at release. Well there you go! In Stars and Time will be released in both English and Japanese!!!

Now that the first pass is over, it’s time for the very time intensive work of adding all that translated text into the game, as well as translating any illustrations. And after that, the localization team will take over QA, and will play the game from beginning to end in Japanese, making sure everything works well in context!

I can’t wait for Japanese speakers to try out the game as well!!!

Oh! Also, speaking of words, I wrote a post on how I approach worldbuilding, more specifically expressions and swear words and about how Jesus Christ is not canonical to the ISAT universe. Mayhaps it could tickle your fancy?

Uuuuuh this devlog is so short. I feel bad. Well uh (thinks very hard) how about you come with me on a journey, and look at how I organize my notes? Yeah? YEAH!!! (This section will feature: blocked out text) (Also: I realized after writing all this that I did talk about my writing process a bit in my #2 devlog. Well uh you get writing process: 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

I use OneNote for all my ISAT notes! I use it because quite frankly this was the first software I tried and it works. I like how it has tabs within tabs within tabs, so I can easily (ISH?) find any notes I’m looking for!

If you look at the colored tabs, the first one is “demo”, which is everything related to START AGAIN: a prologue (aka: has not been looked at for a year). It contains all the text in the game, as well as general gameplay notes and musings like “hey wouldnt it be fun if I used rock/paper/scissors.” You might notice the text here isn’t in the correct order. That’s a feature not a bug, thats just how my brain works OK!!!!!

The second tab is “Game”, which is the big In Stars And Time tab. It’s divided into a lot of sections, including: 

General Dev Notes, which contains general reminders (“ADD MORE PUNS”).

Random Dialogue Corner, which, as the name implies, contains a lot of random dialogues between the characters. They’re also divided into different sections, depending on what kind of dialogue it is- is it a funny scene, or a more serious one? Is it between characters, or just Siffrin going on a big monologue? Etc. This dialogue may or may not be in the game, its main reason for existing is “hee hee I like when my little guys talk in my head”.

Gameplay and Stuff, which is all about the rpg part of the game. What are the skills? How does each enemy behave? What quests are available? How does the game over screen work? Etc

And finally, a big section filled with The Story, which is divided into acts. From the very start, I knew ISAT would have very delimited story beats, which made it easy to just go “ok, this scene goes into Act 3”, etc. For the text, I make sure to keep all the different drafts I had of a specific scene, partly because I sometimes lose a nugget of Fun Stuff by rewriting a scene, and partly because it’s fun to see how a scene has evolved. I tend to write important story scenes 3 times, each time without looking at earlier drafts to see what comes out, and then frankenstein the scene from what I have.

In general I try to keep as many of my notes as possible, because I deleted a lot of my notes for START AGAIN: a prologue and it makes me sad I can’t look at my thought process on a lot of things anymore. KEEP YOUR NOTES KIDS

Going back to the big tabs, next we have “World”, which is everything related to worldbuilding, relationships between characters, the general timeline, more detailed notes on the culture, etc. I used this tab a lot less as time went on, but at the start it was very useful to be able to refer to it, especially for all the city names and their spelling…

After that, we have the “Devlog” tab, which is my own private devlog! I find it very useful to keep a private devlog for myself, because it helps me see clearly that YES, the game is coming along. Every week, I try to write down where I’m at, any problems that I have, as well as screenshots of what the game looks like. 

I also give myself space to write how I feel about the game! How is it going? Is it fun to work on this? What do I think about the story, about this character, about this development? I think it’s important to write those things down in the moment- I always keep in mind this post by Wreden, the creator of the Stanley Parable- in it, he talks about the reaction to the Stanley Parable, and how getting so many Thoughts thrown his way about what his game means meant that he lost sight of what his game meant to him. In Stars and Time means a lot to me, and I want to make sure future me remembers why!

Next is “meta”, which is mostly coding references. The way rpgmaker (and, I guess, most video game software???) works is by using variables to keep track of quests and whatnot, and so I used this tab to write down “if this variable equals 5, it means we’re at that point in this quest”! I also used it for code I always use but can’t be bothered to remember, like the conditional code that checks if a switch is ON or not. Aka the simplest most basic code. LISTEN I DON’T WANNA REMEMBER CODE OK

After that is the “To Do” tab, which is pretty self explanatory. I try to divide it into chunks like “To do (localization)”, so I don’t have a massive to-do list, but instead lots of small ones, teehee. This is also where I keep my changelog, to write down any changes I make between builds.

And last, but definitely not least, is my “Messy File” tab! This is where I put ALL MY NOTES. It needs different parts because I made a new part every time opening a tab made my computer chug like crazy. Because it has so many words.

I get an idea for a scene in the middle of the night? GOES INTO THE MESSY SCENE. Oh, I realized when I was grocery shopping that I should fix this small bug by doing this! MESSY FILE. Hehe what if I drew Siffrin baldMESSY FILE. Everything goes there, and then every couple weeks I go through it and put all those little nuggets of ideas into their actual tab. I find it useful to have a file that is allowed to be messy as hell, so the other tabs can be clean and neat!

The Messy File tab also contains the “Entire Story”, which is something I wrote in August 2021 when I started thinking I had no idea where I was going. I took like 4 hours to write down the entire story, from beginning to end, and if I had no idea what would happen, I would just make it up on the spot even if I thought it was bad. And guess what. After that, I knew where I was going. CRAZY!!! I did that a couple more times when I felt stuck at a specific point in the story, and it helped me every time. Would recommend.

And, that’s it! That’s how I organize my notes! I hope! This was! Insightful! Somehow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s all I have to say for today! Let me know if you have any questions, or if there’s any aspect of the game development struggle you’d like me to talk about! See you next time!!!

AND DON’T FORGET TO WISHLIST THE GAME ON STEAM ALSO IT REALLY HELPS BECAUSE STEAM’S ALGORITHM IS MORE LIKELY TO SHOW OFF GAMES WITH A HIGH AMOUNT OF WISHLISTS THAT’S THE REASON WHY GAME DEVS ALWAYS ASK TO WISHLIST!!! OKAY BYE!!!!

[misc-obeyme]

I'm always brain rotting about really silly things like food, fashion, and transportation in the devildom compared to the human world. world building i suppose?

but how do you think the spice levels compare? like there's different types of spicy, and the devildom for sure has spicier stuff. But i wonder how spicy it is. Like Mammon's hell sauce noodles...

I'm thinking about this because my mom cooked dinner, and she always makes separate food for me and my little brothers if she's using chiles (in this case it was just meat cooked without the spicy sauce). and i tried some because I'm trying to finally build my tolerance and I was dying at the first bite 😭 tastes so good though. she gave me a surprised look when i added more spicy food to my plate

i already know mammon would make me try spicy things for shits and giggles, or new foods because I'm a picky eater. Also there's a saying/joke in Spanish where people will ask if you were angry while making something if it's too spicy lmao.

I haven't been too active because I've been busy working early shifts and training in framing at my old store (forgot to set my alarms the last two days), but tomorrow I'm off, and going to ihop and bookstores with my friend !! she's trying to finish her current read so we can buddy read King of Wrath together (king of sloth comes out soon). I'M SO EXICTED

Anyway i hope you're having a good day/night, and I'm very excited for the anniversary banner. May everyone's boys come home 🙏

- ✨ anon

Ohhh yessss I love worldbuilding! And there's so much they leave out, there's plenty of stuff we can fill in, which is always fun.

Okay so spice levels, apparently it really depends on the individual as to how spicy something truly is. This is because humans at least have the ability to make themselves less sensitive to capsaicinoids, which is what they call plants with capsaicin in them. That's the spicy, I think they evolved with it to prevent predators from eating them, but humans were like nope we'll just get used to it!

Anyway, I think this is relevant because it's going to depend on whether or not demons also have that ability or if it's different for them biologically. Like okay, if humans eat enough capsaicin, over time they become partly immune to it, which is why some people can eat really spicy food and other people can't. I think some of that might also just be genetics... like some people might be born more resilient to it to begin with. But don't quote me on that lol.

So demons either have a natural immunity (not completely though because they clearly can still taste the spice, it's just much less) or they also have the ability to desensitize themselves to it.

I like to think it's a bit of both just like it is in humans, but demons have a higher tolerance level to start with. And they all have it. Because they're demons and that just feels right, you know?

But I also think it'd be interesting to consider that the tongues of demons are made of different stuff than the tongues of humans. Or that there are some demons who have tongues that are more scaly or something. Just because that'd be fun lol.

Anyway, I think the spice levels in the Devildom are probably pretty high. I like to think that Mammon has an especially high tolerance due to the fact that those spicy hell sauce noodles are his favorite. You know he eats them all the time and if they can also build tolerance, he must be super used to it by now.

I definitely think he'd make you eat spicy food lol. That's just how spicy food lover are, too. I'm also extremely sensitive to spicy foods. I've been trying to build up my tolerance, too, so I've been adding some hot sauce to things, but it's nothing compared to my brother in law. His spice tolerance is insane. And he's always like, here try this it's not spicy. I have learned not to believe it.

I love the idea that being angry while cooking makes food spicy.... I feel like there could legit be a spell for that in the Devildom, too.

There you go working all kinds of crazy shifts again... truly Mammon coded lol. I hope you had an amazing day off and enjoyed your time with your friend!! I looove bookstores and pancakes, so that sounds like an excellent time!

I hope you're having a lovely day/night as well! And YES I too am quite excited about the HDD~ spreading all the love & luck to all to get their faves~

[thydungeongal]

what would be best setting if i want to run a game about nobodies but not as much dungeon crawling as being mercenaries or gangsters and other picaresque things?

not necessarily official i just want to see what worldbuilding for actual games looks like

(ty for the answer btw)

I think Brancalonia (a "Spaghetti fantasy" setting inspired by medieval Italy) might be worth looking at. It explicitly lists picaresques among its many inspirations. I haven't read it but the aesthetic does look fantastic and based on the ad copy it is clearly more about smaller, personal narratives than epic storylines.

As far as official D&D settings go, Greyhawk is a bit more grounded in tone than Forgotten Realms at least based on the few adventure modules canonically set in Greyhawk I've read.

Not a setting but a game, but Errant (a cool lil fantasy RPG that takes after an old-school D&D lineage) doesn't come with a premade setting attached, but I feel it still has a very clear implied setting (I mean all RPGs have an implied setting but some more so than others). There's a free version of it available, which only lacks the art. The text is still there.

And finally I think Warlock! also has an implicit setting that is very supportive of that style of play. Warlock! is not a D&D-like at all, more like if someone made a hybrid of the system in the Fighting Fantasy game books and early Warhammer Fantasy. It's a quite fun game and definitely has a very grim tone with little room for heroics.

[sophia-sol]

Delicious in Dungeon (Dungeon Meshi), by Ryoko Kui, translated by Taylor Engel

I decided to read Dungeon Meshi because I kept seeing people on tumblr posting about the new anime adaptation, and it looked fun and cute. And although I don't watch much tv, there was an entire manga I could read instead! So I did.

The basic premise: in a world where adventuring parties going on dungeon crawls is a thing that happens, one guy has a dream: to be able to cook and eat all the different kinds of monsters in the dungeon, to be able to find out how they taste!

And because his party needs to be able to head deep into the dungeon to rescue a party member who was left behind, and they don't have the funds or the time to collect supplies, all of a sudden they have REASON to need to eat monsters. They're going to forage and hunt for all their meals as they make their way down.

So using that as the basis, the manga goes on to explore the worldbuilding, the interrelationships of the characters in the party, everyone's backstories and reasons for being there, a developing plot, and of course, the ingredients and nutritional composition and flavour of every meal they eat.

I absolutely adored every bit of this!!! The main characters are all a delight, and it's the kind of story where the author sees and shows you the inherent personness of all characters, including antagonists. And the world created to make sense of the dungeon's existence is fascinating, as are all the ways the ecosystems within the dungeon are expanded upon to make sense of the creatures living within it.

And it's a story that knows what its themes are, too, and is able to tie them all together in extremely satisfying ways in the climax of the narrative!

I had this moment leading up towards the ending where I was like:

[thematic spoilers below the cut]

ohhhh it's about….everyone being part of a balanced ecosystem of life and death where everything sustains everything else! the various human species included! and I was filled through my very soul with this feeling of connectedness myself.

Anyway it was amazing and I had a lot of feels.

And as well as enjoying all of that, I also just really loved our main characters! We start out seeing them all fairly shallowly but over the course of the story as more aspects of them are revealed they're all just…..I love every one of them.

I did struggle with a few aspects of the manga, but none of it significantly affected my ability to enjoy the read:

It kept adding more and more characters, and I got rather lost occasionally trying to keep track of them all. But ultimately it's not vital to remember every tertiary character to get a good read out of this, so it's not as bad as it could be.

In the mid to later parts, it became a lot more plot focused and actiony than I'd really been expecting, in a way that made it harder for me to follow, since fight scenes in sequential art are challenging for me. And occasionally it drew back more than I wanted from its focus on food. But it refocused eventually!

It turned out to be pro monarchy in the end, which isn't my fave, but it's not like a major theme of the manga or anything so I could overlook it.

I kept expecting it to have at least a little bit of textual queerness, and there wasn't any as far as I could see! Even various background relationships or depictions of people's attraction was m/f. But uh. Falin/Marcille, anyone? There are some powerful vibes there. (I'll also accept Laios/Kabru)

In conclusion, I highly recommend it, and if you want to read it, you can read the whole thing online for free in English translation here: https://dungeonmeshi.com/manga/dungeon-meshi-chapter-1/

[far-side-skies]

Reworking Noob

Inspired by this post by @crossyyt. Saying what we're all thinking, Number One Fan was a lackluster episode despite the fact that it furthered what little overarching plot we managed to get out of the end of Season 2.

And it's because of this guy.

Gifs from this post by @atmosiacyclonia

Yeah, Noob. "The fan", and the writers' way of making jabs at both the fanbase and the industry as a whole apparently. Kind of entertaining on a first watch, especially over a decade after the show has ended, but looking at it critically...

He's just kind of a nothing character overall. We didn't need him to get involved in the quest for Warp crystals, he doesn't add anything to the story, he doesn't leave any meaningful impact on the story and yet he gets frozen in the prison crystal in Cyclonia Rising. Anyone could've been in his place and not much would've changed overall.

But I'm a believer that all characters have a use, you just need to find one for them. Noob didn't have much potential, but the potential that he did have feels wasted.

So let's see how he could've been put to better use.

TL;DR: I put him on the reserve team that was mentioned in Talon Academy and then never brought up again. Alternatively he could be a relative of Dark Ace.

Edit: I hit post on this too soon, added more thoughts as soon as I realised this wasn't in my drafts anymore.

First off: remove the meta commentary aspect. Poking fun at fans is bad form and commentary on real-life merch production in a fantasy setting like this is, in my opinion, nonsensical and makes my worldbuilding brain itch.

Second: Let's take a look at this kid's design.

When did y'all notice that Noob has black hair

and red eyes?

I only noticed a year ago.

Remind you of someone?

Allow me to freak out a bit, because

This can't have been an accident, right? What was the intent behind it? As far as I've noticed, these are the only two characters with this specific colouring. What was Nerd Corps trying to tell us??

Ok, freakout over. What are our options?

Noob and Dark Ace are related, and Noob's obsession with the Storm Hawks comes from knowing that he had a relative who was part of the old team.

Possible, but considering how quickly Noob bounced from being a Storm Hawks fan to an Absolute Zeroes fan, I don't think it's likely. If that is the case, then a rewrite of the episode would be needed to show a little bit more loyalty from Noob. I don't know about everyone else, but the jump from one fanbase to another feels like a pattern of behaviour in my opinion. He rotates through special interests on the regular. Nothing against that in a real-life context, but it feels like another mean-spirited jab at fans.

Meta commentary aside, Noob could be rewritten to be a fan of the original Storm Hawks because of this potential relation to them. It'd give us something close to a "real" origins episode if Noob was given a chance to infodump about his old idols. Maybe he dislikes the new team for being "inauthentic", or he doesn't care all that much about them, he's just interested in the Condor; a crucial piece of Storm Hawks history.

As for Dark Ace? Noob could either be unaware that the copilot he might be related to was a traitor (possibly indicating that the Sky Knights tried to cover up the traitor aspect), or he rejects the copilot out of disgust. He's just a traitorous Cyclonian after all and fodder for an identity crisis in Noob if he was anything close to a main character.

In short: Noob could've been used as an exposition device.

Option 2, and my personal take on how Noob can be made useful:

Rewrite him in full and give him a touch more screen time. Put him in Talon Academy for a scene or two, and then have him beg to join the reserve team that Aerrow suggested to Lynn. "Number One Fan" makes good on this suggestion and is about the whole reserve team, not just Noob.

I see this as a two birds, one stone solution. Noob gets to be useful, keeps his character trait as a mega-fan of the Storm Hawks, and that loose end from Talon Academy gets tied up somewhat. As much as I love the show, its episodic writing lead to quite a bit of disappointment. But it just means we get to play with all the elements like dolls.

Let him be an exposition piece for the world in regards to sky knight merchandise, but have it make sense in the context of Atmos. If he really is the only Storm Hawks fan out there (which I find doubtful), why are action figures of the team being made without the Hawks knowing? Either all his figures be handmade, or repurposed from existing figures of more popular teams like the Rex Guardians. Or hell, keep the joke that there aren't any Piper dolls in production, but have it be due to resource scarcity brought in by the war. Or Cyclonis bought every single Piper doll to use as target practise for whatever machine or weapon she's working on.

As I said above, let him be from the Talon Academy. Have him be so enamoured with the Hawks' takedown of this Cyclonian institution that he latched onto them as heroes and then got wrapped up in war propaganda in his efforts to become their number one fan. He's obviously a good few years younger than the team, so have his understanding of the war be incredibly shallow, and maybe give him an arc where he learns from that.

I was going to add more to this a lot more but a misclick or some kind of tumblr goof caused this to he published half-finished instead of saving it to my drafts, so eventually I'll make another post elaborating on these ideas. For now though I'm curious to see what everyone thinks, and their own takes on Noob. Is he a waste of screen time? Did you guys scrap him in your AUs? Did yall forget about him? Let me know.

[save-the-villainous-cat]

*deep breath, dee* I’m not here to fight…as an avid Tolkien reader, what are your reasons for hating the Hobbit movies? How, pray tell, are they so “terrible”? I’m just curious. That’s all.

Is it the cinematography? The actors? Missing scenes? Give me something here. So many people hate on the movies but never give reasons. It starts to feel like it’s because it’s simply not LOTR- and the fact that there’s an age gap. The Hobbit is baby. LOTR is everyone’s great grandmother who makes you warm cookies every time you visit.

Oh boy, here we go.

Lucky for you, I am an unhinged movie nerd and I have lots of food for you on here…

When we talk about the Hobbit, we also have to talk about Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit got published in 1937 and is a fantasy novel for children. Tolkien wrote this book for his kids, so it was a silly story with a simple moral. An episodic narrative with a message about greed and trust, adding lots of adventure and fun. It’s one of the best-selling books ever written. It’s a classic.

Fellowship of the Ring got published in 1954 and is not intended for children. Simply, Allen & Unwin (Tolkien’s publisher) wanted a sequel to the Hobbit and Tolkien provided with a story that is more mature. Because his kids grew up. And those kids who had read the Hobbit had also grown up. Which made Fellowship a perfect story for those grown-ups/teenagers.

And that’s the thing. Fellowship works as a sequel. The Hobbit does not work as a prequel.

We have two completely different stories here on our hands: a story about a ring a bunch of people would like to have and a story about dwarves fighting over their home and…a bunch of treasure. The central conflicts have nothing to do with each other. The Hobbit doesn’t set up the worldbuilding of middle earth, doesn’t tell the story about Sauron nor the rings. And that is because it is not a prequel. It is its own story with its own central conflict.

This made this book a bit difficult to adapt. We either have the chance to turn this childlike story into a movie or turn it into a trilogy that works as prequels to Lord of the Rings (which they desperately tried to do here). I’m not saying there wasn’t any other way — I think they should’ve let Guillermo del Toro do his two movies (as originally intended) that included the overall spirit of the books and could be their own movies without having to reference Lord of the Rings all of the time but we ended up with three movies that can’t be their own thing because trilogies and because money.

The Hobbit is a relatively short book. Roughly around 95,000 words. Fellowship, just Fellowship is around 187,000 words. And it makes sense to make a movie trilogy out of a book trilogy, especially because those books follow a much more Hollywood structure.

But get this. We take the Hobbit with roughly 95,000 words. And we turn this book into a trilogy which leaves us with nine acts in total. Nine acts which leads to adding a bunch of stuff to fill all the plot points. A bunch of mini climaxes that go nowhere, character movements that come too early or too late, adding characters and subplots that absolutely no one asked for (at least of all the story).

For example, the scene at the end of the first movie where Thorin respects Bilbo is way too early. Their relationship doesn’t evolve at all in the second movie. Sure, they fight or whatever in the third movie but wouldn’t it have made sense to show Thorin’s respect for Bilbo when Bilbo frees the dwarves in the barrel plot point? It was originally set to be there but now that it’s not, the barrel plot point is super weak and doesn’t work for character/relationship development at all. It is there because the plot needs it to be there. Bilbo doesn’t have to prove anything, he just does it because the plot needs him to.

And why is that? Because we needed this little climax at the end of movie one (because storytelling and story structure) where Bilbo, a character who is known for his intelligence, who is — unlike the dwarves — not a fighter, fucking knocks over an orc. Don’t tell me this was character development. If this was character development, then he would’ve started killing orcs in movie two and three. Bilbo is not a fighter. He is characterised by his wits. But because the plot needed him to, he had to do this. Weirdly, he doesn’t really do it again, does he?

Originally, the first movie was supposed to end with the dwarves arriving at Erebor/Laketown with movie two starting with getting into Erebor. Smaug’s death would’ve been the midpoint of movie two. Not the most anticlimactic thing to have ever happened in movie three.

Seriously? You kill the main antagonist before the opening title? What were these guys thinking? The death of the Cumberbatch lizard was supposed to be the thing and they just killed him off in the most anticlimactic way ever, thanks to the structure of turning a little book into three movies.

Which makes us watch a bunch of stupid shit: dwarves are — according to the Desolation of Smaug — fire-resistent, we get scary CGI, we get the White Council because, guys, have you heard of lotr, we get a horrible love triangle, a horrible Tauriel who has no character whatsoever, we get Legolas, because guys, remember this trilogy you liked when you were younger, do you remember lotr, we get a river fight scene that is unnecessary, we get Galadriel x Gandalf for whatever reason, a Beorn chase scene, a random trip to Angmar that leads nowhere, Elijah Wood because, hey guys, do you remember LOTR? We get Radagast with poop on his head because we need to tell the people the forest is dying and something bad is coming because lotr, remember? We need Sauron in here because…wait a minute these movies try to be prequels to Lord of the Rings??

It doesn’t work like this. The Hobbit is episodic and not related to Lord of the Rings plotwise. Yes, Bilbo finds the ring but that is that. Help, the ring is actually evil is the only thing that connects these two stories. Nothing more.

But now, we have these three movies full of stuff that doesn’t make any sense, full of characters that stand for nothing, full of contradictions, full of — sorry — bullshit because we needed three movies and as much lotr in it as possible.

Why is Tauriel there? Why is Legolas here? The Necromancer was a plot device to separate Gandalf from the dwarves (which was important for dwarf/Bilbo bonding time) but now the Necromancer is Sauron? Why? Why?

There is more wrong with this trilogy (and don’t get me started on all the stuff regarding the production/New Zealand) and if you’re interested in that, you should watch Lindsay Ellis’ videos on YouTube. She’s an amazing writer and movie critic — a great inspiration— and sums up my thoughts on it pretty well.

But I hope this is somewhat understandable? As someone who grew up with the Lord of the Rings, I am very passionate about these movies and the nostalgia they give me. It is very sad that we ended up with something like this and not Guillermo’s version. Like…c’mon if I recall correctly, these movies came out in December which makes them perfect Academy material and the Academy loves Guillermo…win win for everybody, but no…

[sipsteainanxiety]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers. Let’s spread the self-love ❤

i was tagged by @coopigeoncoo @andypantsx3 @willowser and @namodawrites to do this lil self fic rec game and after finally sitting down to think about it for a very... long... time... i have done it! thank you all for the tag i kiss you each on the forehead and give you a bowl of sliced fruit<3

after looking at all the wips i have in docs right now, i can definitely say that this list would be completely different if i had finished a few of them, but for now this is my ranked list for things i've published already lol

devil's glare — demon!bkg x reader

bakugou katsuki is a powerful demon that you have the pleasure of dating. but when he pisses you off one day, you decide to get back at him in a pretty petty way: drawing a salt circle around you to force him to apologize 

i had THEE most fun writing this one shot LMAO. it was based on a tiktok of all things that i'd found back when i was still on the app pfft. i just loved the idea of bkg being all surly and aggravated that his little human had purposely drawn a salt circle to prevent him from encroaching on their space. and like... him dealing with wanting to idk kiss you so bad but you're trying to teach him a lesson and he's sooooo mad and fuck, he's gonna do whatever he can to get you to comply to him lmao. if i could draw, there's this one scene where you're wearing this like. cute little set of pjs staring up at this big ass demon, wings unfurled threateningly, snarl on his face, arms crossed with a line of salt in between the two of you. like i have a vision. too bad i can't draw it LMFAOO. maybe one day

2. holding out (just for you) — dragon!bkg x reader

in which you find a horrendously injured dragon in a cave and make it your duty to heal him, not knowing that he’s the infamous dragonshifter, bakugo katsuki, who has been cursed to remain trapped in his dragon form forever—unless the spell is broken

this fic... oh boy. i've been working on this fic since mmm 2021 i think? i can't believe it's been a year since the big bang LMFAOO. i also can't blv this shit evolved from being a standalone to having 3 spinoffs and a sequel but well. here we are. complaints aside i really do have fun writing this fic!! i dunno!! i dont think i'd ever read a dragon bkg fic before and i was like fine i'll do it myself and this happened. i added way too much plot and you guys don't even know about half the worldbuilding and shit i have planned for the sequel HAHA. i can't even talk about it bc it would be major spoilers rn rhrsfjhrjfrjrhjg. it's also been giving me such a rough time lately pfft, especially with having to make sure everything lines up for the spinoffs n stuff. im so afraid of publishing ch4 and having to go back and tweak things bc i havent planned out far enough sdkjfsjkdf. i think it just means i'm gonna have to go on a hiatus or smthn and write out all the spinoffs + ch4 at once idk

3. and i give my all (to you) — merman!bkg x reader

you think you bit off more than you could chew when you decided to do your dissertation on ocean acidification, leaving you stranded out in the open ocean. alone. for months. well… maybe you weren’t so alone after all

this is another fic that i've been working on way longer than it's been posted for pfft. i can't blv the first chapter was released over a year ago LMAOOO i am so sorry. i do like this fic tho bc it's one of the easier ones to write and i go back to it sometimes between writing for dragon bkg lol. like i have the chapters all mapped out, all i have to do is sit down and write em. ch2's at abt 3k rn tho and i hit a spot where i'm like oof i dont wanna write these descriptions dfhdkfg it's just a silly goofy story with merbaku and dealing with some of the subtle intricacies of getting to know a mermaid. actually, fun fact, this originally started off as a fic for jotaro from jjba, back when i was in my jjba era. but then i went back to my bkg era and switched it over. i didn't even have to change much LMFAOO jotaro and bkg act the same sometimes. also!! this is the first fic where i'm like... drawing little doodles for each chapter!! and it's so nice but also i'm like damn wtf do i draw for the rest of these chapters.... i'll figure it out ig

4. loving all the parts of you — pro hero!bkg x reader

in which you learn to love all the prickly parts that make up bakugou katsuki

i.. don't think i've thought about this fic for a very, very long time. but i just scrolled thru the masterlist and stuff and i... really liked writing it (when i was focused on it anyways). it's one of my gentler fics tbh. it's more of a character study of bkg, exploring a different aspect of him in each chapter. tbh i need to go through and reread it and make edits so it can better match the writing style i have now, but i rly liked thinking abt what would make bkg tick as a pro and as a person. and tbh, with what i know now of the manga and anime i think i could go very deep with it pfft. also the banner i made for this fic is so cute LOL. it's not high on my priority list rn bc i have other things i wanna work on, but i do hope to return to it one day.

5. forget me not — pro hero!bkg x reader

When you first woke up, you found yourself in a white room, lights blinding you from all directions. A bit disoriented, you squinted and looked around, realizing you were chained to a chair, your arms locked behind you. In front of you was a poster of a man, muscles rippling throughout his body, a spiky mess of ash blond hair nestled on his head, and striking crimson eyes glaring right at you from behind a black mask. In the upper right corner was the name “DYNAMIGHT” in black and orange letters. As you observed the poster, the sound of a P.A. system suddenly rang into existence, the deep, hoarse voice of an unknown person echoing around you. “Your name is [Name] [Surname],” the voice said without emotion, “and you hate the man named Bakugou Katsuki.”

THIS FIC... THIS FCKIN FIC. i have so much i can say about this fic and i am so sorry for the oncoming ramble pfft. firstly, it's both my baby and my number one fucking enemy. like, holy shit i think it gave me the most paralyzing anxiety and bc of this it took me like 3-4 years to finish (apart from being generally busy of course). i started it literally while i was in high school n applying to college, so of course there are aspects of it that i look at now and i'm like mmm don't like that. not to mention there have been so many things that happened in the anime/manga that i wasn't able to add or delve deeper into!! like the war!! bkg's fcking trauma!! midoriya's quirks!! i was an anime only when i first started releasing chapters (and i still am), so i didnt know about the endeavor agency arc or anything so i defaulted to shit with best jeanist and idkidk.

if i could rewrite all of fmn, i think i would. or maybe not all, but a good chunk of it. like i'd condense the first few chapters probably. i also have a different grasp of bkg's characterization now compared to when i was younger lmao. putting bkg in that specific circumstance (iykyk, i wont spoil it) only happened bc of certain outside factors that forced him into that position. which was how i was able to justify it. but... idk. IDK!! this fic had so many things to it that i was not knowledgeable about so i winged a lot of things without doing proper research (i.e. hospitals, police investigations, general bureaucracy and whatnot) and i feel like this has caused certain plot holes that i am not able to detect, but like.... it's been so long already that i'm too lazy to fix it.

i just really wanted to write about having amnesia but... still having this muscle memory and ache of the person you were in love with. that you can fall in love with them all over again. but, jeez, i put the reader through so much that there's so much... trauma and brainwashing and just rhhrhjrkhrhgrkjg. she's a mess and a half!! and this makes it so difficult to read fmn bc she's so frustrating!! but! at the same time idk it was interesting exploring that kind of ptsd and recovery. i think at my core i love writing about truly heartwrenching topics and horror. i rmb i had the most fun writing about reader's nightmares or that one chapter where she was messing around with illusions. actually- one of the things i would change is the reader's fckin quirk and hero name LMAOOOOO what the fuck i made her so op i basically just smashed together dr strange's and wanda's powers for her pfft. i'd also tweak her personality a little, i think.

i digress. anyways. im in the process of editing all of fmn (just like. writing tweaks. changing the phrasing of certain sentences. adding more fluff to descriptions) and i can really see how much my style has evolved lol. like, i am the most happy and proud of the later chapters, where you can really feel certain emotions with bkg and reader. like... the beach scene, or the stakeout scene, or the party scene!! i think i would also add more substance to the investigation and how being a hero is like post-war. the antagonists as well!! there's just so much that could've been built on, but at the same time... i didn't want to go too deep into it bc i was writing an amnesia recovery story.

flaming aside, i am very glad i was able to pull those plot twists successfully LOL. i loved reading people's theories back when i was still updating it, seeing them question things and being like wait a minute... no way... it can't be... it was an era i will never forget pfft. but... because of that expectation i think i was very nervous to reveal specific things or even write the ending bc i didn't know if people would be satisfied lol. fmn was so complicated and for what sdfkjhs. fanfic shouldnt make you this anxious fr and yet there i was. i'm glad im done with it, but at the same time.. i do miss it.

tldr: fmn is the fic that i am the most proud of but also the most insecure LMFAOO. i do eventually want to get to the extra chapters from bkg's pov for it but... idk. i don't wanna even look at it right now sdhfskdfjsf

thank u all for coming to my ted talk B) i'm sorry if u've been tagged alr in this but here we go anyways!! no pressure tags: @earthtooz @call-me-ko @thecatduet422 @boo-kugo @theloveinc <3

[i-didnt-hate-it]

I didn't hate Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, honestly it was awesome!

I just got done watching it so I'm still digesting it, but here are my initial thoughts. Any potential spoilers will go under a break.

I went into GxK that it would be similar to GvK and the other Monsterverse films: big monkey hit big lizard, big lizard breathe laser, big monkey block laser with big axe, and so on. And don't get me wrong, it definitely was all that, all pro wrestling but with big monsters, but in a cooler way than what I thought. I'm still trying to figure out what all made GxK more than what I was expecting, but I think this is the main bit.

In today's media, there seems to basically be two options. Either you make a show on streaming, which means your seasons are too short so you have to sacrifice character to plot. Or you make a two to three hour long movie, which uses a big budget to explain either characters or concept, hopefully with something of a plot to tie it together.

But GxK is a secret third thing. Worldbuilding. Adding to lore. Letting the landscapes they paint and the creatures that inhabit them speak for themselves. There were long stretches of screentime where the titans weren't necessarily fighting, they were just doing their thing, exploring their worlds.

Now obviously we need some humans to A, be able to connect to the story some, and B, know what is actually going on. Because while I would love a completely dialogue kaiju movie, the concepts and gimmicks of the Monsterverse just get too convoluted to figure out without Exposition Lady.

I can confirm that Legendary realized that the less human characters they have the better. The cast was relatively small, and while character development was minimal, they did make me feel some feelings toward some of the humans. But they made the right call not giving them too much of the story. What is this, Godzilla Minus One?

It's not, and if you can go into it knowing that it isn't even close to being the same movie as Minus One, and just watch it as a fun Monsterverse entry, I think you'll love it. The music is great too, better than GvK, imo. VFX were awesome too.

Okay, now for some spoilers, just random extra thoughts:

Godzilla really did the OMG MOTHRA!!! thing from that one meme! And I did too tbh, our Queen is back and beautiful as ever!

I love how it wasn't an instant father/son connection between Kong and Mini-Kong (I don't remember his name). Kong tried to help him out a couple times, but then gave up after MINI KONG TRIED TO KILL HIM LIKE MULTIPLE TIMES! Like come on, this little guy is just chaotic. But like they actually had growth in their trust and relationship, it wasn't just like "me big, you little, I dad now".

Scar King was actually a lot cooler than I was expecting. Shimo/Shimu whatever her name is did not have as big a role as I was expecting, but I'm glad she's okay.

Shout out to Mothra for stopping her boyfriend from killing Kong, helping them in Hollow Earth, and then just chilling when they all went to Rio. She said, "you guys got this, right?"

When I saw there was another hollow earth inside Hollow Earth, I'll admit I had a bit of an eye roll. But they explained it away pretty well.

SCOTTISH GUY THAT SAID SHIT IN STAR WARS. Alex Ferns is literally the same character he was in Andor.

I love how they imply that they basically imply that the Iwi had something to do with building the pyramids in Egypt by having the portal thing open RIGHT NEXT TO THEM. Made a cool setting for the fight, too.

At this point, I have no idea how big the Coliseum actually is.

Last thing, for now. For having top billing, Godzilla wasn't in it as much as I thought he might be. I think Legendary is realizing that if you have a character like Godzilla who can just level up his powers instantly to take on anything, and just kinda does his own thing, you've gotta limit that screen time. Since Kong is kinda humanoid, it's easier to empathize with him and thus add character development. Godzilla can only convey so much emotion that most humans can relate to (obviously Shin and Minus convey a lot of emotions, but anyway). Godzilla is in the movie, but Kong is more of the star. Honestly the world of the Hollow Earth and the Iwi people and their history are almost as much of the focus.

[zxal]

hey im interested in getting into ygo do u have any recs or recommended orders of reading/watching theres a lot from the looks of it on anilist so i was wondering about your preferences o:

ANON I ABSOLUTELY DOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I'm only about halfway through the sequels (i just started arc-v) so I'm not like the most knowledgable person in the world but I can give you my personal recs. COME CLOSER!!!!!

First of all, every yugioh series is totally independent from each other (sort of - gx is set directly after dm and leans on its worldbuilding quite a bit, and 5ds takes place in the same universe as well though a bit further in the future, but you can watch them on their own with no problem) so if there's one in particular that grabs you there's nothing stopping you from jumping straight to it - that being said I've been watching all of the anime in release order (ygo dm -> gx -> 5ds -> zexal -> arc-v (i am here) -> vrains -> sevens -> go rush) and I've been enjoying it a lot. I also wouldn't recommend watching arc-v in particular without having watched the ones before it as it probably won't really have any impact for you. Now for specific recommendations (in order) !!!! SORRY THIS GOT REALLY LONG.

yugioh manga - START HERE !!!!! the original story by kazuki takahashi. high school boy inherits an ancient magical artifact containing a spirit that's really, really good at playing games (and inflicting psychological torment on bullies). I have to give it a warning for some shonen-typical creepiness towards female characters in the early chapters, but it's REALLY worth reading and it's a story that's so near and dear to my heart. this is the fastest and easiest way to start loving yugioh. Its worth noting that the original ygo manga is the ONLY manga (afaik) that tells the same story as its anime + i haven't read any of the others aside from a little bit of the gx manga, so the rest of my recs are anime-only

(optional) yugioh season 0 / 1998 / toei - a one-season anime based on the early manga chapters. if you like the horror vibes of the manga you'll enjoy this a lot. really fun 90s animation with a killer soundtrack, but generally not considered """canon"""

yugioh duel monsters - this is the one most people watched as a kid. it's an adaptation of the manga, but with most of the early chapters cut out so as to get straight to the card games + some extra arcs added in. this is most people's favorites and the most popular! you can also watch this in lieu of the manga, but you will be missing a LOT of the early story or experiencing it in condensed form (and the plot of ygo dm is already patchy At Best).

yugioh gx - direct anime sequel to ygo dm. boy goes to gamer school to become the next king of games + high school shenanigans ensue. gx is a really charming, goofy romp with a super lighthearted s1, an interesting s2 and a shockingly engrossing s3. s4 (the last 25 episodes or so) never got dubbed in english so if you're a dub enjoyer like me you'll have to switch to subs to get the full story

yugioh 5ds - direct sequel to gx, though further in the future than gx was to dm. card games on motorcycles are real and so is class warfare and the surveillance state. iirc this is the only yugioh anime that was rated 4+ - it has a slightly more mature tone but there's still plenty of lighthearted fun to be had. Really strong s1 with a second season that falls off a little bit, at least to me, but is still absolutely worth watching. s2 is missing a number of episodes in the english dub, so again if you're a dub enjoyer you will find yourself quite confused by the end. its probably worth watching s2 entirely sub-only (something i still need to do)

yugioh zexal - the first of the sequels that is possibly set in a different universe entirely (or just the really distant future). middle school boy gets a magic necklace from his dad that has an alien inside. zexal is a lot of peoples favorites and now that I've watched it I GET IT. Really strong story + pacing from beginning to end and a really endearing cast of characters. It's silly and goofy and fun but DAMN DOES IT COHERE.

yugioh arc-v - the first of the sequels that is DEFINITELY set in a different universe entirely. this is the one I'm watching currently so i don't have much to say about it yet GET BACK TO ME ON THIS ONE. this one boy's dream is to become the greatest clown who ever lived (tragic) (inspiring)

INHALES LOUDLY. that was probably more info than you wanted BUT I HOPE THAT HELPED AT LEAST A LITTLE BIT? again I recommend reading the original ygo manga first and i think that will give you a good idea of whether you are down with the yugioh silliness or not. It's important to remember that this is a very silly anime series about card games but like. As long as you can buy into the worldbuilding and accept that this is just How Things Are in the world of ygo, it's suuuuuuuch a fun world to sink your teeth into.

[starflungwaddledee]

omg thank you for responding to my ask!! tysm for explaining the grammar and even a bit of the culture!! my brain is rotting so much from this newfound knowledge, i might go feral :D!

i do have another question, what irl languages are you referencing from? I think you’ve said ancient greek but i’m dying to know how your brain functions when it comes to constructing this language.

i will say i love the world building you’ve done just explaining starspeak, it’s absolutely ruined my brain and i’m once again living for it!

waa i'm glad you saw the answer, thank you for sending in asks! i'm also delighted to get to share my worldbuilding and cultural headcanons... this is very nice for me!!

i did mention this before but it was quite small and attached in this image which i now realise i didn't put an ID on. so i'll rehash that and explain a little better!

under a cut because no art just text wall, rip;;

i'm referencing predominantly modern greek, because translating back-and-forth with ancient greek is a bit harder and in my quick attempts required more dictionary flipping than i felt like doing for something which is just for fun in my free time. i can and have done it for certain phrases- especially ones that are older even by Celestial standards- but it's mostly modern greek and occasionally a tiny bit of arabic.

i was inspired by naming conventions for stars and cosmic entities on earth, and the general bastardisation of languages that occurs with the proper names of stars

and oooo aaahhg whuuughh i wish i could say I did something really cool and thoughtful, but if i'm being honest with you the bastardisation "process" i go through for this is translates several words in the vicinity of what i want >> mashes them together >> makes them have the vibe i like 😂

(i reckon this would look like absolute hell to anyone who actually speaks/reads these languages though, so again I'm profoundly sorry for that omg;; there's also a very good chance there are overlaps with other languages, or that some of these made-up words might translate for others in ways i can't predict or always catch. i originally designed this only for fun and personal use and never imagined anyone else would be interested in it, so it's a bit of a hot and self-indulgent mess haha)

there are a few words that i've formed which now affect the basis of other words and don't require any further translation of bastardising.

for instance asté for "star" appears very frequently; as you might imagine. another is the diminutive ró which can be added onto or into most other phrases to imply that something is small; ie astéróki (small star).

other aspects- like the existence of formal reverse possessives, or question particles (like you would find in mandarin chinese)- are just ways i think language can be really varied and interesting! i guess i just think there's no reason that alien languages would be formed with the same structures as earth english in particular so if i have the opportunity to do Not That then i do!