#mostly I just like making nebula backgrounds

[purity-town]

Ask responses below the cut! Lots of thoughts on Terraria lore and Purity Town worldbuilding -- mostly focusing on the Crimson, the war, and Guides.

Reasons why I chose Corruption over Crimson, off the top of my head:

Artistic reasons: Chris was always going to lean towards magenta & dark blue weapons/armor where possible as a nod to the nebula pillar coloration, and I felt that it was easier to work with those colors against a purple/gray/brown background than a red one. Similarly, the purple of demonite matches the Corruption colors, making it easy to tie a visual connection between demonite and the shadow orbs' evil energy.

Personal reasons: My first world was a Corruption one, and I tend to favor Corruption in general as I like the music more.

Practical reasons: It's much, much easier to draw worms and the various other Corruption enemies than it is to draw the Crimson enemies, as the Crimson enemies are far more complicated in appearance and poses. Plus all the blood and brains puts me in an awkward spot as I don't want to run into issues with any of the websites I post the comic to.

Lore reasons: While the Brain of Cthulhu does very nicely match up with Moon Lord's actual design, it doesn't have a Mech boss associated with it, and I didn't want the Destroyer to feel like it came out of nowhere; I felt it was easier to justify the EoW being related to evil/Moon Lord in some way than the Destroyer existing in a Crimson world. The Corruption's shadow orbs also naturally tie into the idea of the "ancient spirits of light and dark" being released from the underworld, as the Crimson doesn't really convey the "dark" side of things that well. Also, the Crimson is generally associated with health while the Corruption is associated with mana, and since Chris is a mage I wanted to lean into the magic side of things.

As for my ideas with the Crimson:

Theme-wise, the blood and gore is easy to relate back to the same consuming, flesh-melding energy of blood moons. (While blood moons already have a link to Corruption/Crimson in the form of corrupt/vicious animals, the Crimson just makes more sense.) The massive skeletons in the background bring up similarities with bone serpents and wyverns/phantasm dragon, and the eyeballs with the EoC/WoF/True EoC.

Where the Corruption is more of the culmination of sin and dark thoughts and eldritch energies that twist whatever they come into contact with, the Crimson is a growing, living being that spiraled into wild mutation from eldritch energy. The Corruption naturally grows over time through additional sins giving it the power to spread, while the Crimson grows by actively consuming more and more living material; contamination vs. infection; acidic vs. corrosive.

The Crimson is a hive mind, of the sort where each new mind adds its knowledge and input to the collective, and likewise has its will overridden by the majority. At the core of it all is the Brain of Cthulhu -- intelligent, but not something that can be reasoned with or spoken to; the sort of being whose mind is so fundamentally different from a human's that anyone who comes into contact would be left mentally shattered. Much the same way one who stares into the darkness seeking to study the eldritch and bizarre could be left broken.

Where the Corruption chasms are worm tracks, I've always interpreted the Crimson chasms as a heart and the arteries spreading out from it. Or maybe the tendrils of a spreading infection? Not really sure!

Side note, the general theme (flesh/blood) and many of the monsters (face monster, crimera, blood feeder, etc.) also tie very well into the Wall of Flesh and its hunger. The justification for the WoF being so...flesh in the comic is that Andrew is a human*, and so the WoF's form is influenced by what his soul knows (flesh and blood body), mixed with lots and lots of eldritch energy giving it the visual ties to the EoC/Moon Lord in the eyes/mouth. But it's not as natural of a link as "the WoF's form is steeped in overflowing Crimson energy locked away in the center of the earth."

Instead of shattering, I imagine it would just poof into a particularly liquid-looking red smoke. Something to combine it being an immaterial/magical collection of energy with it being bloody and gory. Less of the sharp/shattered/sparkly look of shadow orbs, and something more organic and primal.

As for Crimson hearts...I suppose it's the other side of the coin of shadow orbs. Keeping with the theme of Crimson being vaguely health/damage-related while Corruption is mana-related, where shadow orbs are pustules of evil and eldritch magic, I could imagine Crimson hearts as concentrations of the life energy that's been consumed by/generated within the Crimson. Something that pulses with the hearts and minds of the countless creatures that have been incorporated into the Crimson before. Hence the panic necklace; something that fills you with adrenaline and the vitality to push forward and run for your life when hurting (compared to the band of starpower boosting your ability to channel magic).

BAD. Really, really, really bad.

The most obvious reason was all of the general destruction that the world had suffered at that point. Land masses ripped apart or twisted/distorted. Civilization shredded, infrastructure destroyed. What wasn't outright blasted to bits was warped beyond recognition or so corrupted there was no hope of salvaging what had been there before. Loss of homes means exposure to the elements, and loss of farmland means starvation; many societies crumbled or were staggered by the loss of vital industries and resources.

The main surviving communities were small subsets of what were once larger cultures. They were the ones lucky enough to have enough resources nearby to be self-sustaining -- cities had it the worst, requiring resources to be brought in from elsewhere, while more remote communities tended to be affected the least. Andrew, for instance, grew up in a very small community out on the plains, and while they did have contact with other communities, trade was limited to only specialty goods. Everything else came from the local area.

On top of the physical loss of land and infrastructure, there was also the loss of knowledge. The people who stood up to fight were the most powerful mages and strongest warriors, trying to hold back the destruction and stop the eldritch power contaminating the world; when they died, their knowledge of the world died with them. Similarly, Dryads were far more common back then, with people relying on them to interpret the weather, bless the crops, protect them from harm, and purify any imbalance of good and evil. So even the folks who did survive had to suddenly adjust to having no Dryads to fall back on.

Then, just when they thought the worst of it was over -- that their world had ended and was something new and scary, but stable -- the first Blood Moon rises and everything goes to Hell in a hand-basket once more (albeit only for a night). So now, rather than the night being a time for mages to practice their craft, the inherent chaos of the dark is now dialed up 1000% (even moreso during blood moons). Hence the push for some folks to try and find solace beneath the earth -- building the underground cabins, establishing the Dungeon, and the Lihzahrds locking themselves within a temple away from the sky.

The world was finally given a chance to breathe again once most of the eldritch magic, and in equal measure the divine hallow, was locked away in the core of the world. But by that point the old world was already a distant memory. It's been 500 years since the war, around 450 since most magic was locked away, and what did remain from before the war gave the world a significant boost in recovery. Old magic items and technology can be studied and recreated, and while technological/magical advancement is a bit uneven from region to region depending on their level of development and general population, the Guides have worked hard sharing everything they know between them to rebuild.

Purity Town, and the smaller villages immediately surrounding it (in the desert, snowy mountains, etc.) has such a low population/is so remote that they don't have much in the way of established governance. Various NPCs arguably have varying levels of authority within their specialization: Heather is the go-to for healing, Malik is the local monster hunter, and so on, but it's all very informal. The individual villages probably all have people who handle day-to-day things -- there are various random folks who live in the region to fill out each village outside of the established NPCs -- but it's just something going on in the background to keep the place running.

Guides aren't really meant to be politicians either, but they do often fall into a default leadership role since they're the go-to advice guys!

They're meant to preserve and share knowledge of the world, its languages, and its cultures; a reaction to the vast majority of that knowledge having been lost in the wake of the war 500 years ago. So Guides are out there fielding questions like "how do I make this medicine/when do I harvest this plant/is this edible/etc.," but they also are expected to know enough about situations like weather/celestial events such that they can give advice no matter what crops up. Extend that attitude to a more general "this person knows how to handle Problems, so let's default to whatever they tell us whenever we run into Problems," and you end up with Guides often taking pseudo-leadership or advisory positions.

Andrew is in something of a weird spot, as he took over for a much more established/respected Guide after she retired and threw him into it, and is not particularly good at commanding authority or dealing with people in the way she could, even though he tries to be nice. But he's extremely, extremely knowledgeable, even compared to other Guides due to having been around for long enough to pick up so much knowledge, so at least he can fulfill that aspect of the job easily enough and the townsfolk trust him to do so.

Tangentially related, but the lack of solid governance is specific/unique to Purity Town's remoteness. With a small enough population, folks rely on the cooperation and skills of others much more, and any disputes would be worked out among the townsfolk proper.

The world isn't fully settled, but there are some locations with enough of a population to be considered actual kingdoms (see: Princess NPC) with established government (see: Tax Collector). Chris' hometown, which sees a lot of ship traffic/trade, has a proper government, local guard, etc. along with their own Guide. Purity Town is just particularly out there! But it's still been around for long enough to have seen some trade, built up some skills among the residents, and establish basic infrastructure so that residents can live comfortably. Like comparing a small town in the modern day to a remote village in medieval times, residents still enjoy a relatively high standard of living, despite being a scattered and remote population.

The world hasn't recovered to where it was pre-Moon Lord, but it's certainly not a post-apocalyptic wasteland anymore!

[gimmethatagustd]

the heart nebula (2) | kth + pjm

♡ Summary: It has been a year since Jimin and Taehyung started dating, and they still haven't slept together. Jimin thinks they haven't because Taehyung doesn't want him; Taehyung thinks Jimin won't want him if they do. (Or, the one where Jimin is Taehyung's moon, and Taehyung is from the stars.)

♡ Pairing: Taehyung x Jimin

♡ Words: 3,387

♡ Rating: Explicit

♡ Genre: Science fiction, established relationship, angst, smut, fluff

♡ Warnings: They're cute but it's vmin and i wrote them so that's to be expected, groping, the tentacles are back or whateva, we're learning all about alien culture

♡ Post Date: September 23, 2024

♡ Notes: I'm probably on a plane rn~ Maybe? Idk how time zones work.

♡ Masterlist ♡ AO3 Crosspost 

♡ series masterlist ♡

“Tae.”

“Hmm?”

Taehyung lifts his chin to look at Jimin. They’re in their living room, taking advantage of a stormy Saturday evening, the thunderstorm outside competing with the TV playing softly in the background. Jimin sits on the couch with his back against the arm and his legs sprawled out. Between Jimin’s legs, Taehyung lies on his stomach, his arms wrapped around Jimin’s waist and his head resting on Jimin’s abdomen.

An educational docuseries about sharks plays on the TV, but Jimin is busy reading a book he recently borrowed from the library. He put on the docuseries for Taehyung, anyway, since Taehyung has decided that sharks are his favorite Earth animal species.

When Jimin mentioned assuming Taehyung would have picked the octopus, Taehyung almost threw him onto the floor.

“What did you like to do for fun back home?” Jimin asks, closing his book and carefully setting it on the coffee table without jostling Taehyung too much.

Two of Taehyung’s tentacles are playing in Jimin’s hair at the back of his head. When Jimin reaches up to touch them, he realizes the tentacles have been braiding his hair — and rather well, all things considered. Sometimes, Jimin wonders if Taehyung even notices when he does these little affectionate gestures with his tentacles or if they simply come naturally to him.

“I liked to read, too,” Taehyung speaks slowly while he thinks, his words weaving through the air like his tentacles weave through Jimin’s hair. “Mysteries, mostly. And I enjoyed athletics.”

“Sports like ours?”

Taehyung grins when he uses another tentacle to flick the underside of Jimin’s chin.

“Do you think humans are the most interesting creatures in the universe, little moon? Because, unfortunately, I have news for you.”

“Ahh, Taehyung, quit it,” Jimin groans and tries to shoo away the tentacle at his chin. Instead, he ends up tickling it back with his fingers when the tentacle curls against his collarbone. “I don’t know anything about all that.”

Jimin waves his hand at the ceiling as if gesturing to the universe above, and Taehyung laughs.

“We have our own games but adopted some human customs, too. And I am fantastic at playing basketball,” Taehyung is smug, and it makes Jimin smile.

“That’s just because you have more limbs than a normal person.”

“I have the same number of limbs as the rest of my people,” Taehyung points out.

Thinking about a world where tentacles are a regular part of life is fascinating. Jimin wonders what he would look like if he had them. Would they be as troublesome as Taehyung’s? Jimin has yet to understand Taehyung’s relationship with his tentacles. He can tell when Taehyung is controlling them, but he hasn’t figured out why they behave the way they do when Taehyung lets them “roam” — as he calls it. Taehyung is a very composed person, even when he’s being cheeky. His tentacles must be the parts of his personality he has to be more intentional about controlling.

“I wish I had tentacles,” Jimin confesses with a sigh.

One of Taehyung’s tentacles wiggles out from the collar of his t-shirt. He uses it to boop Jimin on the nose. That action was definitely intentional from Taehyung, not just “roaming” behavior. Such a little shit.

Taehyung grins, boxy and bright. It seems that all Jimin and Taehyung do these days is smile, laugh, and look at each other with so much love that it’s sickening.

“You would look cute with them.”

“Really?” Jimin asks shyly. He tries ducking his head to look away from Taehyung, but the tentacle that had booped him in the nose grabs his chin and pulls him back to face Taehyung again.

“Little moon,” Taehyung adjusts his position to be level with Jimin so he can get closer, “I bet they would be small and sneaky, just like you.”

“Oh, whatever.” Jimin rolls his eyes, but his stomach flutters at the thought. Magically growing tentacles could never happen; that doesn’t mean he can’t dream about it.

Based on what Taehyung has said about his tentacles in the past, Jimin infers that he is Taehyung’s first relationship with a human. He wonders if that is meaningful in any way. There seem to be so many similarities between humans and Taehyung’s people that Jimin wonders if relationships and physical intimacy are the same, too. He certainly hopes so. Jimin doesn’t want to think about the possibility that he can’t give Taehyung everything he wants, needs, and deserves, all because Jimin is a human.

“You’ve become so pensive,” Taehyung murmurs. He brushes the tip of his nose against Jimin’s, forcing out a huff of playful irritation from Jimin’s parted lips.

“Are you saying I normally don’t think?”

Taehyung raises his eyebrows — a silent response that rings loud and clear.

“Watch your show!” Jimin scolds Taehyung’s snarky behavior and snatches his book from the coffee table.

Although they got through one intense conversation about their relationship, Jimin isn’t quite ready to start addressing all of them. He’s still a bit of a coward, so he lets Taehyung settle back down to learn about sharks and tells himself he doesn’t need to worry and rush so much anymore.

Unfortunately, Jimin doesn’t overcome his insecurities about his humanity as quickly as Taehyung overcomes his insecurities about his extraterrestrial status.

There are undoubtedly many downsides to being human, now that Jimin knows there is an alternative species to have been born into. Taehyung greatly enjoys pointing out such downsides. Apparently, these thoughts were hidden away in the past, and Taehyung is taking full advantage of Jimin’s new knowledge of extraterrestrial life to tease the fuck out of him. 

For one, grocery shopping has become a whole production, with Taehyung playing a little game of risk and reward. He lets Jimin wobble on his tiptoes as he tries to reach a jar of gochujang on a grocery shelf just high enough that his little fingers slip against the edge. 

“Shut up,” Jimin huffs over his shoulder at Taehyung’s giggling.  

“You look so cute!” 

Jimin gives Taehyung his middle finger.

“Grumpy little moon, aren’t you?” Taehyung murmurs more of the same questions he always asks Jimin, pondering what he should do with such a troublesome creature – as though Jimin is the only one causing trouble in their household! 

Jimin can count five other things that cause worse trouble than he does. One of those things slips out from the hem of Taehyung’s t-shirt. He watches the tentacle extend long enough to curl around the jar and bring it down to place it into the grocery cart. 

“It’s not fair,” Jimin huffs again and grabs the handle of the grocery cart to push it down the narrow aisle. “You’re lucky no one is around to see that.” 

Taehyung trails behind him, with his tentacle put away and more giggles on his lips. Jimin swears his heart swells with affection, knowing Taehyung is comfortable, even when his confidence could get him into trouble.

Over time, their comfort with each other deepens, moving beyond just Taehyung’s playful antics during grocery shopping and his love for intergalactic sports. The changes come slowly. After Jimin and Taehyung's intense conversation, it takes Taehyung nearly a week before he finally lets his tentacles free when he’s at home. Even though Jimin said they were cool, he understood why Taehyung was still insecure.

Taehyung’s confidence in being himself around Jimin is growing now. It started off subtle, mostly evident in the little details of their domesticity — the light press of Taehyung’s fingers against Jimin’s waist as he steps past him in the kitchen, hugs from behind while Jimin brushes his teeth in the bathroom, and the gentle kiss against the side of his neck that comes with them, the casualness of Taehyung’s demeanor when Jimin video calls his parents.

Taehyung has always made Jimin feel loved and adored, but being loved by Taehyung when Taehyung is in a headspace where he is also giving himself love is an entirely different experience. Love like that reaches deeper. It means something more because it goes beyond just Jimin.

Watching Taehyung learn to love himself in an environment where he can’t even be himself without fear of getting caught by the government or being hurt by a human is enough to make Jimin cry. Even though they’d be mostly happy tears, he keeps them at bay so he doesn’t worry Taehyung.

They’d always been drawn to each other in a way Jimin had never experienced with anyone else, but this new chapter in their relationship goes far beyond what they had once shared. 

Ever since the big reveal, Jimin feels like he’s having a sleepover with his best friend every night again.

At night, Taehyung stands beside Jimin in the bathroom. Through the mirror, Jimin watches Taehyung’s eyes crinkle in a smile as he tries not to laugh while brushing his teeth. Whereas Taehyung brushes his teeth with his hand holding his toothbrush, Jimin grins as one of Taehyung’s smaller tentacles holds Jimin’s toothbrush and brushes his teeth for him. It’s messier than Jimin would like, Taehyung’s tentacle far more uncoordinated than a human hand for a task like this.

The toothpaste foam dribbles down Jimin’s chin, making him step back with his hands under his face to prevent any from getting on the floor while Taehyung giggles so hard he almost chokes. 

Looking back, it seems impossible that Taehyung could have imagined that Jimin wouldn’t still adore him once he learned the truth. Jimin loves Taehyung, and he loves his tentacles, too. They’re fun! Jimin insists that they are, though Taehyung is still working on trusting the adoration Jimin gives him. 

They have all the time in the world to figure things out. Considering how far they’ve come in just a little over a year, Jimin isn’t worried.

“I forgot to tell you about Soomin’s party,” Jimin calls out to Taehyung once they brush their teeth. He gets settled in bed and waits for Taehyung to finish changing into his pajamas in the bathroom. 

Taehyung still won’t get naked in front of Jimin. It has only been a few weeks since Taehyung shared his secret; Jimin understands if Taehyung still isn’t ready to cross that boundary. Although Taehyung said his tentacles are the only visible difference between himself and humans, Jimin wonders if there’s more to it than that. 

Either way, he won’t rush Taehyung. Trust takes time, especially in a relationship like theirs. 

“Did you guys dare each other to kiss?” Taehyung waggles his eyebrows once he emerges from the bathroom. He's shirtless to let his tentacles freely move around, and he's wearing loose plaid pajama pants.

Jimin does appreciate at least admiring the top half of Taehyung, and he has found the swell of Taehyung’s muscular pecs to be a lovely pair of pillows.

“What?!” Jimin looks up from his phone to narrow his eyes at Taehyung as he slips under the covers beside him. 

“Isn’t that what humans do at parties? Play sexual dare games?” 

Jimin snorts. He puts his phone away to charge on his nightstand and wonders where in the hell Taehyung got such an idea. Really, where are aliens getting their information?

“Maybe teenagers, but we’re too old for that. Unless we were, I don’t know, swingers or something.” 

Taehyung snuggles against his pillow with wide, curious eyes and gazes up at Jimin.

"I've never heard of swingers," Taehyung says.

“They’re usually a married couple that likes to have sex with other married couples, sometimes together but sometimes… like, swapping each other’s spouses out.” 

Jimin must visibly cringe because Taehyung bursts into laughter and flops onto his back. His tentacles slither out of the way to avoid being crushed underneath him.

“That would never happen in my culture.” Taehyung wipes tears from his eyes, and Jimin complains that it wasn’t that funny. “We are strictly monogamous.” 

One of Taehyung’s tentacles flicks the underside of Jimin’s chin, and Jimin knows it’s Taehyung trying to be cheeky. His suspicion is confirmed when Taehyung turns his head to the side and winks.

“Good to know,” Jimin says with another snort to mask how flustered Taehyung makes him.

“The unity between couples is important to us,” Taehyung says thoughtfully after a moment of comfortable silence. “I suppose it’s because it goes beyond merely… saying I love you and living together or getting married. We connect on a spiritual level.” 

Jimin closes his eyes as one of Taehyung’s tentacles gently brushes his hair away from his face. It lingers for a moment before ruffling his hair.

“What do you mean?” Jimin asks, barely getting the words out. There’s a reason why he hasn’t asked Taehyung about relationship dynamics on his home planet. 

“When we mate, we create a bond. It’s hard to explain, but in a way, we can understand each other’s thoughts and sense each other’s feelings. There is no greater connection, no relationship as deep, even between family – it just isn’t the same.”

Taehyung speaks as though he knows what it feels like. 

Jimin inhales slowly and opens his eyes. He doesn’t look at Taehyung, afraid of what his expression may be. Instead, he sinks deeper into the bed, lying on his back, with his eyes fixated on the ceiling.

“Do you have a mate? Back home?” Jimin whispers despite the unease churning in the pit of his stomach. 

If monogamy is so important, Taehyung shouldn’t be with Jimin if he has a mate. But maybe Jimin doesn’t count—maybe humans are just throwaways, little things to play with before returning home. They haven’t discussed that either—whether Taehyung plans to go home. There are so many things they haven’t talked about.

Another tentacle wraps around Jimin's wrist and lightly tugs on it to stop him from chewing on a hangnail.

“Of course, I don’t,” Taehyung's tone is soft, but Jimin knows he's reprimanding him in his own gentle way.

“Just asking.” 

“That was a silly thing to ask.” 

Jimin glares at the ceiling, suddenly irritated. “I don’t know, Taehyung. There are a lot of things I feel like I need to ask you.” 

The tentacle around Jimin’s wrist lets go and slides along his arm to eventually rest on his shoulder. It curls against his collarbone, warm and not too heavy, a comforting weight that grounds him.

“My lovely moon may ask me anything he wants.” Taehyung always knows how to speak gently to Jimin.

Sometimes, Jimin wonders if some kind of cosmic magic gives Taehyung's voice the power to calm him down. His brain tells him he’s just in love. With a sigh, he reaches for Taehyung’s hand under the covers. Taehyung's tentacles are definitely cool, but Jimin likes his hands the most. They feel nice engulfing Jimin’s. 

“Let’s play twenty questions in the morning,” Jimin offers with a yawn. “I’m tired.” 

“You didn’t even tell me about the party!” 

Jimin closes his eyes and waves his free hand at Taehyung as though to shoo him away.

“Sleep.” 

He thinks maybe, for once, Taehyung will listen to him. But then the tentacle at his collarbone lightly brushes against the side of Jimin’s neck. 

Twitching his shoulder, Jimin brings it to his ear to block the tentacle from accessing his neck, but the sneaky thing slips over to the other side and tickles him there. 

“Taehyung,” Jimin hisses, but the only response he gets is the sound of muffled giggles. 

He tries to scrunch both shoulders. He’s like a little turtle retreating into his shell, neck shrinking into itself. Yet the tentacle slithers its way in. 

Fed up with Taehyung’s too many limbs, Jimin grabs the tentacle, still tickling his neck, and pulls it off. When he does, he slides his fist from the tapered tip down to the thicker part of the tentacle, making it easier to get a good grip on it as it wiggles. It’s a quick movement, and he doesn’t think much of it until Taehyung lets out a low moan.

The sound makes Jimin’s entire body shiver as a spike of heat shoots through him. His eyes fly open, and he immediately turns his head to look at Taehyung. More heat stirs within him when he sees the expression on Taehyung’s face.

Taehyung lies on his back with his fingers gripping the strands of his hair at the back of his head, elbow bent and resting against his pillow. His eyes are squeezed shut, and his other tentacles are wrapped around his bicep and slipped beneath the covers — Jimin assumes to wrap around his waist or legs.

Biting his bottom lip, Jimin slowly drags his hand up the tentacle he’s still holding. He watches Taehyung inhale; the sound is soft and easy to miss.

When Jimin keeps his fist around the tentacle and slides it down again, Taehyung’s mouth falls open with another quiet moan that goes straight to the heat growing in Jimin’s shorts.

“Moon.” Taehyung opens his eyes and slowly turns to look at Jimin. “What are you doing?”

The tentacle pulses in Jimin’s hand. He lets go of it and watches in awe as it quickly shrinks back until it’s practically hiding against Taehyung’s body, though it doesn’t completely retract.

“I… don’t know.”

“They’re really sensitive,” Taehyung explains quietly. He holds out his hand and lets the tentacle Jimin had touched wrap around his wrist. “Especially this one.”

“Why that one?” Jimin doesn’t see anything different about this tentacle aside from it being slightly thicker than the others.

For only the second time since Jimin has known him, Taehyung's ears and cheeks flush pink with embarrassment. It makes Jimin perk up, shifting on the bed and turning onto his side to prop himself up on his forearm, eager to get a better look at Taehyung.

“Why that one, Tae?” Jimin’s eyes sparkle in the white light of the bedside lamp.

Taehyung closes his eyes when Jimin reaches out to touch the tentacle again. Rather than shrink back even further, the tentacle seeks out Jimin’s touch, wrapping around his wrist to press against the inside. Almost immediately, the tentacle begins to pulse, mimicking Jimin’s heartbeat, even as it quickens.

“That’s the one for mating,” Taehyung’s whisper is shaky.

“Oh!” Jimin quickly pulls back his arm, forcing the tentacle to let go. “Taehyung, I’m so sorry.”

Opening his eyes, Taehyung gives Jimin a small smile.

“You didn’t know; it’s okay. It’s not that big of a deal, I promise.”

Jimin eyes Taehyung skeptically. He wants to say that Taehyung moaning kind of made it seem like a big deal, but he keeps quiet. It might be that Taehyung wants to brush off the situation to ease his embarrassment. Jimin decides to be merciful tonight despite his desire to tease Taehyung further.

Well, maybe. 

“Does that mean you don’t have a…” Jimin makes it obvious that he’s looking down at what’s between Taehyung’s legs under the covers. “But, I have definitely felt something down there before…”

“Jimin-ah,” Taehyung whines, rolling over so his back faces Jimin. By now, his tentacles have all disappeared. 

“I’m just asking! If the one tentacle is for mating, I mean, in humans, it’s… well, you know!” 

Taehyung lets out an exaggerated sigh. “I have a penis, Jimin, that looks pretty much like yours. Its purpose is solely for pleasure, not reproduction.” 

“Ew, don’t call it that.” 

“That’s what it’s called,” Taehyung looks over his shoulder to narrow his eyes at Jimin. 

“It’s not sexy.” 

“It’s anatomy, Jimin. It isn’t meant to be sexy.” 

“Hmph.” 

Taehyung laughs, and Jimin knows he has no other choice because Jimin has given him the poutiest expression he has ever contorted his face into. 

“Go to bed, little moon. We can talk about penises in the morning.” 

It’s strange how flat and smooth Taehyung’s back is when Jimin shoves it with his hands splayed out against his warm skin. It’s as if there were never any tentacles at all. Alien biology is too much for Jimin to wrap his head around, though it makes sense that he wouldn’t understand. Taehyung isn’t of this world; why should his body have to conform to its rules?

“Goodnight,” Jimin huffs. 

He falls asleep to Taehyung still giggling, and that’s just fine by him.

♡ series masterlist ♡

My fanfiction works are created for entertainment purposes only and do not represent real individuals or events. My content is exclusively posted on Tumblr (gimmethatagustd) and AO3 (gimmethatagustd, daddytaehyungie). Copying, reposting, modifying, translating, or using my content for AI purposes is strictly prohibited. All rights are reserved.

[thresholdbb]

[sweatinghoneybee]

I’m so happy this is finally finished! It took awhile to finish but i’m so happy!!

This is just a fanart of a headcanon i have of MC in a transformers fanfic i read in quotev where in the future she becomes a rebel against the senator council and goes threw out Cybertron graffitiing peace protests against the government and puts up hologram posters of facts and the lies that the council puts up to propagandize Cybertron’s population.

Honestly the hardest part on MC’s design is the shoulder and legs wheels cause i’ve never drawn transformers so i was racking my head on how to draw them. And also is it just me but why are transformers helms so hard to draw?!! Like i know it’s a helmet but just kept feeling like i just made them bald. But it’s so much fun trying to draw something that i’ve never tried before and so glad that there’s a concept art for the MC of the story in chapter 18 cause if there aren’t any i’m an absolute goner to draw this!!! And I mostly drew this in the Transformers animated style cause primus save me it would have took me ages of life to draw this in like prime or IDW style (to those who can transformers in that style, i bow to your superior skills cause most people would think that drawing detailed blocks are easy but PITS NOPE!!!)

And i gave little reference on the paint that’s inside the paint spray gun where the colors i referenced to the cover of the fanfic (and i also made MC holding a car spray gun to do her graffiti cause i kind of thought that no one in Cybertron have graffitied yet so for MC to do it in Cybertron like back in her life as a human she uses spray guns that are used to paint cars/alt modes in transformers. And if someone ask on why the spray gun is attached to a hose on MC’s bag thing, the black part of that bag is to storage paints so like the bags used by graffiti artists that i found and the red bottom part of the bag is an air compressor thing like it’s used in car spray gun but in a more portable size. And honestly not sure if i should call it bag cause, atleast in my headcanon on how MC made her handicraft bag, technically it’s just a metal box that MC found that she attaches a cut hose for the sling and maybe and old used air compressor she fixed cause if I remember correctly bags aren’t a thing in Transformers so i tried to incorporate that). And in the background is actually those colored beats like in videos where each music beats the video shows it as a reference to MC’s love of music (and the blue pink colors are not only referring to MC’s optics but also cause in the fanfic she has the power to open a portal to the void/shadow realm so i was referencing that). And the white lines on the edges of the drawing is a referencing to MC hacking and putting up hologram posters cause i thought that if MC is going to get the truth from the government she will need to be able to hack computer systems and such to get them. And it’s just a tiny detail but the curves inside of Nebula as she swirls behind MC where it’s sharp is a reference that she looks like flowing flames but I didn’t want it to be too obvious so i just decided to make her a flowing blob (cause i thought that that’s what she looks like in the solid world if MC isn’t in the void) shadow with slight sharp angles like how stylized fires look like. Also can someone tell me if there’s a device in Transformers to make hologram posters? Cause I wasn’t sure what it would look like so just made it look like a flat disc in MC’s right servo. And just a headcanon as well, MC’s will absolutely splatter herself with colorful paints as not only as protest against the government that tries to make her to convert to their ideals but also just as a fun self expression where while MC is covered it messy paints it’s also made her beautiful with her confidence on not being afraid to stand out and be different (tho i have a feeling that if Knockout saw her like that he’ll have a spark attack) kind of like a transformer’s version of tattoos and such. The feathers on MC’s helm i intentionally put rainbow colors on them cause i kind of thought that the feathers are holographic so every time MC moves her feathers reflects and changes color. And the reason why i made MC and Nebula surrounded with so many colors is sorta kind like a representation how went from just living by under the rules of Cybertron to taking charge in trying to help Cybertron by doing things that’s different by the standards there and giving color to the lives around her. And i made Nebula with wings as a little nod on her connection with Unicron and i just made her sparkly cause i thought it’ll be pretty hehe~ along with the mismatched mascaras that MC uses cause i just thought it adds abit of that rebellious allure especially since the colors that are used are the shade of the other optic’s color!

Honestly this is one of my favorite drawings i made! I’ve always loved those drawings where monochromatic colors being surrounded by like a rainbow bomb around them, so this drawing is definitely my absolute favorites!

X - X - X - X - X

And also if anyone is curious and wants to read the fanfic that i’ve been rambling above on the fanart i made here’s the link to the fic!

Please give some love to the author of this fic cause they’ve worked really hard to make this incredible well written fanfic that goes in depth on Transformers. And don’t forget to leave a heart on their fic! Like seriously go and give this a read! The plot hasn’t even gotten to the war part of the Transformers and it’s already so good! And to those who want a various x reader fic where the relationship goes deeper then just characters falling in love without context, this is a fic for you simping boos out there!

[am4ura]

So I had this AU idea that is idk complicated but I need to share it somehow.

So basically what if the unit leaders / sekai owners were spirits linked to their Sekai, that in this case is more like a domain.

Leonii's instead of a school would be a space like zone. Mmj's instead of a stage would be a sky, kinda similar to the background in "hear me hopeful show" set. Empty Sekai would stay kind of the same. I haven't had any ideas for street or wonderland Sekai.

The Sekai owners (or Sekai spirits) have all characteristics relevant to their Sekai.

Ichika is mostly made of stars and nebulae. With her hair and parts of her body moving and flowing around. She also has hollow eyes that light up with little stars when she's happy.

Minori Is a mix of an Angel and a light being. She's mostly made of light, but has a projection of her body making her look kinda like a biblically accurate angel? She has lots of feathers around her body and a bandage covering her eyes (that are completely made of blinding lights)

Kohane is made of coloured smokes, like the ones of spray pain bottles. She can change colour and size based on her appearance. She can also turn herself into graffiti. She does that a lot to blend in and hide.

Tsukasa shares a lot of characteristics with an hippogryph, with mane and wings of light/fire. He also has hooves instead of feet. Like. A mix of a phoenix and a Pegasus.

Mafuyu (not kanade BC mafuyu is the Sekai owner) is very similar to a banshee. Ghostly and transparent appearance, covered in veils to hide herself and her suffering. She would also kinda look like a ragdoll, with parts of her body and face stitched together.

There are lots of legends about these sekais and Sekai spirits. It's said that if you're too passionate about something or too determined to reach a goal, you will get absorbed by one of these domains and eaten by the spirit. These Sekai spirits are also said to be lost kids with a big passion for something, but never managed to make it a thing.

So imagine the other members of the unit being so determined with their music, that one day they all wake up in this unknown unreal place and find basically a god just chilling there.

The Sekai spirits are all very lonely at the end and they just wanted someone to spend time with.

Ichika would at first be shy and try to not approach the rest of leoneed in fear of scaring them or be a burden, but in the end they would all try to make her smile and feel less lonely (Saki does the first steps), since it reminded them of their lost childhood friend.

Minori would immediately rush to get to know mmj. She gets captivated by all of them in a short time and would admire their beauty and their grace. At first mmj is kinda overwhelmed by this bright (eheh) presence, but they quickly start to love her. Haruka in particular, finding the way this spirit talks similar to the way one of her fans would write her letters.

Kohane would at first hide, scared of people she doesn't know, but would then slowly introduce herself only to an. An gets immediately a big liking of her, seeing in kohane the perfect partner she kept seeing in her dreams. When kohane gains more courage she shows herself to akitoya too. I also imagine this fun scene where an and kohane are talking, then akito reaches to an, kohane disappears and akito thinks an is crazy for talking alone.

Tsukasa would try to show off as the "mighty blazing Sekai spirit" but would cringefail anyways. Wxs seems unfazed by that, actually being interested in how tsukasa matches almost perfectly the description of the main character of a famous theatre show about a fantasy world.

Mafuyu hides, but not like kohane or Ichika. She wants to be alone. She accepted her fate of being forgotten and having to suffer alone. She tries to push the other members of niigo away, but they are resilient in trying to put an end to her pain (mostly kanade) because they know the same feeling. In the end mafuyu accepts their warmth.

Uhhh idk I think that's it. Sorry for the long yap, ideas kept flowing like a river. I might try to doodle something one day.

[whirligig-girl]

Star Patrol rocket Piccard-5 encounters an artifact of the incredibly powerful White Marble Civilization. circa 2169, colorized & shipgirlified.

Commission for @foxgirlchorix, based on a render by Holly for @torchship-rpg

This is some of my best rendering work ever! These commissions do have a knack for putting me out of my comfort zone enough to continue developing my technical skills and style.

Image ID: Digital art of two ship girls in a black and blue nebula background. One girl is a very large solid white marble statue with a naked feminine form, pitted and cratered with meteoric impacts, drifting belly-down though space. Instead of a face, her head has a large hole which glows yellow-orange, with a white marble sphere held in space outside of it. A green tractor beam is being emitted towards the second girl, a Torchship named Piccard-5. She is a silver girl with her body resembling a star patrol jumpsuit. Warp drive rings circle her waist like a hula hoop. She is wearing a spherical ball helmet. She is wearing white rocket boots. She has glowing red-orange radiator panels as wings on her back. The white marble sphere's tractor beam is slowly disassembling her into individual hull sections, disconnecting her radiator wings, removing her boots to reveal the rocket propellant inside her legs, and taking her body apart. Piccard-5 is reacting with a worried or confused expression. End Image ID.

Artist's notes and concept sketches in the read more:

When this render was posted Levana immediately had the idea to make it one of a series she was planning on commissioning me for, of shipgirls based on Torchship's Star Patrol (and alien) rockets. So we quickly brainstormed how it would go down and what she could afford price-wise.

When I do big commissions with new characters where I'm creating the design without an existing OC reference, I charge extra for character design. That doesn't just go to waste! Here's the concept art page:

The White Marble shipgirl is inspired by the Eerie and Enigmatic Empty Vessels by @murmurlilies, which Levana really likes--if you look at her blog you might see one of those posts reblogged multiple times. I wanted to pay homage to the eerie and enigmatic empty vessels without directly ripping them off! The first sketch on the upper left is imagining the girl poses by breaking her arms into segments and moving them around, but that never looked quite right to me. The second is basically just a direct study of the empty vessels (with a ball head). The third is after a little more refinement--I liked the cute hair on the empty vessels so I wanted to keep the head mostly intact, and I found a way of keeping the silhouette of the jagged angular hips on the empty vessels but in a very different way! Meteoric impact damage, just like on the original Torchship render. I also used an edited version of one of the Empty Vessels drawings for the thumbnail sketch in the lower right out of laziness.

There's also a sketch of what Piccard-5 looks like when she's not being disassembled. Piccard-5 has a rounded main hull, so it looks much more like a regular space suit helmet than the frustum-shaped helmet on the Newton-2 shipgirl I sketched a while back. The Newton-2 shipgirl had heat radiators as wing shapes on her boots, but making them actual wings on her back makes the disassembly image all the more unsettling.

I changed the hairstyle on the white marble girl when I drew the main drawing because I wanted to evoke like, greco-roman marble statues, and so a curlier/braided look worked better than the cute pixie cut of the empty vessels. I'm really happy with how the final product looks. I knew I wasn't gonna be able to half-ass it with the rendering, you know, just a little shading along the edge; this required a lot of careful thought and it was a lot of fun to do! Especially where the craters interact with the terminator (line between light and dark), just like on the Moon, which I have a lot of experience sketching (see below--the following sketches were made while looking through telescopes at the Moon at night)

Here's a WIP of just the line-art:

and with the basic shading done on the marblegirl

I started with like, a cel-shaded look (?), and then went in and softened the edges, then went over it again to fix the craters. I also added the marble texture to the unshaded base layer.

For the Piccard-5 girl, I spent a lot of time trying to get the pose right. I wanted it to be a little stiff, she's in a suspension beam after all, but not too stiff? And I had to decide like, what pieces should be detached, and where should they be going. In the render, hull pieces are often displaced towards the side, but when doing that to a humanoid, it ruined the pose too much, so i avoided doing too much weird stuff to the torso and kept the disassembled pieces largely to one axis. The cross sections are hollow because they're ship decks. She's a spaceship, not a robot girl. The warp ring was suspiciously untouched by the dissassembly beam in the original render, but i had the marble girl pull a few pieces off of it in my drawing.

Probably the one thing that isn't based on something happening in the render is the belt. Like, rockets don't have belts, cosmonauts do! So that was a fun little touch.

[questioningespecialy]

egg⚽🧠irl [Transfem Meme] [Nonbinary Meme]

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION] Expanding Brain meme with two extra rows of boxes on the bottom. 1st row left: "I just like the outfit." 1st row right: Human skull with small brain. 2nd row left: "Something about her aesthetic is just visually appealing to me." 2nd row right: Human head with regular sized brain that has many lights glowing inside. 3rd row left: "I wanna be her." 3rd row right: Human head with regular sized brain that has many more lights glowing inside with great intensity. 4th row left: "I wish I was her." 4th row right: Human head with regular sized brain that has some lights shooting out past the head and none inside it. 5th row left: "I wish I lived in an LGBTQ+ safe world so I could discover myself sooner and be a weird-ass tomboy who liked girly things." 5th row right: Photo of the Helix Nebula (aka: Eye of God) in outer space. 6th row left: "i wanna be visibly me" 6th row right: The girl Sayori (from the game Doki Doki Literature Club) in her fan-made "Coolyori - Finger Guns Emoji" form pointing two finger guns to the left while wearing a Pale Pink colored short-sleeved shirt, CG Red colored bowtie in her neck-length hair, and two sunglasses with one raised mostly above the other. Behind her are the Chevron Queer Flag's lavender colors split vertically down the middle with Orchid on the left and Twilight Lavender on the right. Entire left side: Boxes have a background of the off-white color Seashell increasing in opacity from 20% (barely visible) in the 2nd box to 100% in the 6th. 3rd to 6th row left: Tall image with 18.6% opacity of

Rainbow Dash (from the series My Little Pony Equestria Girls) in possibly fan-drawn human form with hip-length rainbow colored hair and bangs, fully open Shocking Pink colored eyes, and a large smile posed with her right foot ontop of a Black & White soccer ball while facing the audience and wearing the following athletic wear:

A tall pair of Ocean Boat Blue & White colored boots with slightly taller rainbow colored socks sticking out.

A slightly pleated White colored mini skirt with a wide Sky Magenta colored vertical stripe down the middle and black underskirt shorts sticking out by maybe 4".

An open zippered Ocean Boat Blue colored short-sleeved jacket with a non-folded collar.

A mostly visible White t-shirt with a large image of a cloud unleashing a single thick blue, yellow, and red lightning bolt that's half covered by her folded arms. The left of which bearing an identically colored wristband.

[END OF IMAGE DESCRIPTION]

Context: Found myself experiencing a ton of gender envy 2 days ago while referencing this image of Rainbow Dash for something. Almost got intense. So of course I decided to spend hours making a meme about it. 📝🤷🏿‍♂️🤷🏿‍♀️

[literary-illuminati]

Book Review 71 – Prophet, Volume 3: Empire by Brandon Graham (et al)

I’m continuing to read volumes of this as natural breaks between each large book which, besides being a way to juice my reading stats for the year, does do a great job of testing how good my memory is. In general this feels like a pretty consistent continuation of volume 2, with sharper characterization and an utterly overstuffed plot.

The comic continues the saga of a revived Earth Empire, entirely populated by the revived (and no also being once again mass-produced) effectively-posthuman clones of one John Prophet. Specifically, the story is mostly split between following the ‘Old Man’ Prophet who defected and led the rebellion which toppled the first empire, and the newest Father, the prophet who was the star of the frst volume and is responsible for resurrecting the empire to begin with. Beyond continuing on the story from previous volumes, these issues introduce a new threat invading from the edge of known space which is the ostensible new driver of the plot and what both leads are left scrambling to try and find a solution to.

Now, it might just be that I’m failing to adapt and meet the medium where it is, but my overall feeling really is that there’s far too much plot (and just, stuff) stuffed into far too little space. This volume did do a lot more touching on and sketching out real character dynamics and fun little beats for the cast, which really only kind of drove home the fact that there just isn’t the page count to do more than touch on them. In terms of plot my feeling is that this whole psychic pain nebula or whatever is a needless distracton from a story that already had plenty going on, especially since as of the end of the volume it’s stll no where close to being resolved. Will see where volume 4 goes with it, I suppose.

One thing the book did set aside a bit of time for was giving a sense of what the society of a bunch of wildly distinct posthumn clones of some guy from thousands of years ago now engineered into a brutal imperialist engine of militarism with genetically defined castes actually looks like. Which was absolutely great fun, and I dearly wish there’d been whole issues devoted to the question. Especially since the book actually commits to it being weird. Also, as far as world-building tropes goes, I absolutely adore the whole conceit of a society of engineered soldier/slaves/automata upholding an empire long after the creators their theoretically imperializing for are long gone. Gets into fun themes of inheritance and legacy, if nothing else.

Also, points for having a sleazy sci fi brothel scene and having zero conventionally-attractive-human-woman-with-blue-skin to be seen. I think the feature most vocally sexualized was gills? Truly a breath of fresh air compared to most sci fi. Really there’s probably something to be said about how resolutely unsexualized and un-Male-Gaze-ey the art is compared to most big comic books, but I really don’t have the background to make it.

Less pleasing uses of the pagecount where the points where you could really feel it become obvious that this is part of some wider superhero comic universe – the improbable number of characters who are ‘ancient beyond reckoning’ or similar who are clearly introduced and given instant narrative significance as fanservice gets old incredibly quickly. (Also, superhero names are dumb in a way that’s noticeably distinct from the way space opera names are dumb, and they don’t necessarily go together well. Suprema?)

[theaistired]

Blog introduction

Hello, my name is Thea (she/they), I’m acespec, arospec, and autistic. I speak German and English and I am trying to learn Italian, Swedish and Arabic (learning three different languages at once is complicated, so trying instead of actual learning). I’m a big fan of the fantasy genre and like to read, write, draw, play the piano, and occasionally play video games. I also love birds and science.

Now, this is my main blog where I post about my writing, my art and also stuff in general. I might also post about some of my own music in the future. You can find a short introduction to my WIPs under the cut.

Hope you enjoy and I'll see you around on tumblr!

Galidean: A fantasy series that was supposed to be a trilogy but has grown into a much longer series. But I guess that is what happens when you look a three different projects and think to yourself "wouldn't it be hilarious if the took place in the same setting". So, the series can be divided into three different "eras" with their own little "main plot", but there is also a plotline running through all of them mostly in the background.

A hundred years after the joined victory over the Dark Sun, the human nations gather together in celebration. Future leaders attend a journey through each other's home, during which it becomes clear that scorching raids have left their marks over all the territories. With no apparent culprit, a prince, an orphan, a lord, and a sorcerer band together to find the power that turns banishment into death. With the help of a friend and a sibling, they start chasing mysteries and legends across the world, unaware that they all take root from the wounds of the world itself.

Old Gods: A fantasy series consisting of 3 – 4 books, while I also wanted it to be horror, that part has gotten somewhat lost while developing it. Oh well.

Cyr was young when the war started, he was young when he joined it and he was not so young anymore when the enemy captured him. After four years of imprisonment, he comes to terms with his inevitable fate. Surrounded by enemies, hated by his allies, stripped of his magic and will, there is no escape for him. While the voices and visions invade both day and night, Cyr prepares for his final day. His only true solace is the new courtesan who has endless stories of hope and rebirth to tell him.

The Human in Us: An urban fantasy series, that really is just two characters and my investment in their relationship in a trench coat. All started by me looking at different supernatural YA stories and going “wonder how I would do that”.

Students, alcohol and an abandoned house should have been the set-up for a fun, maybe spooky anecdote in their future. It should not twist and turn and talk, it should not turn nightmares real, it should not make Josephine’s hallucinations even more vivid and grotesque. Yet it does, and one month later, a burning girl appears to give her an envelope containing an address and a promise of answers.

There Are Voices In the Void: A sci-fi horror story, set in the same setting as a different sci-fi project of mine, but story-wise not connected to it.

While investigating a nebula, the scientists of the crew gather samples of cosmic dust, finding an unknown organism on it. The head biologists determines it to be deceased and proceeds with further testing. The death of two of his colleagues soon afterwards is just the beginning of the nightmare.

Little Remains: A bit of crime fiction/thriller, that happened by me looking at YA mystery series and going “wonder how I would do that”.

Detective Morgan has worked on many gruesome cases in the past, most of them took place in bigger cities with an anonymous population. When a teenage girl is found dead in the fields of a small town nearby, Morgan first assumes an outsider to be the murderer of the unidentified victim. However, with the murder of a local student a few days later, even the tight-knit community quickly realises that one of them is far more familiar with the gruesome case than the rest of them. Unwilling to sit back, the student’s friends start their own investigation, while Morgan begins to struggle with old ghosts.  

[thanos-is-a-grape]

Just seen gotg vol3 for the third time and here are some of my thoughts, these are just my thoughts, so pls disagree politely if u have different opinion on this matter.

Spoiler alert, dunno if it's necessary now that everybody seemingly have seen the movie....

- It was great overall, like everybody been saying, although i think Adam could do a lot more in the story. Literally just watched the damn movie to thirst for the golden god.

-My main complain is that the lack of screentime he got, and i know, this movie is supposed to be a final goodbye to the og guardians and therefore should be focusing on their story. BUT, golden boi could have been more useful when they were trying to defeat the high evo, also this is a character everybody's been waiting for for ages and has been teased for YEARS for god's sake.🤦🏽‍♀️

- For example, Adam could've lost his sh*t when Ayesha died and put the blame on high evo, and now that he has the same goal as the guardians; to kill the bastard in purple, he joined the team. And i know, he's pretty much a baby at this point therefore he can't understand much emotions, but i mean come on, Ayesha was his mother figure, her loss had to affect him to a certain degree.

-next, since this is Rocket's story, i wished groot could have more significant role in his background/origin story, and/or the main story. He's his closest pal in the og team after all. Although it also makes sense if groot only have a small role in Rocket's arc bc this is not the groot from the first movie.

- Marvel, my man, what are you doing with making another queer character a literal kid? I understand when it comes to Tommy, Billy, & America bc young Avengers project is nowhere in sight at the moment, therefore their character can grow to young adult once their role is gonna be significant.

- But Why is Phyla not a grown a$$ woman she is supposed to be?😔 (She is also probably has no connection to Mar-Vell or Kree & Titan in general, considering Mar-Vell has been ruined in captain marvel, therefore i will silently cry to sleep knowing another potential has been lost in the mcu).

- Speaking of Phyla, i think it would've been better if instead of Phyla, they introduced Heather/moondragon first? like, wouldn't it made more sense if they had to rescue a bunch of kids from the ship, one Drax ends up bonded with (let's pretend it's bc she reminds him of his deceased daughter), is a young Heather? She's also Drax's daughter in the comic. I think it would also made Drax so much more than just a 'comic relief'.

I'm gonna piss everyone off with my personal rating, but this movie is a 8.5/10 for me, taking one point mostly for how they did Adam dirty and for not giving him his 70s hair and making him wear that ugly ass armor. But Rocket's story is such a tearjerker, and Nebula's arc is beyond perfect, so millions of thumbs up to this film.

[pitruli]

ended up trying tu summarise my frozen watcher au through stories on insta after i got asked in comments so i’m retyping everything here too. wanted to make a proper mega post one day but this’ll have to do

so Warmth of the Winter Sun (wows) or just Frozen Watcher, is a hermitcraft 8 au based on the boatem crew and hugely  inspired by both of the Frozen movies. Basically, I just wanted to play with the concept of watchers that is over used in the fandom, and made it a frozen au because of a skin made for halloween mcc last year (grian as elsa done by mahgck)

Grian is the “lucky” kid who got gifted a part of the watchers’ power and gained matter manipulation magic; he can manipulate any object and part of landscape and change its form at will. It goes as far as turning matter into another one and can have effect on the weather (mostly by summoning storm clouds) When the manipulation goes too far, the matter turns into something similar to minecraft sculk, some kind of nebula cloud, way easier to manipulate, but can also spread on its own and corrupt stuff.

Pearl is his little sister, and unfortunately, the accident is still a thing there haha. Living matter (other than plants) immediately corrupts under Grian’s magic, and Pearl got something she though was a burn scar on the side of her face.

I’m adding a twist tho, as the siblings acually got cursed through the accident; if they’re too close, Pearl’s injury would spread and threaten to suffocate her. If they’re too far, it’s Grian’s heart that can’t handle it. (Yeay i like angsty stuff like that). So they spent the rest of their childhood trying to keep a middle ground, apart from one another (Pearl not knowing why as you could guess).

For the following I need to settle more background lore I made for this. The siblings are the heirs of the Mountain kingdom, a part of a huge island they inhabit with several other kingdoms. These different factions were all at war for years, until “something” caused a massive explosion during an atempt between monarchs to set peace. They all died. Leaving the island in a cold war the time their orphaned heirs reach adulthood.

(The “something” and the war will be relevant for what would be “frozen2″ haha. The universe is also set in something like northern UK in the 50′s)

SO back to main plot, Grian doesn’t lose control as he becomes king. He had the role for a couple years actually. But he had organised a ball to set real peace across the island once and for all, despite his fear of his power being reveal. He failed, as you can guess, but he tried his best ! And you can imagine how the other monarchs reacted, thinking they had been tricked into a trap when Grian’s black magic reveal itself. So yeay, some background part of the au is the monarchs trying to dismantle the Mountain kingdom as Grian exiled itself somewhat.

The following goes mostly like in Frozen; Pearl sneaks off to find back her brother; finds out a plush she made as kid and gave to Grian, Mumbo, is now alive (and having massive existential crisis); and travels with a friend she met years prior while sneaking off the castle, Impulse, and Scar, a cat shapeshifter.

Grian morphed an entire mountain into his s7 mansion (no need to make the back /hj), and once the curse got him back with violent hearthache, he’s ready to give up just so the curse can finally break (the song monster from the musical be like)

A huge thing I changed is the whole thing about true love, as I didn’t want to have shipping in this au. Mostly, it’s just pearl, once she learns the curse “needs true love to fade away”, thinking she’s doomed for good as she doesn’t have anyone, and thinks her death would somehow be another way to break the curse. (Yeay both sibling are being suicidal at one point, ready to die so the other gets free of the curse)

I’m still indecive about how to make the end of this, as i want the aftermaths of the plot to be more obvious than canon Frozen. Don’t worry no one dies tho !! I still need them for part 2 okjihibuv

Part 2 of the au is for now very vague; all I know for sure is that it has a rather sad ending (I’m going full on “fix it” on that one, loved Frozen2 but the plot from deleted scene could have been epic haha). I will have stuff with the island war and shapeshifter lore, and I already made edits to the wonky spirits for the au. But other than that, that’s basically all!

Well, I went rambling quite a lot for just some summary... Hope i’ll have more drawing f this to post this year tho !

[alluralater]

Hey Allura, primordial hunger anon here - just wanted to say that I briefly overcame my ravenous lust until I saw you’d answered my ask and now… I’m almost oppressively lascivious. To be honest, I’ve always had an above-average sex drive and it doesn’t help that I’m closeted with a religious background.

But the way you describe sex, desire, wanting has been kind of transformative for my self-perception. I usually see my urges as bestial and shameful but it feels natural when you talk about it. You make it sound magical or even sacrosanct even when it’s intemperate and dark and reprobate.

Idk. Maybe I’m just trying to justify this sort of febrile, manic state to myself but thank you and also, maybe, possibly, could I get a tag? I know you’ve been really inundated with anons but could I maybe be 21? I’m she/her and mostly bottom. If not, I completely understand. Again, thanks for helping me make a dent in my sexual shame ❤️

hi! sex to me is holy, but not pure in a religious way. it is not a covenant made between myself and any god to give myself to someone with a heart driven through white as snow. sex is messy and primal. it's fucking delicious. honestly one of the reasons i may be such a sex maniac could easily be the amount of exposure to different religions i had when i was young, could be all the rituals i was in as a kid, could be the fact that my mother called me a prostitute for showing an inch of skin, it could be all the pain i went through as a child and then more as a teenager. i've no idea. what i do know is that from the moment i discovered consensual sex, my first thought was that this should never be hidden. i am the most sexually open person that i know. one of my best friends definitely comes close but i've totally got her beat. i cannot go a full 60 seconds without thinking about sex. sex is the energy within nature. it is the oxygen wrapping itself into fire and adding to the blaze. it is the most incredible thing to me. with that comes care and education, but also.... liberation. it is fucking empowering like nothing i've ever known. it is to love yourself. and it is to feel the energy in the air, in every molecule of your form. fuck i wish i could explain all of this in a less feral way. basically- we are made of the universe. we are part of it. the same things in nebulas are in me. and when i have sex with someone, i can feel it. like stars swirling and exploding. i mean i also have synesthesia so it adds to it. but generally yes it is fucking beautiful. feel no shame for your liberation, only pride.

the tag is all yours <3

[limestoner]

What my gender is. I guess I always knew I wasn’t one or the other because I remember being a kid and seeing a bunch of gift bags at some event and they had blue and pink and I was always like:

“You know, I don’t really want either of those.”

I wanted an orange gift bag full of creepy Halloween stuff and orange candy. Any time throughout my life there are male options and female options and I’m just like (shrugs) and choose the one that has something I can use.

I thought everyone was just being complacent and choosing the one that they’re expected to “go with,” and that’s just what you’re supposed to do. But why then do I sometimes want the other gift bag or one that’s completely different. We just take what we don’t want because we’re supposed to?

Well, I have spent my life trying to be normal. It’s not that I actively “knew I was different”; I couldn’t even comprehend why I wasn’t doing the things like other people. So I kept trying to imitate what they do all the way to some semblance of adulthood. [Another good band name. I need to make a list of thos.]

BecUse I am visibly AFAB, I am always read as “female”. I’m stuck with it so to have the optimal reaction from people I try to lean into it because it’s what people are expecting. If someone is unsure of someone’s gender, people seem to view the person as more attractive if the person is confirmed male rather than female.

“I’ve got girl bits. So I’m just an ugly girl.”

Sure, I didn’t like the implication that I was ugly, but it didn’t even feel applicable to me. Like I’m being called ugly but that’s not the point. Like dustbins. Does anyone get worked up about dustbins being grotesquely hideous? No. They are usually appearance neutral and only noticeable for the height function.

So I found it advantageous to try the girl thing and it’s fine. Not torturously horrible but still an effort to fit within expected behaviors. But I don’t do a lot of the boy things either. Not into sports or cars. But I sure like early biplanes and triplanes. And insects, especially praying mantis. I didn’t go to movies because I generally didn’t like movies.

I am proudly disclosing that too. But everyone likes movies! There are plenty of movies I like, mostly animated ones. But it’s rare that I’ll sit and watch a movie with a story. I like a background music movie, but following a story is hard work, and I’m also admitting that I’m quite lazy. I can’t tell the characters apart, what are they talking about, I can’t hear them having an important conversation because I turned up the volume to hear the last important conversation and then a sudden explosion blew out my speakers. And my eardrums.

But now I know that I am non-binary.

When I think of my gender, those are the colors I think of.

My friend who is childfree told me (also childfree) that she hates that she gets bombarded with baby commercials online. I’m not sure what algorithm causes that but I never have that problem. I always get dommercisn about food, video games, retirement plans, travel, just whatevs. And that’s how I like it best.

I like clothes to be lightweight and stretchy, so lady clothes work well. And men shampoo and deodorant. I like having groovy long hair. I think about how much I like sometbint first and whatever it is adds to my gender. My gender is all

I was never part of the binary. I’m out there floating in space where I belong. Not literally of course. The first time I heard the term “non-binary,” I thought of binary stars. I am not a binary star. I am a nebula. What is it? Yes. Nebula is very star.

I am the orange bag filled with pop rocks and flamin skull head/snake/rose combo tattoos. Or those glow in the dark dracula teeth that never fit me. Because it belongs in someone else’s green or orange or purple or multi bag.

I have to be careful when I walk. My legs feel like a tall stack of discs wobbling and threatening to topple over. I think that’s how I hurt my back. My muscles are so relaxed that they’ll do things that aren’t a good idea.

And then later they hurt.

I keep forgetting what day it is. And what time. Good thing I don’t need to be anywhere doe a while.

But I still don’t talk about it much. Who cares about it, bhr also I don’t want to seem like I’m doing it on purpose. Like, “Why are you so special you need different pronouns and words.” Because words are labels and I’m labeling what is.

I accept any pronouns actually. Other kids called me “it/its” when I was a kid because they did not like me and wanted to other me. I’ll accept anything that sees even part of my humanity, even if that part is only the part that society sees as female. I don’t even like writing that word in pink very much because I don’t feel right with the word female and I really don’t feel right being associated with pink. And I don’t think I would have felt much more right when pink was the color for boys. And it’s not just because I don’t like pink. Some shades of pink are awesome.

It’s just such a genderly loaded color.

I’m a gender nebula.

[bodacious-bombini]

ART TUTORIAL TIME, BAYBEEEEE

How to Draw: Stylized Nebula

Never thought I'd be making one of these, but I couldn't find any helpful (for me) tutorials online, and I just so happened to figure things out on my own! I still wanna change a LOT about the hair in my piece, but I think the tutorial still works!

For this tutorial, you don't NEED these brushes, but if you wanna have your piece look exactly like mine, and you're using Clip Studio Paint, you should get the Galaxy Brush brush pack (Content ID: 1758879)

Step one! Find a nice, dark color! Preferably something that isn't black, as when we Color Dodge the colors, they're going to look mostly like brighter versions of the dark color. (Notice how the colors all become different purples in step 4, due to the purple background color!)

Step Two! Use that dark color with a fluffy brush! I used Clip Studio Paint's default cloud brush, but I'm sure you could find better brushes. This is where you're going to shape your nebula!

For me, my nebula is a person's hair! I wanna go back to my piece and make all of her hair nebula bits, but in case you're new to my blog (hi!!!), I am doing daily drawings! This tutorial is one of my daily posts! If you wanna see this art finished, I'll be uploading that after today! Is this relevant to bring up? No! I am writing this post at like, 3am :)

Step Three! Get some colors!!! This is where you're going to want to experiment around. Or, just take the colors I'm using! They should probably be lighter colors for the Color Dodging to work, so keep that in mind. It might be worth it to find a photo of a real nebula and try to guesstimate colors! For my colors, I had absolutely zero plans for what I was doing, and all my friends say it looks great!

Your brush choice might be important, too! The brush I'm using here is a brush from that Galaxy Brush brush pack!

Step Four! COLOR DODGE YOUR COLOR LAYERS!!!

Or don't! Play around with other blending modes! I actually didn't end up using Color Dodge for my final piece :)

Step Five! Add some stars! A bunch of little dots is all you need, or maybe you want some big dots! It's up to you :) Season to taste!

For me, I used the Stars brush from the Galaxy Brush brush pack! But the stars from that pack are only white for some reason, but that isn't really an issue as you can just use the Layer Color layer property in Clip Studio! I made my stars pink :)

And there you have it! My first art tutorial! Feedback is appreciated! I'm so friggin sleepy, so, goodnight! Follow my comic on Webtoon, cuz I'm gunna be serializing it (relatively) soon!

[random-thought-depository]

Continuing from my last post about science fictional “hyperspaces” (wow, I think that might be the most viral original post I ever wrote; it’s amazing what being reblogged by @argumate can do for a post!):

As a science fiction writer, these are the features I find attractive about “hyperspace” that incline me to favor it over other explanations for “fast” interstellar communication and travel:

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Hyperspace lets space still feel big. Wormholes/portals and instantaneous “jump drives” tend to make space feel small (though wormholes lend themselves nicely to space outside the wormhole network feeling big and to a feeling of sharp discontinuity between “known” or “civilized” space within the network and “unknown” or “wild” space where the network doesn’t reach). Start-anywhere go-anywhere jump drives without serious limitations have the additional issue that they’re more-or-less equivalent to teleporters, so they create the ultimate MAD setting where defending multiple fixed locations from a peer adversary is very difficult, and they minimize the strategic advantages of sustainable stationary banditry over unsustainable hyper-exploitive mobile banditry, and since the likely implications of that are very depressing I prefer to avoid it (except maybe if I was deliberately setting out to write a dystopia or explore the idea).

I want space to feel big in my writing, to give the reader some feeling of the vastness, grandeur, and inhuman scale of the universe. For my main science fiction setting, I think I’ll give hyperspace travel an effective “speed” of something like 5-10 c in Sol’s local neighborhood. That way interstellar journeys are more manageable than they’d be with journeys through our space, but journeys to other inhabited solar systems usually take at least a year or two (Sol to Alpha Centauri may be less than a year in hyperspace, but add in travel time to and from the Sol and Alpha Centauri hyper-limits, which is probably going to be at least a couple of months for each leg, and it’s probably about a year).

---------------

Hyperspace feels more like the sort of thing that might plausibly be useable to almost hairless apes with near-future-ish technology. With warp drives and wormholes and jump drives and so on I get the niggling feeling that’s the sort of thing you should probably have to be on approximately the level of an Orion’s Arm Archialect to do. Real theoretical warp drive and wormhole proposals tend to involve stuff like exotic forms of matter and energy and very large amounts of energy. Hyperspace would be a natural phenomenon, so it’s easier to explain it in terms of people exploiting natural phenomena we just don’t know about now, no weirder than being able to travel faster than rowing would allow by building a sail to catch the wind.

You can say that there are some rare atoms that naturally have a structure that extends into hyperspace. With human senses and 2020s technology they just look like ordinary atoms of silicon, iron, etc., but with the right kind of machinery you can detect them, sift them out of the surrounding 3D atoms, and concentrate them. Once you’ve got enough of them, you can make them the core of a pair of transmitters that you can use to send and receive radio messages through hyperspace. With more energy, you can “push” on these structures and “push” those atoms into hyperspace, and then if those atoms are part of a larger solid object the rest of the object and anything touching it gets dragged along with them (with a certain size limit, perhaps related to mass being “pushed” and energy used, so you don’t have to worry about accidentally sending the whole Earth into hyperspace the first time you try this - that’d be one heck of an oops; maybe a later disproven small theoretical possibility of that happening would go down into the history books along with “before they exploded Trinity they were worried it might ignite the atmosphere”); thus you can send a whole ship into hyperspace instead of just information. When you want to leave hyperspace you can reverse the operation and “push” the ship back into our space.

That gives you a nice highly valuable “handwavium” that can be a hook for various plot and worldbuilding points, e.g. there’s not much obvious economic reason to colonize Mars IRL except maybe tourism (anything you could mine there you get more easily from near-Earth asteroids, and it’s too inhospitable to make much sense as a settler colony), but maybe there’s a huge mother lode of these hyperspace-touching atoms somewhere on Mars. These hyperspace-touching atoms would be especially valuable if the process of using them for communication or in hyperdrives “strained” these structures and at some predictable rate caused some of them to “snap,” causing the atoms to become ordinary 3D atoms of silicon or iron or uranium or whatever. Then there’d be a continuous need for (relatively) large amounts of new ones even in a steady-state economy; you couldn’t just keep recycling them and recycling them and just do a little mining to make up for recycling inefficiencies. This would also be an interesting limit on use of hyperspace; using hyperspace radio or doing a hyperjump involves destroying a small amount of a precious resource, so people wouldn’t want to do it frivolously. This might augment that sphere analogy limitation on hyperspace communication I talked about in my other post; even if a hyperspace radio message from Saturn to Earth got there a little ahead of a radio message through our space, you’d probably send a radio message through our space for anything that isn’t time-critical, because the message arriving ten minutes sooner usually just isn’t worth the predictable cost in “snapped” hyperspace-touching atoms.

--------------

Hyperspace would be an environment, so you can do interesting things with it.

Since hyperspace offers a short-cut because it’s more compact than our space, I like to pull on the idea that it’s like our space but in a more compact state, so it’s similar to what our space looked like when the universe was younger and smaller. Going to hyperspace might be a little like time travelling back to a few tens or hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang, before the first stars formed. The environment of hyperspace might be a little like the inside of a giant molecular cloud, but “warmer” and extremely impoverished in heavy elements. The gas density might be a few thousand to a few billion atoms per cubic centimeter (by comparison, sea level air is about 10^19 molecules per cubic centimeter while the interstellar medium averages around 1 atom per cubic centimeter). The gasses and plasmas in hyperspace would be almost pure hydrogen and helium. The cosmic microwave background temperature in hyperspace might be around 50 K; that’s warm in comparison to what it is in our space (around 3 K), and warm enough to probably be a big part of the reason hyperspace has no stars (present day star-forming giant molecular cloud regions have gas temperatures around 10-20 K), but by human standards it’s deeply cold; it’s upper atmosphere of Uranus temperature. With no stars, I’d guess hyperspace would be a place of more-or-less total darkness outside the range of any lights humans passing through might bring with them.

Alternately, if I want hyperspace to have a murky and mysterious quality and be a place where visibility isn’t good and sensors don’t work well (so a vibe a bit like B5 hyperspace), I could say the Big Bang nucleosynthesis era lasted longer in hyperspace and there produced a substantial amount of heavy elements, some of which then condensed into dust (probably more like smoke if it’s similar to interstellar dust in our space - nanometer to micrometer particles). This dust would probably be pretty insubstantial on human scale distances (again, if it’s like the interstellar medium matter in hyperspace would be about 99% mostly hydrogen and helium gas and plasma and 1% dust, and even a relatively “dense” hyperspace with billions of atoms per cm^3 would have less than a billionth the gas density of sea level air), but over AUs it would scatter light and that effect might add up. This would make hyperspace similar to a dark nebula.

If I want to take the “hyperspace is a scary place” further, I could add sources of energy that might further confuse sensors and add dangerous radiation and other dangers to the mix. Maybe hyperspace has a few large black holes or something, with energetic accretion disks and polar jets fed by all that relatively dense gas and adding turbulence to it. Or maybe spacetime in hyperspace is “lumpier” than spacetime in our space and hyperspace has weird “rivers” formed by something related to whatever force drives cosmic expansion and some of the gas/plasma gets caught in that and accelerated to large fractions of the speed of light and then slams into the low-velocity material in the “still” parts in places, creating lots of turbulence and various other interesting and scary things (powerful magnetic fields, radiation, locally intense heat, maybe some of these collision zones are even giant naturally occurring inertial confinement fusion reactors; maybe that’s where the heavy elements in the dust come from). Maybe hyperspace has a lot of cosmic strings; it makes a certain intuitive sense that, hyperspace being more compact than our space, its cosmic eggshell might be densely veined with cracks.

This gets into another interesting aspect; hyperspace might have something equivalent to terrain; hyperspace travel may be easier in some directions than others. And there’s lots of worldbuilding and plot hooks you could hang from that idea.

For example, let’s look at that idea of hyperspace having “rivers” formed of exotic spacetime structures and filled with gas/plasma streams moving at high fractions of the speed of light. If the edge of these “rivers” has a gradual enough velocity gradient and the plasma in the “rivers” is ionized, with enough skill a spacecraft pilot might be able to catch that “current” with a magsail and ride it, then when they’d gotten about as far as they needed to go they could leave the “river” and do magsail braking against low-velocity plasma in the “still” areas. Just gotta be careful to stay well away from the dangerous collision zones! This might be a huge part of the short-cut offered by hyperspace travel! It could be that distances across hyperspace are only modestly shorter than distances across our space (say, Alpha Centauri is 1 light year away in hyperspace), but the really big savings is you can catch one of these hyperspace “currents” and use it to get up to large fractions of c without expending any fuel. A set-up like that does raise some awkward questions about conservation of energy, but I could say something like “the hyperspace ‘rivers’ are areas where dark energy is being converted into kinetic energy, slightly slowing down the expansion of the universe in the process.” It’s not like we know much about how dark energy works, or even what it is, so for all we know that’s a thing that might happen under certain conditions.

Those collision zones would generate substantial radiation, including light, so unlike a calm hyperspace a turbulent hyperspace with energetic “currents” would probably have light. Don’t know how bright it would be; all that dust (made of heavy elements built up over the eons by inertial confinement fusion in collision zones, I like that idea!) would absorb a lot of light over cosmic distances, and stars are pretty bright but most of our space is pretty dark.

That set-up would make hyperspace travel kind of like sailing; there would be “currents” or “winds” you want to catch, and travel might be a lot faster along directions where the currents are favorable. Travel times in hyperspace might only loosely correlate with distance; Alpha Centauri might take longer to reach than Zeta Reticuli. There would also be hazards you’d need to avoid, e.g. the collision zones.

Maybe part of the explanation for the Fermi Paradox might be that Earth is in the middle of a big “still” part of hyperspace; few ships went here because we’re in the middle of a cosmic doldrums that takes years to crawl across.

With a set-up like this, hyperspace may have “weather” that influences interstellar commerce, and “climate change” on historical timescales that influences the trajectories of interstellar societies. Ages when hyperspace is particularly turbulent might cause Dark Ages as hyperspace travel becomes very dangerous. Ages when hyperspace becomes unusually calm might also cause Dark Ages as there are no fast hyperspace “currents” to ride and hyperspace travel becomes relatively slow. In one age hyperspace “currents” may be arranged such that a world is isolated; a few thousand years later the hyperspace “currents” might have shifted and that previously isolated world might be much more accessible and back in the mainstream of interstellar civilization.

One wrinkle: a turbulent, energetic, opaque hyperspace such as this probably wouldn’t be good for sending radio signals across. Maybe the universe actually has multiple “basement” levels, hyperspace is just the one that’s “closest” to our “living room” level and the only one that’s “close” enough that ships can travel to and from it, but there’s a clearer layer that’s “farther away” but still “close” enough that you can send radio signals through it, and that “deeper” clear layer is the one used for interstellar communication. Bonus idea I like: the deep clear layer is even more compact than hyperspace (by orders of magnitude) so it’s overall a much better short-cut in every way except being “too far away” to send ships through it, so finding a way to send ships through it is a huge potential breakthrough that tantalizes generations of scientists and engineers who so far have not managed to figure out a way to do it.

Really, on that note, I like the idea that the universe is analogous to an onion with many “layers,” and hyperspace and the deep clear layer are just the layers that are most easily accessible from our space. There are a lot of “basements” below the deep clear layer, and generally as you get farther “down” the “basements” get smaller, denser, and hotter; going “down” is a little like time travelling to eras closer and closer to the Big Bang (though this isn’t a completely reliable rule - the deep clear layer is smaller than hyperspace and perhaps warmer, but seems to be a lot emptier; maybe most of its matter has been sucked into black holes?). Maybe the whole thing is a bit timey wimey wibbly wobbly and if you go “down” far enough you eventually hit what 2020s science knows as the moment of the Big Bang. As well as “basements” there are also “attics,” but they’re less accessible because going “up” is harder than going “down.” If going “down” into the basements is a little like time travelling to the early universe, going “up” into the attics is a little like time travelling to the deep future, to places that look kind of like what our space may look like in the deep future black hole era (assuming the Big Rip doesn’t destroy our universe before that deep future proton decay story has time to play out). The “attics” are vast, empty, and deeply cold; cosmic microwave background temperatures a tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero and precious little else to generate energy, maybe one atom in every cubic kilometer of space. They probably expanded too quickly for stars to ever form there. The total number of layers might be large; maybe hundreds or thousands, maybe billions, maybe a number so big it would need to be expressed in scientific notation. I like this idea because it makes hyperspace feel less implausibly convenient for humans; we’re just taking advantage of a particularly convenient part of a big macrostructure that’s mostly inaccessible to us.

----------

Hyperspace is a natural phenomenon, so it probably isn’t going to be neatly quarantined to just being a thing humans can use for communication and travel. Hyperspace-related phenomena are going to show up in nature, and this offers a neat explanation for any exotic soft SF-ish natural phenomena you may be interested in incorporating into your setting.

Hyperspace (and other “basements” of our universe) also gives you a built-in parsimonious explanation for any other bits of soft SF technology your setting might feature. Want your setting to have e.g. Star Trek style forcefields? You can say they work through interaction with one of the “basement” layers of the universe.

On that note, I have an idea for a more hard SF version of the Babylon 5 “going beyond the Rim” thing or Stargate ascension, based on the “onion universe” concept I described above, which might serve as a partial explanation for the Fermi Paradox. Maybe some “layers” of the “onion” are “superhabitable” to advanced machine intelligences (though not to primitive flesh and blood beings like us). You know the aestivation hypothesis? If advanced machine intelligences could move to an “attic” they wouldn’t have to wait billions of years for our space to cool down; the cosmic microwave background temperatures in many of the “attics” would already be some tiny fraction of a degree above absolute zero. Maybe they could move to a nice big cold “attic” and live there and “mine” a nice compact “basement” that is rich in matter and energy, getting the best of both worlds. Most of these “attics” and “basements” would be completely inaccessible to humans, but beings with better technology and more resources might be able to access many more of them (or maybe even get beyond the “onion” and search the entire multiverse for universes with conditions more to their liking). So the universe’s most powerful and most enduring civilizations might usually leave our space and move to another “layer” or universe that has conditions more ideal for them, and thus be mostly undetectable to us.

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See: the concept of hyperspace is loaded with potential plot and worldbuilding hooks if you use a little imagination, and I like that!

[utau-bowl]

Looking at all the Voicebanks on the Arpasing website

This is a project that took a good amount of time to write and publish, so I’m glad I’m finally here! For context, there is an unofficial Arpasing website with reclists, plugins, and USTs to use. There’s also a list of avilable Arpasing voicebanks to try out, and here’s where I had the idea to download and talk about-all of them. These will generally be pretty short, but I hope they’re at least somewhat informative. Many of these voicebanks are in beta/unfinished to a degree, so keep that in mind. Since a lot of these are old beta voices, if you don’t want your VB on here, just send me a message and I’ll delete it.

All of these voices can be downloaded at the Voicebank Directory on the Arpasing site. 

A few of the links on the site didn’t work, so sorry Cherry, Daichi Hayashi, and Armani. I’m also not including the Arpasing prototype VB since it’s just recordings and has no oto. For people who don’t know much about arpasing: 0.1.0 is the original version of Arpasing with 219 samples, and 0.2.0 is an updated later version made by Kanru Hua that has 334 samples. I also bring up the alveolar tap a little bit. The alveolar tap is a consonant common in american English (it’s the “tt” sound in butter, better, and letter). Since Arpasing was optimized for American English, it’s surprising that most of the reclists for it don’t include the alveolar tap! So I might point that out when I see it added into a vb.

Aero-gen Shinsu by Wolfe Nebula

※Reclist: 0.1.0 ※Number of pitches: 3 ※Has FRQs?: Some Aero is a mild adolescent sounding voice with lots of noise. He generally sounds pretty sweet and light, I love his voice a lot! There is a decent anount of background noise, which some may be picky about. Still, it doesn’t affect the quality much and he works with most resamplers. Putting high BRE on him makes him sound pretty good. I generally had no issues with his oto, but the CC transitions aren’t otoed very well and some are off time.

Aino Erufu by Jasputing

※Reclist: 0.2.0  ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes, also has full llsm and pmk files Aino has a very unique voice acted timbre, and it’s almost difficult to find a song to match her. But when you do, she’s a sweetie. ^^ She has a sweet, louder voice and sounds best above A3, or even higher in the soprano range.  She is touchy with resamplers but works well with fresamp and world4utau.

Aki Toka/幸兔雪  by Yukito Yuki 

※Reclist: 0.2.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes Aki is clear and strong and has a good tone. good tone, clear. has full frqs. got one of my favorite accents. Despite being monopitch, he has a very wide range and can go a little below his stated range of F3-C5. The mid/low range sounds best though imo. He comes with a guide for aliasing for those new to Arpasing, and a list of all the sounds which were affected by the VP’s accent. The Finnish accent does come through in the vowels and ending consonants, but the duplicates allow for more varied pronunciation so it’s not a big deal. Akihana ENG [radiance] D3_beta by Lunamageice ※Reclist: 0.1.0, uses phonetic filenames  ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes Akihana has a low, rich, full voice that’s good in bass and baritone range. I’ve used his VCCV before, but the Arpasing actually has more natural pronunciation. It has been in beta all this time, but it’s still worth it to use because of the rarity of this voicetype in UTAU. Angus by ReticentResolve

※Reclist: 0.2.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes    I was blown away by how good Angus was! He’s a deep, soft masculine voice ranged F2-G4 with a nasal quality. He comes with a tripitch VCV JP bank for those who’d want that too. The mic he was recorded on picked up a lot of background noise and makes him sound muffled, but he’s still a decent vb.

AWG YukiList verKLAD by Adlez27 ※Reclist: YukiList with modifications ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: No This is an example voicebank for the Yukilist arpasing recording style created by YukitoYuki. It has 800+ samples and a lot more coverage than basic Arpasing. It’s a tenor vb with a mild tone. The alveolar tap (dx) samples are in a separate folder for some reason and aren’t fully otoed, but they work fine. Some of the VC transitions aren’t configured correctly, but generally the oto is good.

Canary by SlightlyShredded

※Reclist: 0.1.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 (D3) ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes + llsm Canary has a really pleasant voice! He’s a sweet, fruity baritone with power in his voice. He’s very suitable for pop/edm. His oto kept spitting out errors while I used him but he sounds mostly fine despite that. 

Eon_Arpasing by fmccaddy12 ※Reclist: Custom (made by fmccaddy12) ※Number of pitches: 2 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes + llsm Eon is a very realistic baritone voice. He sounds a little congested but is overall one of the best voicebanks on this list. He can be pushed a bit out of his range As far as I’m aware, his official site/character revamp is not done yet but his dl is still up on this website. Not even sure if I should share the link but it is still up publicly...

Hailey Denali by CatMoun

※Reclist: Custom  ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes + llsm  Hailey has one of the cutest tones one of all these voicebanks. She’s very nasal and sounds almost voice acted. Her reclist is 500+ samples long and doesn’t lack anything. However, all the vowels and most of the consonants are 2-3 syllables. Hailey also comes with an automatic updater.

鳳鐘ユウリ(Houshou Yuuri) by さきた (Sakita) 

※Reclist: 0.2.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Some  Yuuri has a range of about A3-D5. She has a heavy Japanese accent but a decent range. She’s very emotional and pretty sounding, especially in the higher ranges. Though, if you want to use her, know that her oto requires a lot of fixing, as a lot of VC transitions are configured incorrectly.

Johatsun Kikuro Arpasing by Awes0meBr0/Biohazard-P

※Reclist: 0.2.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes + llsm/bak/pmk   He has very quiet samples which causes lots of distortion in the program. Nevertheless, he still manages to sound realistic somehow-? He reminds me of older vocal synths like Microsoft Sam almost. I did mess around a bit with resamplers/flags for Kikuro and the best combination I’ve found so far was f2resamp and F0g1H20h0C10. Using Kikuro requires some effort but he’s sill pretty good.

Kara Kokone by SunGuardian524

※Reclist: 0.1.0 ※Number of pitches: 5 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Some  Kara is most impressive for being one of the UTAU with the highest number of pitches on this list- each of them has a different tone, with one being a falsetto and another being a shout pitch. Her range is pretty wide, reaching almost into alto and being able to hit the high soprano notes too. However, this bank really does feel like a beta that hasn’t been touched in a while. It doesn’t have a fully configured prefix.map and the oto is pretty off and requires a lot of adjusting. I also wish she used a more comprehensive form of the reclist, since there is a lot missing. At least there’s a lot of duplicate entries.

Kayaka Konagi Arpasing(English) by こむぎこ (Komugiko)  ※Reclist: 0.2.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes Konagi is very good, her pronunciation is clear and she has a nice tone. She is a bit finicky with resamplers and flags, probably meant to be used with default settings. She does have a Japanese accent but it’s a little less pronounced than Yuuri’s.

Kevin Futarine STUDIO (VP2 Arpasing) by FRAloids

※Reclist: 0.2.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: No  Kevin is another baritone voice with a youthful flavor. It has a good amount of flexibility, being sort of emotional and soft sounding but also capable of producing a bright, clear sound. He was recorded at E3 but has a flexible range and even sounds good higher. His pronunciation is pretty on point, but the t/d are a little mixed up. His dh sounds are also so short they’re hard to hear at times. The oto is generally good but might need some adjusting out of the box. He has a ton of extra samples of sighs, laughs, whispers, etc. I’ve been a Kevin fan for years and this voicebank definitely keeps the tone his Japanese vbs have.

Kii Nane by kii ※Reclist: 0.1.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Some   Kii Nane is a sugary sweet voice that sounds best at C4 and above. Her samples have a lot of reverb, and there is some background noise which affects the output. Her pronunciation is very good, but a little slurred and off because of the engine noise. Resamplers are hit or miss, she does sound good with world4utau though.

Koyanagi Sayuki DEITY by Mango-tama

※Reclist: 0.1.0 ※Number of pitches: 4 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: No, but has full llsm  Sayuki is a very realistic voice ranged F#3-G5. Her low range is soft and her mid/high range is loud and clear. Lovely to tune and use in anything, I don’t have much negative to say about her.

Koyanagi Takehiko_TSUNAMI (BETA) by Mango-tama

※Reclist: 0.1.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 (G3) ※Has fully generated FRQs?: No, but has full llsm Takehiko is very cool sounding and bassy, and the voice acting makes him distinct from his sister. His best range is from D3 to G4 and he has sorta a soft tone that can be boosted via resamplers. He sounds great with f2resamp.

KYE by WinterdrivE

※Reclist: 0.1.0 + a few Alveolar tap samples ※Number of pitches: 5 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: No, but has full llsm Kye needs no introduction-he’s the guy who got most of us interested in Arpasing in the first place! His abundance of pitches works in his favor. He’s probably the best of these voicebanks to just plug and play to learn how to use Arpasing-if you don’t mind waiting for all those 1000+ frqs to generate. He is by far the best in baritone/bass range. A lot of the D4 pitch actually has pitch/frequency issues that can’t be fixed without workarounds, so using him from B2-C4 is your best bet-or just using a different pitch for the higher ranges. He does have a sort-of lisp but overall, not many oto or pronunciation issues.

Marie Kagekine Arpasing (v1.0) by AdagioFantasque

※Reclist: 0.1.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes +  some llsm, pmk, and uspec  Marie is an operatic voicebank who tries to recapture the charm of Prima in an UTAU format. She has a wide range of B3-F5 and a mature, yet high and bright, sound. She has some of the best understandability out of any of these voicebanks. I really like her <3

Mikone Samu by codyboyo

※Reclist: 0.2.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes Samu/Sam is a port of Microsoft Sam done in a similar way to how Defoko was made. He’s a crisp sounding masculine low voice. Due to the samples being short, he can sound very stilted. But for a jinriki (?) like this, he is very high quality.

Resonance Harmony (Arpasing English) by Hazu/パワ 

※Reclist: 0.1.0 ※Number of pitches: 6 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes I have a lot to say about Harmony, and no good way of wording it. Okay. Resonance is very nasally and high, she has 3 base pitches plus growl, power, and whisper appends, and some vocal fry. Conceptually, she seems like a pretty good bank but I’ve always had trouble using her...it feels like a hit or miss on whether she’ll sound good or not. She sounds decent with f2resamp and w4utau but not many flags make her sound better. If anyone else wants to download her and play around, I’d love to hear it.

Rose Mae Arpasing BETA by Monochrome Rose ※Reclist: 0.1.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes + llsm Rose has a bright, tomboyish, androgynous voice. The readme file notifies us of the non-native accent in the vb. It does have a drawl and some of the consonants aren’t recorded/otoed right, but overall the vb sounds very smooth. Honestly, I care more about recording conditions/oto/general feel than accent most of the time, and Rose does well in those ways.

Ryuunosuke Aoyama by Mattsuran 

※Reclist: 0.1.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 (B3) ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes + llsm Ryuunosuke is a childish, boyish voice with a strong Chilean accent. I think this vb may have actually been recorded by a kid, so that’s a point for uniqueness at least. He sounds best with fresamp and f2resamp. He has a gentle tone that can work in a lot of different ranges.

Tarek by Tadashi

※Reclist: 0.1.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 (B2) ※Has fully generated FRQs?: No, has llsm Tarek has a clear, loud tone with a noticeable lisp. UTAU recommends using him as a baritone, but I found putting him into higher ranges generally worked too. His samples sound less like singing and more like talking. He was recorded on a midquality mic which causes some distortion in the output. Still, I think his voice is really cute and I’m a sucker for baritones.

Thoma by Nythoma

※Reclist: 0.2.0 + vocal fry/alveolar tap ※Number of pitches: 1 (F#3) ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes   Thoma is an androgynous alto/mezo soprano. They have a soft, plasticy sort of feeling to their voice. They sound best from C3-F5. I feel a little..weird linking to/talking about Thoma since they were redesigned and are supposed to be a private voicebank, but the download is still linked on this site. Also please check out Nythoma when you get a chance, they make the best Arpasing USTs which helped me a lot while making this post. I feel like I haven’t checked in on anyone here in a while. How are you doing? I’ve written most of this post within the span of a few days and I think my brain is not capable of producing any thoughts other than “monopitch.”

Tsubasa Arugo Arpasing (BETA) by WinterStar

※Reclist: 0.2.0 ※Number of pitches: 1 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: Yes   Tsubasa has a soft, androgynous voice that sounds best from E3-A4. The samples are full of static, which causes some distortion. The ending vowel sounds also cut off too much at the beginning, making them too breathy. Still, it’s always nice to see another soft vb.

Xiao Meihua by 実偽Migi

※Reclist: 0.2.0 ※Number of pitches: 2 ※Has fully generated FRQs?: No Meihua has a realistic mature voice that’s also sweet and friendly sounding. She has a sort of low voice, and sounds the best from G3-C5. The download comes with a natural vb and a Sweet append, both monopitch. I listed them as being different pitches because they aren’t recorded at the same note. The Sweet voicebank is nasal and stronger too-it sounds more solid than sweet. She’s one of the vbs on this list that sounds the best with little to no edits. Her oto is smooth as butter :0

And that’s all of them done! Thank you SO much for reading if you got this far, seriously. You are what makes writing this blog worth it <3

Also I wanted to list my favorites of the bunch! This isn’t meant to pit any vb against each other or anything, just the ones I’m likely to go back to. -Canary -Eon -Xiao Meihua -Marie Kagekine -Kii Nane -Aki Toka -Thoma -Kevin Futarine Studio

Who are your favorites?